Photograph “lost” in the woods

[Heroique]

[…] It helps that I never have any difficulty remembering where I took a particular shot. *When* causes me endless problems, but I can recall where I was standing, and find it on a large scale map, for several years after exposure. That reduces the need to note down subject details. [From the “A poll about your field notes” thread.]

I wish I enjoyed better talent for returning to a specific shot, especially when off the trail, and I’m curious if others share this strange condition.

Even with specific field notes, compass, and USGS topographic maps (think Cascade Mountains), my searches for earlier locations can mysteriously go astray, despite considerable hiking experience. Even when I’m standing within yards of where my tripod once stood – and though the scene has undergone no significant change – I still feel strangely misled. It doesn’t seem to happen when I’m hiking for reasons other than photography.

Such a fit of disorientation may be a fascinating problem of psychology:

My bearings, I will think, have not been based on my objective memory of the former scene, but on the “pre-visualized” metamorphosis it underwent for yesterday’s photo. I’m being led by perception, not facts. Not the best state of mind when you’re off the beaten path!

If this sounds familiar, I’d enjoy hearing about your experience, and how you may have diagnosed and “treated” the condition.

[Eric Rose]

"My bearings, I will think, have not been based on my objective memory of the former scene, but on the “pre-visualized” metamorphosis it underwent for yesterday’s photo. I’m being led by perception, not facts. Not the best state of mind when you’re off the beaten path!"

So true, I suffer the same malady. For getting my exact spot however I use a GPS. Mainly that is used to tell others where I have taken a shot as I generally don't like to go to the same spot twice to photograph unless I couldn't get what I wanted the first time.

[reellis67]

This is a very interesting concept. I tend to photograph outdoors mostly in areas that I am already very familiar with - places that I've spent years wandering about getting to know, and I actually find it difficult to photograph places that I have not been before because I don't feel like I have any connection with that place yet, so I can't see it properly. Because of that, and despite the fact that I could get lost driving home, I tend to be able to go directly to the location of a previous photograph many years later without error. I do also share the temporal issue you quoted above - I couldn't tell you what today's date is half (or more) of the time, let alone when the date that I made an exposure weeks, months, or <shudder> years ago.

I can't really give you any suggestions for remedying your situation though, sorry. I've tried for many years to become better at navigation, but the only place that I can get around unerringly is in the great outdoors. I suspect that I care more about those places than I do urban areas, in which I habitually get hopelessly lost, and so they 'stick' better in my gourd, but who knows. I think that you've got the measure of it though - sometimes it very difficult to not see the idea of the final presentation when you are looking at your subject...

- Randy

[mandoman7]

My experience is the opposite. I can remember the elements in the picture and why I chose a position, and there is usually only one place where those elements will line up properly. Maybe the top of certain tree was above the horizon, or some other type of reference. If I can remember what I was going for, that's enough usually.

There aren't all that many places where everything lines up right.

[Steve M Hostetter]

Hello,,

very cool thread,as usual.

I understand totally what you mean in regards to finding an old spot that I once photographed..

Here's my story:

There have been many times I have hiked the back country near Brown County state park. I will never use a path to navigate but instead blaze my own trail.
The back country can go for many miles(10-15) before intersecting a road, town or even a path.
The ridges will spead out in all different directions and when you reach the bottom of a valley you had better mark a tree with a marker for the rest of the way.!

Before I used to mark trees I went on memory but upon returning one evening I found myself looking for my truck in near darkness. I had hiked up the wrong ridge which put me heading in the wrong direction. I started to panic and my heart raced violantly.

What happens is that all those ridges descend to valleys which carry streams and when we get decent amounts of rain it can change the topography beyond recognition to even the most experianced hiker.

The tree markers (ribbons) I use are bio degradable so I have to mark them everytime I visit the area.
I will even follow streams for which I find much of the subject matter I intend to photograph but as they fall they migrate in many different directions making the return trip very missleading.

We don't have bears or wolves but we do have timber rattlers that can be up to 10' long and the diameter of a mans thigh,,,(I've seen one) and yes they come out mostly in the cool of the night. A thought that can make that certin orifice tend to pucker

[domaz]

I don't think I've had much trouble finding spots when I visit them again. But I can't say I've photographed anything significantly off-trail. Which is shameful because I am in the Cascades as well, probably done more climbing this year than photographing though. My problem is I have a hard time taking photographs when I am out in the mountains for another reason (e.g. climbing, hiking).

[Vaughn]

I have been photographing the same stretch of Prairie Creek for the past 30 or so years. I find that even if I put the camera in the same spot as I did in the past, the image will be different and can be worth photographing. Weather, seasonal changes, vegetation differences and time-of-day differences make the light different, thus the image different. I do not believe that there is only one possible "best shot" from any particular place.

