Documentary review: Step into the World of Lars van de Goor

Friday 8 May 2020, 20:10 by Michelle Peeters | 5,868 views | 0 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

I watched the documentary: Step into the World of Lars van de Goor on Photofacts Academy. In this article, my review.

The documentary was made by a foreign filmmaker (Janek Sedlar) whom we supported financially. This means we are allowed to show the documentary on Photofacts Academy. So we did not produce it ourselves, which is different from what we normally do.

From musician to artist

Lars van de Goor was once a musician and could not imagine that there would ever be anything else in his life apart from music. However, when he bought a Panasonic camera with an extreme zoom lens on it, he became almost exclusively interested in creating exciting pictures.

He did not know much about camera settings and mainly experimented with viewpoints and compositions. Because he almost always zoomed in quite a lot, he soon managed to create fascinating images through the compressing and framing effect of this.

Someone who saw his photos told him: You are not a photographer, but an artist! This made a weight fall from his shoulders. Because, as an artist, you can do whatever you want!

Learning to see differently with a zoom lens

A zoom lens also makes you look at things differently. So he started looking at nature in a completely different way too. Through social media, where he shared his images, he quickly gained a huge following.

Fascinated by trees and leaving

Lars lived in Diemen, near Amsterdam, and was already photographing avenues because he was obsessed with trees. Because of the constant traffic jams, it always took him a very long time to reach nature areas near Diemen.

This constant bustle and hectic pace eventually led him to sell everything, buy a campervan with the money and set off with his wife for an indefinite period. First, he moved to Lochem in Gelderland, where he also photographed avenues with beautiful rows of trees.

According to his wife, nature is his religion. Nature does not lie, nothing is as truthful as nature. It makes trees magical. But it was time to move on and develop further.

Home is where you park

That was not possible with travelling alone, because the time would be limited and it would be too expensive as all the costs would continue. So he bought a campervan, which became his home. 'Home is where you park'.

He soon discovered the great advantage of life in a campervan, namely that you are always in the middle of nature and close to your subject, whatever the weather conditions. And when the conditions are very bad, you simply climb back into your campervan and wait for better weather.

He and his wife became ill almost immediately because they had to go through the process of letting go and becoming completely at one with their new world. When you are stressed, nothing comes out of your fingers, which many people will recognise, so all of that had to go.

They travelled to England, to the Dartmoor area, where there are many old, crooked oaks. A magical area!

Drone

The filmmaker filmed a lot with a drone, and you see beautiful images of the campervan driving through dazzling landscapes. Good music has been used that fits perfectly with the landscapes shown in England, the Dartmoor area, France and Spain, Biscay, Navarra and Bardenas Reales.

Lars explains well how he creates his magical images. Even when there is no colour in the landscape yet, as the forest is still leafless in April, and how you then have to look for patterns, lines or use your imagination to see faces in something.

Connecting

He also explains that if you are able to truly connect with nature, mainly with trees in this case, you feel nothing, which is a good sign!

In terms of composition, it is often helpful if there are many large, old trees in an area with nothing obstructing the view between them. So, plenty of space between them. He does not do much post-processing, mainly bringing out the colours.

After travelling around for a year, the moment of saturation and tiredness arrived. Constantly chasing beautiful images and moments takes its toll after a while. All the bad moments are also mentioned in the documentary, having to change a wheel, getting stuck in the mud, and so on.

Lars decides to carry on, but no longer constantly chase beautiful moments. He lets them come to him and allows the moments to present themselves, which works!

What did I think of it?

I thought it was an informative documentary that is very enjoyable to watch. Lars is an intelligent, highly creative person who is good at conveying what is involved in creating fascinating, dreamlike nature photos.

You have to fully immerse yourself in it, let go of all the stress and routine of daily life and become one with nature before you understand how this works. Highly recommended, and you can watch it in an hour!

Would you like to be inspired?

At Photofacts Academy, our online learning environment for photographers, we have the complete documentary Step into the world of Lars van de Goor. You can watch this documentary for two weeks and also take other courses with a free trial membership.

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