The MOOD Podcast

Photography with and without Boundaries: Ian Plant, EO72

• Matt Jacob

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Are boundaries important in photography, and does the 'perfect shot' exist?

Ian Plant is a renowned landscape and wildlife photographer who left a career in law to dedicate himself fully to photography. Founder of an acclaimed educational platform, Photo Masters, and author of an incredibly popular and instructional book, Ian is celebrated for his unique style and ability to inspire photographers worldwide. Through workshops and tours, he shares his expertise and passion for storytelling through the lens.

What we talk about:

  • Ian's shift in career from lawyer to full-time professional photographer and educator. 
  • Whether there is such a thing as the 'perfect photo'. 
  • Insights into balancing creativity with technical skills and gear limitations.
  • How different photography genres can shape your perspectives.
  • Overcoming creative blocks and finding inspiration in unexpected places. 
  • The challenges of leading workshops in unique locations and capturing something different. 
  • The value of teaching photography and how it refines your own artistic process. 
  • Why composition is the cornerstone of compelling photography and tips for mastering it. 
  • Ian's philosophy on editing: enhancing the 'magic' of the moment versus creating it digitally.  
  • Predictions about the future of photography, from AI's impact to the dominance of mobile photography.


Find Ian Plant's work on his channels:
Website: www.ianplant.com
Instagram: @ianplantphoto
You Tube: @ShuttermonkeysTV

Thank you to Luminar Neo for sponsoring this episode - get 25% discount on all their products here using the code MOODPODCAST25.
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Matt Jacob:

Welcome to the Mood Podcast, uncovering the art of conversation one frame at a time. I'm your host, matt Jacob, and thank you again for joining me in today's conversation, and today's guest is Ian Plant, a photographer who left a career in law to dedicate himself fully to photography. He's known for his striking landscape and wildlife photography and for leading photo workshops that inspire photographers worldwide. Ian is also the founder of PhotoMasters, an educational platform for photographers, and is also the author of an e-book, visual Flow Mastering the Art of Composition, which has shaped countless photographers' understanding of visual storytelling.

Matt Jacob:

In my conversation with him, we explored Ian's journey from law to photography and the transformative experiences he's had in nature. We discussed his thoughts on creating authentic images, overcoming creative blocks and developing a unique style. Ian shared valuable insights on the balance between vision and technical gear, as well as the practical challenges of photography in remote locations. His perspective on meaningful photography beyond social media influence was a highlight for me, along with advice for aspiring full-time photographers and reflections on some early business mistakes that shaped his approach today. So now I bring you Ian Plant. Ian Plant, welcome to the Mood Podcast. Thanks for joining me today.

Ian Plant:

Hey, thank you, matt. I'm so happy to be here. I love your work and everything that you're doing, so it's a real honor and a privilege to be here. Thanks for joining me today. Hey, thank you, matt. I'm so happy to be here. I love your work and everything that you're doing, so it's a real honor and a privilege to be here. Thanks for having me on.

Matt Jacob:

Thanks so much. No, the honor's mine. To get things started, I noticed something on your website doing some research and I wanted to kind of dive into it a little bit more without putting you too much on the spot, but there was something on there about single-minded dedication to capturing the perfect photo, right? So I want to ask you is there such a thing as a perfect photo and, if so, how do you go about getting it?

Ian Plant:

I love how you've started this conversation by immediately calling out my BS.

Ian Plant:

Saying the tone right, right, and you're right. I mean, that really gets to the heart of it. I think you're absolutely right there. It's hard to say that there's such a thing as a perfect photo. I mean, I feel like every photo I take is a work in progress and sometimes I feel like, okay, maybe I've got it, maybe I've got what I want. But usually I'll stare at a photo and a year or two or three years later I'll look at it and say you know what? Now I figured out what I could have done better.

Ian Plant:

Yeah, I think it's pretty fair to say that there's no such thing as the perfect photo, but I think we should all be striving to get as close as we can to that perfect ideal as possible.

Ian Plant:

I mean, I feel, like you know, photography can come from two different places. It can come from just reacting to what you see around you. It can also spring forth from your own creative process. Like you have an idea in your head and then you just need to go out and wait for the real world to spontaneously align with that idea in your head. And either way, I mean when you're reacting to something that the world's offering to you or when you are trying to bring to fruition something that starts in your brain either way. It's really, really difficult to get the real world to do exactly what you want it to do, so it can be a challenge to get that perfect photo. So I guess I view it more of, I guess, just like an ongoing story arc that never seems to end trying to get that perfect photo you know, trying to get that perfect photo every photographer should certainly have at their fingertips.

Matt Jacob:

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Matt Jacob:

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Ian Plant:

Yeah, yeah. I hate to be cliche cliche about it, but it's, it's more of a journey than a destination, exactly.

Matt Jacob:

Sometimes cliches just make sense. Um, yeah, yeah, you, you mentioned something really interesting there and it and it goes. It's evident in your work, which, by the way, for for people watching this and listening to it, please go check out Ian's work. It's fantastic. Some beautiful artwork that you put out there in the world. You mentioned almost the combination or the balance hopefully not a dichotomy or too much difference, but the balance between what the real world and the environment gives you and what is in your mind and what your visions dictate to you in. In that sense, tell us kind of what your photography is. You know, your style, what, what type of subjects, what type of genre, what type of style do you do, and how do you kind of fit that into the balance between environment wildlife in your case, as well as environment, landscapes and your creative vision?

Ian Plant:

That's actually like a really good question, because I think every photographer needs to wrestle with that question. What is it that one style is? What is it that you want to be photographing? And I know when I first started. I first started my my photographic journey. I've been a full-time pro for 20 years now and I was an enthusiast for 10 years before that. So it's been 30 years now that I've been taking photos and I just realized how old I really am. Join the club.

Ian Plant:

But when I first started out I thought I just wanted to photograph the natural landscape and I didn't want any sign of the hand of man at all, no human element of my photos. And over time my repertoire expanded. I started shooting wildlife, which is a natural extension. For someone who starts off shooting natural landscapes, it's all nature. But at some point I realized that it wasn't beautiful landscapes or beautiful nature that I wanted to photograph, that I just really wanted to capture photogenic moments.

