/// Wild Tracks - Landscape Photography by Eduardo Gallo

WILD TRACKS

Passion for Landscape Photography

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MY PHILOSOPHY

July 2015, Olympic National Park, WA, USA

My purpose with photography is to bring home images that remind me of what I felt in the field when I took them. I try to employ the best possible technique I'm capable of to increase the images quality, which includes the use of tripod, mirror lock up, exposing to the right, and shutter release cable. At home I process the RAW files with the objective of obtaining final images that look as close as possible to the memories I have about those moments, but I never make any modifications in their content in order to "improve" them. What you can see in this website is my best attempt at sharing with you what I saw at that time.

October 2011, Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, AZ, USA

Photography for me goes hand in hand with hiking and backpacking. Both feed each other, as the later takes me to the beautiful, isolated, and sometimes magnificent places that I cherish, while the former enables me to record the feelings that those places inspire in me. It is a pity that photography only allows us to record images, having to rely on memory alone for the sounds (or lack of), scents, and feelings that always accompany them, and making it impossible for me to transmit those to you. On the other hand, they also restrict each other, as there is a limit to the amount and weight of photographic gear that one can add to his backpack, and another limit to how far one can be from his camping tent at the golden hours around dawn and dusk.

In the last few years I am becoming more of a "backpacker that always has his camera with him" than a "landscape photographer that is continuously hiking or backpacking". It is not that the former is replacing the later, but I now dedicate a higher percentage of my vacation days to backpacking than I did before. Reasons are several. First of all, the farther, higher, and deeper I get into the wilderness, the more profound are the feelings of balance, peace, happiness, and beauty that I obtain in return, and this is in fact what I look for above everything else. Being able to successfully photograph it is a plus, not an obligation. This means that I rely less on reaching a certain site where I already know what to expect from a photographic point of view, and instead adopt a less rigid schedule in which I just look for photo opportunities along the trail with little or no preconceived plan, and take most of my pictures at the golden hours not too far from my tent. Another reason is that as time goes by, I am becoming a stronger and more experienced backpacker, which allows me to get to places (on and off trail) of which I could only dream before. After several incidents of getting my vehicle stranded in the middle of the desert and having to spend the better part of a day digging it out, I now have far more confidence in my legs taking me to (and out of) wherever I want to go than on my driving skills achieving the same result.

This does not mean that all my pictures are taken in the wilderness. Quite the contrary. Many of the images shown in this website were taken a short distance away from a paved or dirt road. What they all share, however, is a serious attempt from my side at being at the right place at the right time. Landscape photography is in my opinion more about light than content, so it is not only a matter of reaching the proper locations, but to do so at those times when the probability of encountering good light is highest. Although fortune certainly plays a role, "luck favors those who are prepared".