that of freezing the moment in time when the subject appears
perched in a state of maximum motion. The second is that the
point of view creates a composition that reveals something
unusual in the scene. This second aspect is more important
in landscape photography.
If we only had unlimited time, think of all the images we
could create. The beauty of our predicament is that we don’t
and must work with schedules and limited resources. These
constraints are what forces us to improvise and stretch our
imagination and creativity. All the hard work and ingenuity
pays off and in the end makes the difference between some-
thing interesting and something truly beautiful. opThis three-part article series is excerpted from The Art of See-
ing, an ebook by Marc Muench, available as a free download at
muenchworkshops.com/ebook.Timing. For this photograph, I set up the tripod in the
dark, with no view whatsoever. I waited for over an hour
for just a tiny dawn glow to appear before I could even
see the lake below. Then I waited another hour for the
clouds to finally part to see Sunburst Peak. Thankfully,
I was ready and captured this image just moments
before the mountain disappeared in the clouds for
another hour. This timing was critical, as the summit
of the peak creates proper scale above the lake and
conveys the size and enormity of the landscape.
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