Ian Plant:

I think I was in a diner in some small town in Michigan and I just I was driving from a photo shoot that I was doing and I stopped to get lunch and I'm in this diner and all the waitresses in the diner they were dressed like they were out of the 1950s and there was this old mirror, this concave mirror that was in the back of the diner. They had lots of you know kitschy things up on the walls. And there was a moment when an ambulance went by and all three waitresses looked out the window and I could see it reflected in this concave mirror, the whole scene, all three waitresses looking out. And I remember thinking to myself wow, that would have made a great photo to have zoomed in on that mirror and captured that scene reflected in this funhouse mirror. And I remember thinking, well, a, I don't have a camera and B, that's not the kind of thing that I typically photograph, so I probably wouldn't have photographed it anyways if I had my camera.

Ian Plant:

And I realized at that moment that I was approaching photography all wrong. And I realized at that moment that I was approaching photography all wrong, that my style. I think this is getting back to your original question. I realized that I really wanted to be chasing these magical moments when the universe just randomly coalesces, all the chaos that's out there randomly coalesces into something that's meaningful and something that's powerful. You know, basically, a composition emerges.

Ian Plant:

This is what Cartier-Bresson called the decisive moment, and you know, it was then that I realized that that's what I should be chasing, is those magical moments. And so from there I started to branch out more. So, you know, I knew about Cartier-Bresson's work, but I never really took a close look at it. But I was starting to think more about this decisive moment that he was talking about. So I was taking a closer look at his work and the work of other artists, and so I started branching out from there.

Ian Plant:

I'm still mostly focused on natural landscapes and wildlife, but I try to capture those photographic moments whenever I can, and so I guess I don't know. This is a very long and rambling answer to what was a very succinct question, but I kind of, when I think about my portfolio, I think I'm hoping that that emerges, that I'm not just kind of chasing a specific type of photograph or a specific genre, that I'm really just trying to find those special moments that I find meaningful to myself and that I think are going to make a strong visual design, and whether that's landscape, wildlife, travel subjects or something else, I just want to be there to photograph it.

Matt Jacob:

It's very difficult, isn't it? Especially when you talk to other photographers or beginner photographers or hobbyists. Difficult, isn't it? Especially when you talk to other photographers or beginner photographers or hobbyists and everyone kind of gets a little bit wound up about style. And on one hand, you understand how important it is, especially if you're going to be a professional and want to earn money from it. There has to be an element of identity, otherwise no one knows really what you're about or what stories you're trying to tell or what voice you have. More importantly. And then the other side of it is exactly what you said.

Matt Jacob:

You don't want to limit yourself to anything. Most photographers just want to take photos. It doesn't always matter about what's in front of you. If you think something is a good shot or, like you said, a photogenic moment, then that's what it is. You want to capture it right and I'm learning that as well is, rather than limiting myself to a very specific niche, I just want to go and take photos and if I think something looks or feels or there's a special moment, then I just take it. The next level is whether you want to share that and make a series out of it or story out of it. That's a little bit different. If you want to fit it into your brand and stuff, that's, I guess, where the bit more of a strategic sense comes into it. But at the end of the day, you want to take photos. Just going to take photos, right?

Ian Plant:

Well, I was just going to say I mean, I like the way you frame that, because you know you're talking about two different considerations. There's the artistic side of things and then, from the perspective of people like you and I who are doing this for a living, there are the business aspects as well. And so, yeah, certainly I've taken photos that are outside of my comfort zone, that are outside of what I'm known for, and chances are I'm less likely to share those photos than I am the stuff that I'm known for. But that's more of a business decision rather than an artistic decision. I still enjoy making those photos and even if I don't share them as broadly, if I keep those closer to the vest, so to speak I still think it's worthwhile.

Ian Plant:

It's something that I find artistically fulfilling and I've always felt and I tell people this all the time that when you try a different genre of photography than what you're used to or what you think you should be focusing on, that's when you really learn and grow as an artist. It forces you, when you cross over to a different kind of art, different style, to see the world in a different way, and I think that will only improve what you do. Primarily, I enjoy doing street photography in my spare time and I don't show my street photographs as much as I show my landscape and wildlife photographs. I don't have any of that stuff on Instagram, for example, but I think it's made me a better landscape and wildlife artist, having that experience doing something that's completely different, that forces me to see the world in a different way.

Matt Jacob:

What type of different way then does it make you see the world? It just gives you perspective, is kind of that's what you mean.

Ian Plant:

Well, yeah, I mean. So if you think about landscape photography, you know, for decades landscape photography has been dominated by a certain style of composition, sort of that near far style, where there's a foreground element juxtaposed against background scenery, and you know, not all landscape photos fit into that type of composition, but that's that's very common of the style. There's also this, you know, deep focus effect, where everything is sharply in focus. These are the things that kind of define that genre. So it requires seeing the world in a very specific sort of way. I find street photography to be much, much different, and so you're not doing a lot of the things you would do typically with landscape photography. And street photography is something, I think, that focuses heavily on the magic of the moment. So maybe it has more in common with wildlife photography, because that's something that's very important there, but it's much different kinds of compositions as well. So it's not that sort of carefully constructed, well-balanced, harmonious landscape composition. It's something that's a bit more scattershot, a little bit more on the fly, something that's usually a little bit more off balance, a little off kilter. And so I found the experience of doing street photography. I really felt like it was improving the way I was looking at things for my landscape and wildlife photography.

Ian Plant:

I like to joke around that I photograph wildlife like a landscape photographer and that I, uh, I photograph like street scenes, like a, like a, like a wildlife photographer, and I guess I I photograph landscape like a street photographer would, um, or you know some variation of that Like I feel like it really does help. I know with my landscape photography, my experience capturing those magical moments with wildlife or street photography I've brought into my landscape photography. So I'm waiting for just the perfect weather or the perfect cloud to drift into place to complete the composition, and so a lot of my landscape photos aren't the famous icons, a lot of them are otherwise fairly mundane scenery that works because there's just that perfect interaction between the landscape and the sky and the cloud drifts in and the composition just comes together perfectly or near perfectly, and then the cloud drifts away and the magic of that moment, the magic of that place, will never be repeated again. So that's the sort of thing I like to do.

