Landscapes Very Close to Home

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

We are all tempted by fantastic landscapes in the Lofoten Islands, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and more.

We save for months, or years, to be there for one or two weeks, and hope the conditions will be perfect. They cost a fortune, and don't always guarantee success.

Maybe it's time to look closer to home.
Really close.

As landscape photographers, we all know them: the rorbuer in Hamnøy, the Múlafossur waterfall with the village of Gásadalur, or Mount Kirkjufell complete with the waterfalls in the foreground.

These are of course just a few of the many fantastic places we would love to visit as landscape photographers.

However fantastic it is to be able to photograph in those fabulous landscapes, and however much we longingly look at those faraway places, we often forget to look at the possibilities closer to home.

By that I really mean close by, no more than a fifteen-minute walk away, or ten minutes by bike or car.

These places are so ordinary that we have actually become blind to the possibilities they offer. You might think that someone living in a city has no photogenic landscapes around them, or within a short distance.

And perhaps it is true that some people really have no nature nearby. But it doesn't have to be the Veluwe, or the Amsterdamse Waterleiding Duinen. It could also be the park around the corner, where there might be beautiful trees, or a nice path where the evening sunlight can play through. Maybe there's a pond.

Go for a walk in a nearby park and look through a photographer's eyes. Who knows, you might be surprised by what you find.

I live in Helmond, in a quiet suburb. We have a park there with a large pond, where young people hang around every day and dogs are taken for walks. It's just a few minutes' walk away, and perfect for photographing beautiful sunsets.

The great thing is that I can quickly pop to the park between cooking and eating when the light turns beautiful.

I know where to stand, and can be back before the food gets cold... so to speak. And yes, there are houses in the photo when I photograph my sunset there, but so what?

After all, we say that a human element in a landscape can be beautiful, as it gives a sense of perspective.

We are happy to include a house in Iceland or the Lofoten Islands in our photo, so why not traditional Dutch terraced houses? The Japanese would love it.

A little further from home there is a fishing pond, hidden between a lock, the canal, two busy main roads, a roundabout, close to the railway, a sports centre, and overlooked by high-voltage pylons. Normally, as a landscape photographer, you wouldn't consider it worth a second look.

And yet, with this pond in the foreground, a photo of a sunset can turn out particularly beautiful. If you look closely, you can see a street lamp, and perhaps a few other things, but you could easily remove those in Photoshop too... if you want.

And there are more places like this, a short distance from my home, quickly accessible and, with the right composition and angle of view, not recognisable as a place in a residential area. You could imagine yourself in a vast landscape. Isn't that fantastic?

So, have a look close to home and find the hidden compositions. Learn what the light can be like there, at sunrise or sunset. Know where to stand and which angle of view to use. And who knows, perhaps you will take the photo of your life just five minutes' walk from home. Good luck!

Incidentally, all the photos in this article were taken within a ten-minute walk of my home, in the middle of a residential area in Helmond.

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