It’s tough to imagine a more fitting location for a gathering of Canada’s top landscape photographers than the exquisitely photogenic Canadian Rockies.
And that’s exactly what is taking place in Banff, running Jan. 8-10, based from Banff Park Lodge.
Kicking off on Friday evening with a keynote presentation by Roy Ramsay, publisher and editor-in-chief of Photography Canada magazine, the weekend lineup for the Banff Landscape Photography Summit includes feature presentations, panel discussions, skills workshops and, naturally, sunrise and sunset photography sessions.
Guest presenters and instructors include Ramsay, Robert Berdan, professional nature photographer and educator, and Ethan Meleg, whose works appears regularly in numerous magazines including Canadian Geographic, National Geographic and Popular Photography.
The aim of the event is to bring landscape photographers together in one of the most beautiful places in the world, and to provide a setting in which they can develop their technical skills as well as the emotional expression that is essential to create good art, said Brian Merry, a long-time Banff resident and professional photographer since 1997 who is founder and organizer of the summit.
“The summit is meant to be a haven for creativity where photographers can immerse themselves 100 per cent into their photography and learn from leading professionals in the field,” Merry said.
The setting, he added, will provide participants a weekend retreat from day-to-day distractions, enabling them to focus their undivided attention toward growing their craft.
“The Canadian Rockies is one of the most beautiful places on Earth for landscape photography and has inspired internationally recognized visual artists to travel here to study and create,” Merry said. “Artists have been coming to Banff for over a century, with the first wave of artists including the Group of Seven, which collectively helped define Canada’s cultural identity.”
Merry said he was inspired to create the photography summit in large part because he was unable to find an event of its type and scope anywhere else in Canada.
“There are lots of workshops, which I highly recommend, but nothing like this,” Merry said. “I’ve been looking, but I couldn’t find any in Canada.”
Another main motivation for him was the opportunity to give back to his passion and profession, from which he has gained so much.
“In the evolution of any artist, at first you’re struck by the cool techniques you learn and then you refine your skills and compose beautiful pieces of art,” Merry said. “You produce the art, exhibit it, hang it, and then it can stop there. It seems like a one-way expression. For a decade I felt comfortable just making art, but I also noticed I’d hit a plateau. I knew I had something else to give – helping others to learn more, see more, to communicate through their art and express themselves more clearly. I thought about everything I wanted to see in a weekend event, and I created it.”
In effort to offer the most to participants, workshops will offer instruction on editing skills, “bomb-proof” storage/backup systems, tips for relaxing in the field to maximize focus and creativity, image composition, and advanced capture and editing techniques such as motion blur, black and white imagery and nighttime photography techniques.
In addition to hosting a photography field trip to Lake Louise, Merry will also moderate a panel discussion looking at the question of “how far is too far?” in terms of approaching, disturbing or, at the far end of the spectrum, altering nature all in the pursuit of capturing the “perfect shot.”
Merry’s inspiration to organize the panel stemmed from an incident in Banff National Park a few years back when a pack of wolves was baited with leftover Christmas turkey so an over-eager unethical photographer could get his “dream” shot with little regard for the long-term welfare of the wildlife, or any respect for Canada’s national park regulations.
Unfortunately, the incident gained widespread media attention and led some to brand all wildlife photographers selfish and inconsiderate. In a proactive move, Parks Canada created its Wildlife Watching and Photography guidelines, which, Merry explained, contribute to the basis of the Nature Photography Ethics panel discussion. In addition to Ramsay, Berdan and Meleg commenting from the photographers’ pint of view, professional interpretive guide Kevin Gelding and bear researcher Lori Homstol will round out the panel by sharing their professional perspectives.
Thus far, some 70 attendees from as far as Ontario have registered, leaving a small number of available tickets for certain events.
To learn more, visit http://banffphotographysummit.com.