Matt Jacob:

I love it. Let's rewind a little bit and start from how you got into photography, how you found that genre that you enjoy. Again, we don't want to kind of pigeonhole you into one genre all the time, but for those that don't know you and go into your website and Instagram and stuff, it's evident that there is a genre there, obviously, and we'll talk about landscape of wildlife there. Obviously, and we'll talk about landscape of wildlife. How did photography start for you? I know we could talk about corporate life before that, but how did photography start for you? Why did it start like that for you? And then, how did you fall into that genre? Three questions and one go.

Ian Plant:

Yeah Well, I like to say that I took the scenic route to becoming a professional photographer. It was kind of a roundabout journey. I never thought I was going to be an artist. I was actually terrible at art when I was young. If I tried drawing or painting or music, I was just awful, absolutely awful at it and never even really thought of photography as an option either. And I went to college and then after college, I went to law school. I was going to become a lawyer. I decided. I think there was even a time in my life when I was thinking of getting into politics. It's hard to imagine me as a politician or as a lawyer, because I think it's pretty obvious talking with me for a few minutes that I do not take myself seriously at all. So these are two professions where being super serious all the time is very important.

Matt Jacob:

I'm not sure politics is that serious right now.

Ian Plant:

Yeah, it can be a bit comical. I guess, If I'd known politics would be so entertaining, maybe I'd known about it.

Matt Jacob:

Let's not talk about politics.

Ian Plant:

Right. And so I did one year of law school and then took a job in New York City with a law firm, as a summer intern basically, and it was the first time in my life I'd ever made any real money. So at the end of the summer I treated myself, decided to buy a camera what the heck? Why not? Biggest $100,000 mistake I've ever made? And that's obviously not because of the camera, because I was hooked on photography.

Ian Plant:

As soon as I got my hands on that camera, I just, I just loved it, absolutely loved it, and it quickly transformed from a hobby into a passion and then eventually into a career. Now I call it a lifestyle. It's, it's all consuming for me. And so I had this super expensive law school education that I was in the middle. I mean, I wasn't just going to drop out of law school after one year, still had two more years of that because there was kind of a sunk cost at that point anyways. So, and so I had this huge pile of legal debt that I needed to pay off. So I wasn't able to realize my dream of becoming a full-time professional photographer for another 10 years after I bought that first camera. So I completed law school I went to work as a lawyer in a big Washington DC law firm. Once again, hard to imagine me in that environment. I mean, first of all, I hate wearing suits, yeah.

Matt Jacob:

What type of law was it Sorry? What type of law?

Ian Plant:

It was antitrust law or, as you might have learned about it, competition law, and so, basically, my job was to help super big companies buy other super big companies and become even bigger companies. Yeah, photography was much more interesting.

Matt Jacob:

So then what happened? So there was a point. Obviously you felt you could transition, both, I guess, on a financial basis, also on a skill set and experience basis. What was that pivotal moment for you?

Ian Plant:

I think it really had more to do with the demands of my legal job. I'd been there long enough that they were beginning to actually require me to be responsible. And, uh, I didn't want to be responsible and so I I just said enough is enough, it's time to go into, to go into this full-time as a photographer. I was kind of doing it part-time dabbling. I thought I was ready artistically and I was not. I only know that now looking back at the work I was producing then. It was really, really bad. At the time I thought I was doing pretty good, but in retrospect I feel like I probably needed to spend a little bit more time baking in the oven before I was ready. But I just went for it. I quit my job. I didn't have any sort of real safety net or anything like that. I just rolled up my sleeves and worked hard to make the business part of it work, and 20 years later I'm still standing.

Matt Jacob:

What was the first part of the work, and 20 years later I'm still standing. What was the first part of the business then? Was it working for brands, was it doing personal shoots or selling art? What was the first kind of business model in photography?

Ian Plant:

Well, so doing nature photography, there really isn't much commercial work for that. It's typically always been freelance for the people who have been doing it. And so I started off as a freelancer. I decided, you know like the freelance photographers at the time would get their work published in magazines. You know, maybe if they were lucky they would get published in books and things like that. So I was definitely pounding the pavement, trying to land licensing deals where I could sell my work to magazines and calendars, et cetera.

Ian Plant:

But you know, when I did this, that was at the same time that digital photography became a thing and the Internet was exploding. And you know, during that time the entire industry just got turned upside down and photographers were no longer making as much money, or any money, from their stock portfolios of images. They were making less money from licensing. Magazines were paying less and less. Eventually, the magazines mostly went out of business, so that sort of work began to disappear. Magazines mostly went out of business, so that sort of work began to disappear.

Ian Plant:

And so in the early days, while this was happening, I was still able to make some money selling the magazines, calendars, books et cetera. But I decided to cut out the middleman. I actually co-owned a small publishing company with some other photographers and we self-published coffee table books of our work, instructional books and things like that, so we actually kind of did self-publishing for a while. Of course, the publishing industry went the same way as, like, the magazine industry that all began to take a nosedive. So after doing that for a while, I transitioned to more of an online presence with instructional eBooks and videos and things like that. And you know, this business, as you know, is constantly changing and so you constantly have to be reinventing yourself as a artist and as a business person to stay afloat in this industry.

Matt Jacob:

Yeah, absolutely. It's a constant hustle, right. So fast forward to today and we'll fast forward two decades, I guess very fast. What does your business look like now? I mean, I get a basic understanding of what you do, but for our audience, tell us exactly what you do on a daily basis when it comes to photography, teaching, speaking, selling commercial stuff. Give us a 30,000 foot overview of what you do.

Ian Plant:

What I'm doing right now is pretty much what I spend my time doing. I'm, you know, talking about photography. Photo education is the lion's share of my business. Still make some occasional money from licensing images, or occasionally I'll get an assignment, but almost all of it is teaching workshops and tours in person or doing instruction online, giving presentations, doing a lot of Zoom meetings these days, talking with camera clubs all around the world, and so, yeah, this is what I do.

Matt Jacob:

When you started and you had to essentially hustle and I know we all still hustle today. It's never a plain sailing ride, but are there any moments that you can think of where you had to kind of compromise that artistic integrity you talked about when you started? You didn't necessarily have the artistic voice or artistic skillset that you thought you did or you were seeking. At some point you obviously found it. But are there any commercial pressures that you've experienced have put too much pressure on you in terms of your artistic voice and your artistic integrity?

