Portraits of the Planet?

Over the past couple of years, I have discovered a new passion in my photography: landscapes.  In college, I used to look down a bit on those who decided that they wanted to embark on photographing the land around them.  I thought, mostly because of where I lived, that photographing landscapes was kind of the "easy" way out.  And a lot times, it most certainly can seem that way.  But if you look at the work that several landscape photographers put into their images, you can tell that it most certainly isn't "easy." 

My mind began to change mostly due to a change in equipment.  I love night photographs, but I never had the camera equipment to create a successful image.  But when I got a camera and lens that could "see" better than my previous one, things began to change.  I took my camera up to Hyalite Reservoir near Bozeman, Montana to try and photograph a meteor shower.  Instead I ended up taking several successful night landscapes.  My next venture was into Yellowstone National Park.  It was a full moon, the Park was quiet and erie, and I captured one of my favorite images after sitting at the Great Geyser for a couple of hours.  The love of night photographs turned into trying to create successful day landscapes.  Night images are still my favorite, but sometimes they aren't always feasible.  

Portraits of the Planet came to me one day while at a cycling class at the gym.  While I was huffing and puffing away on the stationary bike, I began thinking of what I could do to revamp my website to show my new point of view.  Lo and behold, Portraits was born.  After all, what are landscapes but portraits of the land?

In three weeks I am embarking on a world wide tour beginning in Akureyri, Iceland.  My Portraits may be of a traditional nature (people), but the purpose of Portraits of the Planet is to show the landscape in various parts of the world.  I plan on getting dirty, I plan on being sore from lodging myself into places a human may not fit.  I plan on having a ball while doing it.  And I can't wait to show the final product.

Cheers,

Aly Hansen

Portraits of the Planet