Since my images are more light orientated, I find it just about impossible to make the same image twice when there has been significant time passing. Photographers and viewers who are more place-orientated might consider them the "same" image, but I do not.

But I have been pleased when "rediscovering" a spot I might have photographed in before (especially if I made a final print of the scene). One set of favorite snags I "lost" for many years when the park re-routed the trail. How fun it was to find them again...and rephotograph them with a larger format and very different printing process! Even I was different enough to make a brand new image of them.

Vaughn

[Steven Barall]

If you can't recognize the same spot twice it just means that you are seeing it differently the second time around. This is not a problem, this is a good thing, the kind of thing that you should welcome and be grateful for.

You shouldn't use GPS and maps to tell you where to take photos. It's about the discovery, the thing you are seeing for the first time. Loosen up people and have some fun. Look around, take the road less traveled. Cheers all.

[J.Medlock]

I found the talk about navigation, GPS, topo maps interesting.

I live in Southern New Mexico and frequently hike the White Mountain Wilderness (Lincoln National Forest); in fact, I was out on a mountain top late this afternoon / evening with my backpack, camera, and dog. No one around for many miles. Beautiful sunlight, beautiful landscape, and wondering if I have any beautiful negatives...

If I'm out hiking without my camera, and come across a scene I want to photograph, I'll mark a waypoint on my GPS so that I can easily return at a later date. Very helpful!

Regarding gear: along with my camera, I carry a GPS, cell phone [but coverage can be non-existent in certain areas], and a Yaesu VX7 HAM radio with a J-Pole antenna that I can put in a tree [to help coverage if needed]. Of course, I have other essentials in my backpack.

Maybe I'm overly cautious when I'm out by myself; but I'm also a member of the local Search & Rescue team, so that might have something to do with it.

[Struan Gray]

A topographic sensibility is only partly relevant to photography, but it certainly helps if you like to take photographs off the beaten track. I am not some kind of wonder-tracker or spatial savant, and I have to rely on maps, compasses and tricks like counting steps when in monotonic evergreen forests, or in very rough terrain like large boulder fields where you cannot maintain a mental pathway; but I can look at a photograph I took ten years ago, call up Google Maps, and zoom into the single rock or bend in the stream where I set up my tripod. I can follow a morning-long path through an unknown city having walked it once before, a year or more ago.

The photographic point is not so much that this makes it easy to re-visit favourite compositions, but rather the opposite: if you have this sort of natural affinity for place you become very aware of what changes and what remains the same, and you fully appreciate the significance of the truly exceptional. You can never step twice into the same river, and the same is true of woods, moors, snowfields, shorelines and even urban landscapes. The visual clues and patterns that I use to memorise a route I have taken are often exactly the ones which reveal the most about the structure of the landscape and the forces which formed it. Paying attention to them has a navigational and a photographic role.

It is impossible for me to tell now how much of what I do is inherent, and how much has been learned in a lifetime of hiking off-trail and smooching round foreign cities to see what turns up. I was the family navigator on car journeys from the age of five or so, and naturally gravitated to the more visual side of the hard sciences as a career, so I have always had a strong bent for pictorial mental representation of the world, and for thinking about complex shapes and spatial relationships in my head. I also have a fairly good photographic memory, which helps when it comes to deciding whether I chose this rock or that rock last time I was following a particular route.

However, there is also a large element of practice and habit and experience. Because I was good at navigation and enjoyed it I did most of my formal learning early in life, with adventure groups and on sailing boats, but in recent years photography has taken me into new, less easily navigated landscapes, and has made me pay more explicit attention to the small-scale structure of places I know well. I don't think I have stopped learning yet.

For those of you who don't feel a natural sense of place my advice might seem impertinent or irrelevant. But I'll try anyway :-)

First, learn about the landscapes you are in. Geology and ecology both provide background to help identify waymarkers. If you notice when the rocks under your feet change from sandstone to quartzite, or a single wild cherry tree in an ashwood, you'll automatically have markers for where you are. As a side benefit your sense of wonder will also be expanded.

Second, practice the formal aspects of navigation. GPS tracks are great for getting from A to B efficiently, but I find them useless for telling me anything about the journey. Force yourself to use a map and compass, or better yet, put yourself through the old boy scout exercise of noting waymarkers from a map or aerial photo and then following the path as a series of directions. Practice predicting tides and the movement of the sun without having to look them up. Go out at night.

Third, walk. Don't take the car or bicycle, but walk, so you have time and attention spare to really look around you. I think it was Edward Abbey who said "the faster I travel the less I see" and I find that more true than anything. A sense of space acquired from walking can be applied to other modes of transport, but rarely, I find, the other way round.