Ian Plant:

Yeah, that's a fantastic question, and I think generally the answer is no, not really. I've always you know, I talked about the dichotomy between the artistic and the business sides of things, and I've always been of the opinion that you do what you want to do artistically and that the business model is figuring out a way to take what you're passionate about and to find a way to make money off of it, to find an audience for it. And that's really what the business is all about is figuring out how best to market and promote and to reach the audience that's going to appreciate what you're doing, and so I'd like to think that the two exist in entirely separate realms. But I don commercial considerations get in the way of my artistic vision is.

Ian Plant:

Many years ago, I made the internal decision to never do black and white photography. So like, if you go to my website, all of the work on the website is in color, and so that was a commercial decision. I felt that that color, for whatever, was more likely to get me noticed than black and white. I don't know why I thought that that seems kind of silly in retrospect, because obviously black and white photography can be very appealing to a lot of people, and maybe it was just because of the kind of work I was doing, doing nature photography it's more often than not presented in color than in black and white. Some other types of photography, obviously, uh, black and white is much more common. And but I did make that decision and it was motivated entirely by commercial considerations, not at all by artistic considerations. Uh, yeah, and and so it's funny because when I, you know, started just doing street photography for fun, that was the first time I started converting large numbers of images to black and white, because that's just much more common with that genre. And now I'm embarking on a project of going through all my old raw files and picking out the images that had previously been rejected because they weren't good enough as color images but that actually would make great black and white images. So I'm reversing that decision that I've made many years ago and at some point I'll be presenting that black and white portfolio.

Ian Plant:

But yeah, generally one other area that I can think of where I feel business pressure and competitive pressure is, you know, with landscape photography in particular. There are a lot of photographers who go around photographing the very famous landscape icons and I have generally resisted doing that I don't like going and making photos of the stuff that everyone else is photographing. I tend to prefer to find places and moments that are more unique and more personal, and sometimes I feel like that is the road. It's the road less traveled, but it's also the much more difficult road to travel. Because when you know, like on Instagram, you've got photographers that are just chasing each other, you know like people go out and they make a shot, and then you've got photographers that are just chasing each other, people go out and they make a shot, and then you've got a million people who go and copy that shot.

Ian Plant:

But when it's all laid out for you and it's a shot that clearly resonates with people because everyone's doing it, because they love it, if you just go and do that, if you copy the famous Instagram icons, chances are you can very easily build a portfolio that's impressive, but a lot of the artistic work is being done by other people. All you're doing is copying what they're doing. But you could. That makes it really easy to build up a portfolio that people would find stunning. I just, I just don't like doing that, because I just don't feel like any of that is unique or original to me. So I I avoid doing that, but I think that I've taken a hit commercially as a result. So so, yeah, I mean, like the two, I try to keep the two considerations separate, but there there is this squishy middle ground, so it's hard to completely divide commercial and artistic instincts.

Matt Jacob:

It's impossible as long as you, I think, know yourself and know your artistic voice, and that's a journey in itself, right. So you can only stay true to that if you know it and you're aware of it, and then you can almost separate the two and just understand that. Okay, this is a commercial endeavor or a commercial influence. I understand that and this is going to be. I mean, the black and white project. Wow, what a, what a great project. I, I, I just even photos from last year. I look back, I could have done that or could have even just edited it slightly different. And you know, as you organically evolve, right, as an artist, you just always get better, hopefully, at everything, every part of photography, whether it's business, in-camera, post-camera. So, yeah, I'm envious of kind of ripping that all apart and I guess, starting again, you talked about unique places and that's something that really resonates with me.

Matt Jacob:

I think we live in a world now where, I don't know, social media dominates, right, and if you want to be a photographer, you go onto Instagram, you find the style or the people or the photographers that you like and you just emulate them, right? We can have that debate another time where that's a good thing or bad thing. I know I have my opinion on that, but I love that you put the time in and the challenge, the challenge and the pursuit and the journey. Okay, we're talking cliches again, but that's most of the fun and most of the fulfillment you get from it. So how do you go about finding those unique places, the unique moments and those unique spots? Do you have a? Do you have a very kind of clear workflow surrounding that?

Ian Plant:

Um, wow, that's. That's a. That's a great question. Um, I think the answer is no. I don't have a very clear workflow around that. I have an intentionally fuzzy workflow around it because, well, so yeah, like you know, like part of part of discovering the, the things that are going to be photogenic, is putting in the time to really study the subject, and you know you can do some of that study beforehand, um, and you know I'll do research to like figure out if there's an area that I might want to take a closer look at.

Ian Plant:

But if you're doing too much research, you start seeing all of the other photos that are out there and and that can really very quickly infect your personal vision. I mean, I think it's just human nature. You see an amazing photo and the first reaction you have is to say I really want that photo, and so I try to avoid that as much as possible. I think that's something that when you're beginning, you do more of. But as you become more confident in your own vision and having your own vision becomes more important to you and having your own vision becomes more important to you, you want to kind of maintain a quarantine around that personal vision as much as you possibly can. So I'll do some of that initial research when I'm thinking of going to an area. But for me I think it's just getting there and putting boots on the ground, just scouting the location or the subject, getting to know the subject, just getting yourself into the rhythm of a place or the, or the, the uh, the behavior of your subject, and just kind of going with the flow. And so there is some prep work for me, but a lot of it is just reacting and exploring and being curious as much as I can and then finding the visual connections that are meaningful to me, that that match my style of photography, and then going about creating those images.

Ian Plant:

So, you know, a lot of times when I, you know, sometimes I'm going to places that are very much off the beaten path, that other people really aren't paying much attention to, and I love making images in those places. To me it's like you feel like a pioneer, you know, like I'm the first person to be photographing this area. No one's ever been here before. I can. Just, you know, it's a blank slate for me. I can approach it however I want and that's, that's fantastic. And of course it's a big world but it seems pretty small these days. There's people all over the place and everything that they up to take the famous Instagram shot and then they're gone to the next one. It's kind of crazy, and so I definitely avoid those places when I see them, and to me, it's just.

Ian Plant:

The real challenge is just, even if you're in a place or photographing a subject that's been done before, just trying to figure out a different way of looking at it, and I think that's the real challenge. To me, photography is about showing people they haven't seen something that they haven't seen before and that can be a completely new thing. You could trek to the ends of the earth and find some mountain that's never been photographed or some rare, endangered species that's never been seen, but I think it's. It's really more about looking at the everyday, the mundane, all this stuff that's around us, and showing people a new way to look at it, a different perspective that they never would have considered before. To me, that's that's the real magic of photography.

