Of all the possible photo genres, landscape photography is the one that I most wish I could master.  A really great landscape photograph takes me to a place that feeds my soul and tells a story about our world.  I must admit that I have never made a really great landscape picture myself.  It is a challenge.  Perhaps the familiarity of my surroundings breeds contempt in me at times, since I have always lived here in the Upper Midwest and it sometimes feels pretty “ho-hum”.  We don’t have the drama of oceans, mountains, and exotic animals and cultures.  Here, it sometimes seems, it is just corn in the summer and snow in the winter.

I recently purchased an ebook from Craft and Vision, “Close to Home” by Stuart Sipahigil.  The book has reinforced what I know in my heart, that where I live there is bountiful subject matter, that I have a unique advantage in capturing that since I live here, and that I need to take the time to let the beauty reveal itself to me.