Matt Jacob:

Absolutely Well said. And how does that then play into a core part of your business model, which you mentioned earlier in photo tours and workshops at the education or tour guiding side of photography, I guess? Tell us a little bit more about that. And we talked about the unique locations. Do these unique locations kind of translate into where you take people as well, or do you also keep those kind of close to your vest?

Ian Plant:

Yeah, a little bit. I mean, you know. So I used to do a lot more photography tours to some famous places around the world, but I don't do as much of that anymore Now. I'm more focused on teaching workshops, and so I bring my students to some of the places that speak to me the most. So one example is Badlands National Park in South Dakota.

Ian Plant:

It's a fun landscape, I mean. I personally love it. It's the kind of landscape, though, that most other landscape photographers they'll stop by there, take a look at it say, okay, yeah, most serious landscape photographers, and it it's just one of those places that I've I've been exploring for a long time and, you know, kind of made it my own in a way. There's a few other photographers that I work with that are that are also working there doing stuff that's very similar to what I'm doing. You know, my good friend, joseph Rosbach, goes there a lot as well, and he's got a fantastic portfolio there.

Ian Plant:

But, you know, with the exception of the two of us and maybe a few other people, most other serious landscape photographers have overlooked it, and it doesn't have any real famous photo icons.

Ian Plant:

You don't go there and see that one feature that everyone comes to photograph because it's not that kind of landscape.

Ian Plant:

It's kind of more subtle and any one part of the park looks the same as any other.

Ian Plant:

But it's the kind of place where you can just go out and explore and get lost in all of the patterns and the colors that you can find there unique, original work, because there's just an infinite variety of things to photograph and once you get into it you're like a kid in a candy store. There's just all sorts of stuff that's going on, but none of it is anything that anyone else has ever photographed, and so I love bringing my students there on teaching workshops because I can show them how I use all the raw materials present to create these original compositions. So I'm not dragging them to these famous overlooks or these famous photo icons the same thing you might get in a photo tour in a place like Yosemite National Park or Arches, where there's all these really famous features. I'm just taking them to random stuff and showing them how you can take that and make something incredible out of it, make something really photogenic, and that's what I love doing is sharing that process when I'm teaching my workshops.

Matt Jacob:

Tell us a little bit more about the workshop structure. Is this a few days, one day a week? And you know how do people resonate with the way you structure these workshops and you know.

Ian Plant:

So, if it's a landscape workshop, we're going out for sunrise, going out for sunset, you know, maybe doing some classroom work in the middle of the day, uh, but we're working hard to make really great photos and and what I do is I I teach the way I see things, I teach people my artistic vision, how I approach making, uh, photographs, and then, when we're in the field, we work on those principles. You, you know I work with the clients. I might show them a few interesting compositions to get them started, but it's all about teaching them how to fish rather than giving them a fish, and just really trying to teach them how I approach composition and, more importantly, how I approach bringing together what's going on in the landscape down below with interesting activity in the sky. So I'm looking for really great weather, and so that's why I want to do multi-day workshops, because we have to wait for that really incredible weather.

Ian Plant:

You know, one of the things about the Badlands, for example, that's really special is in the summer they get these massive thunderstorms that come in, and these storms sometimes are just dramatic and awe-inspiring, like the big ones I call growlers, because they make this noise. It sounds like they're growling at you as they're coming, and when we have one of those in one of my workshops, it's the most exciting experience. I'm just loving it because I love these big thunderstorms, and the workshop participants just go nuts when this happens, because they could see how the landscape interacts with the sky when you get those dramatic thunderstorms coming through and they could see how it all comes together. All the pieces fit into place in the puzzle and they're as excited as I am and it's just a great moment to be out there making photos.

Matt Jacob:

You talk a lot about composition and they're as excited as I am, and it's just a great moment to be out there making photos. You talk a lot about composition and, if I'm correct in thinking, or if I've done my research correctly, you've written a book on composition. Can you tell us a little bit about that and why? Maybe some tips from it that you can share with us?

Ian Plant:

Well, yeah, I mean, I love talking about composition. I could talk about composition for minutes, hours, days, weeks, months years.

Ian Plant:

I, uh I wrote an ebook years ago called visual flow mastering the art of composition, about photographic composition, though it relies heavily on lessons learned from the great masters of painting uh, from the renaissance period forward and now that ebook is part of a larger course that also has a video element, so it's now the ultimate photography composition course available on my photo master site and the the. The long answer is that composition is is very complicated and it's not easy to learn. It takes a lifetime to master, or it's one of those things. There is no such thing as mastering composition. Uh, I've been teaching composition, thinking heavily about composition, for a good portion of my career, and I feel like I'm still learning new ways of visually organizing the elements within my photographs. But to me, composition is really the most important thing. The magic of the moment, light, mood these are all just parts of the composition, and a composition is the way a photographer organizes all of these visual elements, all of these artistic components, within the picture space, and you're trying to do it in a way that's going to be pleasing or compelling for the viewer. You're trying to connect with the viewer, you're trying to tell a story. All of this is done through the composition, and so it's not something that photographers should just shrug about. It's something that everyone should really try to learn and try to master as much as possible.

Ian Plant:

One thing I do emphasize is that there are no rules of composition. There are only tools at your disposal, and so there's a lot of rules that are out there that are offered by people, like the rule of thirds and things like that that I actually think you know they might be useful when you're first beginning, but they're really just training wheels. You know like you're not really riding a bike when you still have the training wheels on. You have to take the training wheels off before you're truly riding a bicycle, and I feel the same way about the so-called rules of composition and so some tips. So here I've just said that this is an incredibly complicated thing that takes a lifetime to learn. How do you boil that down into some useful tips? Oh well, okay, so I'll talk about.

Matt Jacob:

Give us your favorite tip, then let's put it that way Okay.

Ian Plant:

So one thing to think about it. Well, okay, here's the most basic tip Think about everything in terms of shapes. Learn to see the shapes of objects and think about how those shapes might relate to one another, because that's what a composition really is is just fitting together all the shapes that are out there and so like, at a basic level. Instead of thinking of a mountain as a mountain, you think of it as a triangle. So, instead of a river as a river, you think of it as a line or a set of lines or curves that are leading in. So, learning how to see the shapes that objects create, and then learning how to deconstruct everything around you to see the shapes that make up the parts of it. I think that's really critical to learning composition. And once you start thinking about all those shapes, then that's when you really start learning how composition works, because shapes are the building blocks of composition. So that's one tip. Just think of everything in terms of the shape. You know so. For example, my head is round, though a lot of people think that it kind of looks like an egg. I'm a bit of an egghead, but you know what I mean.

Ian Plant:

Another tip I think this is an easy one is to remember that we perceive the world in three dimensions, but a camera only perceives the world in two dimensions, and so when you're making photographs, you visually separate objects that are at different planes within that three-dimensional space. So you might be photographing a person and there's a tree behind the person. You will see them as being separate. But when you make that photograph and you lose that third dimension, you lose depth, you squish the world down to two dimensions. Suddenly it looks like the tree is growing out of a person's head, and so you have to keep that in mind when you're making compositions. A lot of photography, composition is figuring out how to physically separate objects so they don't appear to visually merge or bunch up, so you don't have that dreaded tree growing out of the head problem.

Matt Jacob:

Avoiding distraction for the viewer right.

Matt Jacob:

Yeah, exactly Like I asked for we said one tip, you gave us two. I feel very privileged, really great stuff. We talked a little bit about I think we've mentioned editing a little bit and there's something else. That kind of that, you know, really grabbed my attention on your platforms and how you wanted to not be reliant on post-processing and you thought that many photographers these days are over-reliant on editing and I think we all understand that it's maybe a necessary part of the process, depending on how you look at it. What is your view and how do you go about your editing process?

Ian Plant:

Yeah. So I just want to start by saying that the way one approaches editing might depend very much on the type of photography that one is doing. Certainly, someone's working more for commercial clients, then I think that you might think about it in a much different way than the way I think about it. But for me, I'm photographing things in the natural world, in the real world, and so my view is that over-reliance on photo editing can damage that tether you have with your photographs to the real world, to the genuine experience, and so I like to say that if the magic is being created on the computer, I think that perhaps your focus is all wrong. To me, part of what makes photography so special and you know, especially for the kind of photography that you and I are doing, where we're experiencing things and people in the real world and you know we're waiting for the that magical moment to happen that that's an important part of the process. And you know, like as a as someone who does a lot of nature photography, you know being out there when there is just that amazing sunrise or sunset, that's an incredible, awe-inspiring experience, and I don't want to cheapen that experience by digitally creating it for every photograph I make. You know, it's a rare experience when something like that happens, and so, to me, photography is about capturing these experiences, and having that tether to the genuineness of the moment is really important to my work, and so I try not to have the computer be where the magic happens.

Ian Plant:

To me, the photographic process is where the magic happens. I work really hard to understand composition and the use of light and to make photographs that capture those unique experiences, and to me, the editing part of it should be just to optimize and suddenly enhance those experiences. It shouldn't be to fundamentally transform the experience into something that it wasn't. Um, I mean and don't get me wrong there's, there's, there's. Nothing like art is boundless, um, you know, like, if, if that's the kind of art you want to make where you're, you're using the computer to transform your photographs, that's great. But to me it's a different kind of art than the traditional art of photography that I was studying, coming up as a young photographer, and to me, doing a lot of digital alteration maybe is closer to painting somehow I'm not exactly sure how to characterize it.

Matt Jacob:

Design.

Ian Plant:

Yeah, I mean, it's all art, but it's kind of a different kind of art. So for me, I like to think of myself more as a traditional photographer, and so I try to keep my digital process to a minimum to reflect that. That said, I'm not a purist by any stretch of the imagination. The digital processing tools that we have are amazing, and I certainly have no problem with optimizing the images I've taken and giving them a subtle boost here and there. But if, at the end of the process, I realized that all the magic of the photo was added later, that none of that magic was there in the original photograph, that's usually when I need to take a step back and think about whether that's an image I'm going to share with anyone.

Matt Jacob:

Yeah, yeah, me too. When we're talking about techniques, then and this could be the same topic of editing or might not be Is there any kind of small change that you've made over two decades of being professional that created a really big impact or a big light bulb moment in you or someone else that you can think of in terms of techniques or processes?

Ian Plant:

Oh yeah, I mean, that's a great question, and I think that there are a lot of light bulb moments, and I'm sure you've had the same experience where, like personally, I feel like my artistic development is at a plateau for long periods of time and I get really frustrated and then, all of a sudden, there's that eureka moment where you have some sort of epiphany right and suddenly, where you have some sort of epiphany right and suddenly you develop a new way of seeing the world, and so I'm constantly having those. Well, I wish I was constantly having them. I'm often having those moments in between, those longer stretches where nothing seems to be going my way and I feel like, artistically, I'm just plateaued. But yes, they, they do happen. Those, those epiphanies do happen, and, um, I've definitely had my fair share over the past 20 years, though Let me see if I can identify any of those.

Matt Jacob:

Yeah, and if they were, um, let me take your time. But if they were deliberate and conscious efforts or changes in technique or um you know something that you've you've actually gone out and changed in order to have a have a big impact, or whether it's just kind of happened and organically kind of evolved, yeah, one I can think of in particular for my landscape work was getting more extreme with my perspective, and so I talked about that near far landscape style earlier.

Ian Plant:

So one conscious decision I made a while back was to start getting closer and closer to my foregrounds and opening up my focal length wider and wider.

Ian Plant:

So I made a very conscious decision to start experimenting with ultra wide angle focal lengths, and so you know, I think the widest lens I'm using right now is a nine millimeter on a full frame camera, and so you know, a nine millimeter on a full frame camera basically is everything from the sky above you to your toes, and so it's a real challenge to keep my feet, my tripod legs, out of my compositions.

Ian Plant:

But I love the ultra your toes, and so it's a real challenge to keep my feet, my tripod legs, out of my compositions. But I love the ultra wide perspective, and this was something. This was a deliberate choice to seek out much more extreme near far perspectives than was typical at the time. And the wide angle lens really allows you to do that, because it makes everything look very, very small, and then you can get very close to something that's small and make it look unnaturally large and the wider angle you use, the more you can create that unnatural perspective manipulation. So that was a very conscious decision that I made years back and now I'm just kind of a wide angle addict. I jokingly refer to my 24 to 70 as a telephoto lens.

Matt Jacob:

Yeah, and you talked about creative block, essentially, or artistic plateauing, which is guaranteed common in every photographer artist, right? It's such a thing that we all go through at some point. How have you really pulled yourself out of those moments, or someone else pulled you out of those moments, and what tips can you give to people listening and watching this?

Ian Plant:

Yeah, I mean, it's something that happens to all of us. I could just tell by the look on your face when you were talking about it that you share my opinion. It sucks, it completely sucks, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Matt Jacob:

Just the confidence yeah.

Ian Plant:

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, you have these moments where you just look at everything you're doing and you're like I'm horrible, I'm no good at this. I need to sell my equipment and get a real job.

Matt Jacob:

And I don't know where to go next.

Matt Jacob:

I don't know how to do something new, right Doing something new these days seems to be and I'm playing the violin here, but it's doing something new all the time seems to be more difficult than ever, Just because we are exposed to so much more. There are more photographers and artists than ever ever were, and it's plastered everywhere and there's, you know, there's, a million posts a day on Instagram alone, let alone all the other platforms, and it's just. It can get again. I'm not playing, the woe is me, but it can get quite overwhelming, especially for a creative who wants to go out and okay, I need to go and find something new and not necessarily compete, but I need to challenge myself. And sometimes it's like, maybe not, maybe you don't need to put too much pressure on yourself. Anyway, tell me what you think.

Ian Plant:

Well, yeah, I think you're right, that is putting too much pressure on oneself. I mean, I think it's healthy to tune a lot of that out. I mean, I don't ever look at social media at all anymore. It's just something I kind of avoid, and part of that is to keep my artistic vision quarantined from what everyone else is doing. And there's an upside to that, but there's also a downside, because you know, you mentioned the word competition. I think it's important to know what other people are doing so that you can kind of gauge whether you need to do more or less. So, you know, tuning things out becoming what is? Someone described it as photography celibacy. There are some downsides and there's some risks to that. But yeah, I think it's healthy to tune it out and I think it's healthy for everyone to recognize that we all go through this. We all have these periods where we feel stuck, where we feel that we're not progressing. And we are, we are, we're progressing slowly, but it just it doesn't feel like you're progressing when it's moving slowly. But the epiphany doesn't just come out of nowhere, it comes from all of that slow progression. It finally avalanches. It's the little snowball rolling down the mountain. Then you know, at some point it turns into an avalanche and you have that eureka moment.

Ian Plant:

Um, to me, the the thing that gets me out of any sort of creative funk that I'm in is forcing myself to take pictures. I know some people do the opposite. They'll take a break, They'll force themselves to take a break and kind of recharge their batteries, but I find that nothing gets my creative juices flowing as much as forcing myself to engage in the photographic process, Even if it's photographing something that might not interest me. You just kind of got to do it. And I find that once I get my eye behind the camera, then everything starts clicking back into place.

Ian Plant:

And you know, to me I just love the process, and so that's what inspires me is just getting behind, Because sometimes you just don't have any inspiration, right? Sometimes you're just like. You're like oh, I don't want to even pick up my camera. That's when I think you've got to force yourself to pick it up and go through the motions, but don't do what you've always done. That's the thing is, we get into these patterns, these habits, right? And to me, I find that it's the moments where I stop and say okay, you know, I've done it this way before and I keep doing it because it's been successful in the past. But I'm now. I'm just making images that look like the ones I've been making.

Ian Plant:

So, I need to do something different, yeah.

Matt Jacob:

Yeah, so do you teach any of this? Is this something like creative block, or whatever you want to call it? Is that something you teach when you teach others?

Ian Plant:

Well, it's something that certainly comes up. I wouldn't say that it's part of the core curriculum, but it is something that comes up a lot, yeah.

Matt Jacob:

And speaking of teaching, let's talk about PhotoMasters. Tell us a little bit about PhotoMasters, what it is, what it entails and how you run it. I guess.

Ian Plant:

Yeah, well, photomasters is my photo education platform that I've been running for a few years now, and it is a place where I have all of my eBooks and video tutorials.

Ian Plant:

It's a growing library of materials, so there's lots of photo education, but it's Photo Masters plural. The idea is that I also connect with other top photographers and, matt, I definitely want to have you on our Photo Masters video cast, or whatever you want to call it, because I think your work is amazing and I think that my audience would benefit greatly from your perspective, and so it's a mix of all that stuff. I try to bring on, you know, super talented photographers that will inspire. I definitely love having photographers that do something different than what I do, and so your work is different, though I definitely see some similarities in the way we approach subjects, but you definitely are working in different genres than I'm typically working with, and so I love having that different perspective, because ultimately, you know, education is not effective without inspiration, and so bringing on inspiring photographers who can share their unique perspective, I think, is the best way to teach people.

Matt Jacob:

Yeah, and I think I totally agree with you, and I think, going back to the creative block topic, this kind of goes hand in hand as well as, like I number one for me, I'll I'll force myself to shoot, right, and and actually I don't care what I shoot, how I shoot it, if it's the same as it just pick up a camera, do what you love and within five minutes I'm back.

Matt Jacob:

But the other thing that really helps me is this is just maybe not in a podcast format, but just talking to other photographers, other creatives, and before you know it, you've been inspired by someone else. So I think that's really, really important. You can get in your own head. You can get in your own way and stay in your own little world and your own thoughts limiting beliefs, imposter syndrome, creative block, et cetera but just reaching out to other people or just forcing yourself to have a five minute conversation with another photographer who's been where you are and maybe does something different and you can garner some inspiration from. So, yeah, keep it going. I'd be happy to come on and talk to you more. It's definitely inspirational.

Ian Plant:

Yeah, I mean well, I think I think you just summed it up really well. I mean, you know, art is not static. Art is constantly in motion. You know, it's what I was talking about earlier, about doing different genres to become a better artist. I think what you just described is an extension of that Getting inspiration from other photographers, other artists. You can get inspiration from someone without copying their style, and I think that's the important thing is to take a look at these different perspectives and see how maybe, just maybe, your own perspective has been too static. You know art is ever, always changing, always growing, and that you know. If you want to be successful as an artist, that's definitely what you want to be doing.

Matt Jacob:

Yeah, so we all need to go and check out Photo Masters. Great platform, look forward to diving into it more. How has teaching and leading workshops kind of shaped your approach to photography, to creativity? What have you really taken away from that or learned as a human and as an artist?

Ian Plant:

I think that everyone should learn how to teach, because it makes you better at what you're teaching.

Ian Plant:

That is very true, that's a fact. It may sound odd, but I think it's true, because when you're teaching something, you need to think about it more. You need to be able to explain it to somebody, and I think a lot of us have instincts, a lot of us have maybe an intuitive sense of how we should be doing things. But when you think about that subjective instinct and translate it into some sort of objective principle, I think it definitely makes you a better artist. So, yeah, I think everyone should try teaching, because it definitely will force you to think more critically about everything and that'll make your work better.

Matt Jacob:

And what lessons have you given or have received in your time that have been unconventional, that you might be able to take away or that's worked for you the best, if that makes any sense? We could talk about composition. We could talk about eBooks and stuff that beginners and intermediate photographers would practice and learn, but what is maybe something that you've learned that's completely left field in terms of a lesson, or something that you've learned that's completely, you know, left field in terms of a lesson or something that you've taught to other people?

Ian Plant:

Okay, that's. That's an interesting question. I'm not entirely sure I understand what you're asking, but I've got an answer anyways. So once I give you the answer, you can tell me if I got it right.

Ian Plant:

I think I know what you're driving at, um, so you know one. One thing that I teach often, uh is a, a lesson that I learned early on. Um was about light, and I think it's. It's pretty standard for photographers to learn to photograph with the light source behind them. You know, put the sun at your back is a pretty common refrain for a lot of you know, landscape and wildlife photographers, for example. But I learned early on the magic of backlighting.

Ian Plant:

So when you ask that question about something sideways that you learned or that you teach, shooting into the light feels pretty sideways to me. It's counterintuitive, it's something that most people don't think of and it's more challenging from a technical standpoint. You know, when you've got the light behind you, illuminating your subject evenly, the exposure challenges are usually a lot less. But when you're shooting into the brightest part of the scene, when you've got the sun right behind your subject or something like that, technical challenges multiply, but the artistic rewards are certainly there. What I love about that contre-jour lighting, as the French photographers would say that into the light lighting is that it renders your subjects in a in a more abstract way, a more artistic way, or at least they can be, they can look so much more artistic.

Ian Plant:

So I learned early on this counterintuitive sideways way of seeing the world and I very quickly realized that I was the guy getting in everyone else's shots. You know, like I would be on location somewhere to photograph wildlife and there'd be a bunch of photographers with the sun at their back and I'd be the guy walking around to the other side to photograph the animal backlit, and they're all screaming at me. I'm like no, no, no to the other side to photograph the animal backlit, and they're all screaming at me. I'm like no, no, no, you guys got to come over here this is better.

Ian Plant:

Yeah.

Matt Jacob:

Yeah, I'm with you on that. I love shooting into the light. I learned that pretty early. It's sometimes a little bit difficult with portraits, like close-in portraits, but I love that look of that backlit look. So yeah, that doesn't get taught that much, so that's a nice little. You nailed the question. You nailed the poorly worded question, so thanks for that. What is the? So, moving on and as we start to wrap up, what does the next few years look like for you? And I'm going to double down on that question and say what do you think the industry of photography looks like over the next five to 10 years?

Ian Plant:

Oh, wow. So the first part of that is is the easy part I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing. I'm just going to keep on getting out there exploring. I love traveling around the world and I'm I'm hoping that I can just keep doing what I'm doing. The second part of that question what is going to happen to the photography industry in the next few years that's a much more challenging and that I feel like is opening up a whole can of worms, because there are these transformative moments in industries.

Ian Plant:

I feel like photography went through 120 years ago. We talked about the rise of the digital camera, the rise of the internet. Those two things colliding completely changed the whole photography industry. It changed the way people made and shared their photographs, and that had a huge impact. You know, a lot of the photographers that were active before then struggled to transition their businesses to this new model, and I feel like we're kind of in that same transformative moment right now.

Ian Plant:

We've got the ubiquity of the phone with a camera in it, and so people our younger people in particular they're not taking pictures with cameras, they're taking pictures with their phones, and I think that's having a huge impact on the way photography is done, and also the photography industry.

Ian Plant:

And of course, we've also got the rise of AI, the rise of the machines, the Terminator Armageddon, and I think that's also going to have a huge impact on our industry, though in ways that we're just beginning to maybe discover. We're kind of more in the stage where we're imagining how it's going to change our industry, but we really have no idea how it's going to change our industry, and it's going to change it in ways that we can imagine and ways that we're not going to imagine. So I'd love for the next 10 years of my career to keep on doing what I'm doing. I'm just hoping that the photo industry stays enough the way that I'm used to it being that I can continue doing that. But I've got a feeling that everything's about to get topsy-turvy again and we're going to be scrambling to find our footing and to survive as the industry changes around us.

Matt Jacob:

Well, on that dystopian and nihilistic note, we'll end the conversation. Ian, it's been such a pleasure to talk to you. Thanks for taking precious moments of your evening to chat with me. Is there anything that you don't think we've covered or that you want to add to the conversation that might be of value to the audience?

Ian Plant:

I just want to say I did not mean to end on a sour, dystopian note. I was saying that all with a smile because I think that we've all had to learn to be nimble in the past 20 years because there's been a lot of technological change and that's just not going to stop. So reality, and we have to accept that reality in order to change with it, not compete against it, right?

Matt Jacob:

So, um, I totally agree with you on everything, but I, I, I have full faith in without sounding too dramatic, I have full faith in humanity and that, if, if, especially with what you do, um, you know, if you're, if you're going to continue teaching, talking, educating, there will always be people that want to learn photography and learn different types of photography and how to do things, and, if anything, I think that will become even more valuable.

Matt Jacob:

So, um, keep doing what you're doing. Keep doing such an amazing job and um, I look forward to seeing you on one of the on one of the chats soon.

Ian Plant:

Well, matt, thank you so much for having me on. This has been a lot of fun talking with you. I can't wait to talk with you again. I hope I can maybe come back on the podcast some other time and, as I said, you will be appearing on Photo Masters very soon, because I definitely think you are a Photo Master and there's lots of inspiration to be gleaned from your work, so looking forward to it.

Matt Jacob:

Appreciate it. Thank you so much.

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