What Happens Before the Image Exists

Most nights in the mountains are uneventful on the surface.

You arrive, you set up, you wait. It’s cold, usually quieter than expected, and progress is slow. In winter, especially, everything takes longer than planned, batteries drain faster, and moving around isn’t something you do casually once the night has started.

That reality has a way of filtering things very quickly. When conditions are demanding, there’s no room for unnecessary decisions. You simplify. You focus. You choose what’s worth staying out for.

Over time, that necessity has shaped the way I approach nightscape photography far more than any technical setting or piece of gear.

When you spend enough nights outside, especially in winter, you start to realize that technique alone doesn’t carry you very far. Cold, fatigue, wind, limited mobility, battery drain, all of these things impose constraints whether you like it or not. And once constraints are there, you either fight them, or you let them guide your decisions.

I’ve learned that letting them guide decisions tends to lead to better work.

Not because conditions become easier, they don’t, but because you stop trying to do everything at once. You narrow your focus. You simplify. You become more selective about what you’re trying to achieve that night, and just as importantly, what you’re willing to let go of.

That shift is one of the reasons I’ve become less interested in nightscape photography as pure documentation. Recording what the sky looked like at a specific moment can be interesting, but it rarely sustains a long-term practice on its own for me.

What keeps me engaged is approaching nightscapes as a process that unfolds over time, where images are built gradually, sometimes over years, through repeated visits, reflection, and adjustment.

This way of working also changes where the creative process begins.

For me, it rarely starts in the field. It starts earlier, often away from the camera altogether. Ideas don’t usually arrive as clear images. They show up as loose questions, observations, or notes that don’t yet point to a specific outcome. I’ve learned not to rush that phase. Trying to define things too early often flattens them.

Writing has become a practical tool in this stage. Not as something meant to be shared, but as a way to clarify intent before execution enters the picture. Putting things into words forces a certain precision. It helps identify what actually matters, and what is just noise or habit. By the time I’m out shooting, I usually know what I’m responding to, even if I don’t know exactly how the final image will look.

Because of that, I don’t see my images as inventions. I see them as translations.

They’re attempts to translate a set of conditions, a physical experience, a particular atmosphere, into something visual. That doesn’t require explaining everything. In fact, trying to explain too much often weakens the result. Leaving space for ambiguity allows the image to carry more weight.

This approach also requires accepting that ideas can remain vague for a long time.

Not every project needs immediate clarity. Some only come into focus after several failed attempts, or after enough distance has passed to see them more clearly. Returning to the same place under different conditions, different seasons, or simply at a different moment in life changes how you see it. That kind of repetition isn’t inefficiency, it’s part of the work.

Winter amplifies all of this.

Winter nightscapes are not just a variation of night photography, they change the entire equation. Cold affects how long you can stay still. Wind affects what setups are realistic. Darkness and snow alter perception of scale and distance. Even small technical choices become physical decisions, how long you can expose, how often you can adjust settings, how much complexity you can realistically manage.

In those conditions, technique stops being theoretical.

Exposure length isn’t just a number, it’s tied to how long you can stand there without moving. Lens choice isn’t just about composition, it’s about how much do you want to cover in the frame or not. Power management becomes critical. And sometimes the most sensible creative decision is to simplify the idea rather than push through at all costs.

That’s why I believe technical choices are inseparable from creative intent.

Technique is a language. It serves whatever you’re trying to express, not the other way around. There are times when technical imperfection is acceptable, even preferable, if the image communicates what it needs to. Knowing when to stop, when an image is finished, has less to do with perfection and more to do with whether adding more would actually improve it.

Learning to recognize that point takes time.

Letting go at the right moment is part of the process, just as much as planning or execution. It’s also one of the ways pressure slowly disappears. When you’re not chasing an ideal outcome, you’re more present in the experience itself. And that presence matters, especially on long winter nights where patience is not optional.

Announcing my talk at the Night Photo Summit

All of these elements, creativity, technique, physical reality, and time, are tightly connected. That’s what I’ll be exploring in my upcoming talk at the Night Photo Summit, taking place from February 13th to 15th.

The session is called “The Creative, Technical, and Physical Journey of Winter Nightscapes” and it reflects exactly this layered approach. It’s not a checklist-based talk, and it’s not focused on maximizing output. It’s an attempt to share a way of working that prioritizes meaning, solid body of work, and long-term development.

By attending this session, you can expect to take away:

• Seeing nightscape photography through a narrative lens

• Understanding how writing and reflection can shape stronger images

• Feeling less pressure around perfection and results

• Gaining tools to build long-term creative projects

• Leaving with a clearer sense of intention and direction

More broadly, it offers:

• A way to reconnect with creativity without pressure

• Tools to develop ideas without rushing them

• Permission to let projects remain unfinished until they’re ready

• A deeper relationship with intuition

• Images that feel lived, not manufactured

About the summit

The Night Photo Summit brings together photographers with a wide range of approaches to night work, from highly technical to more artistic perspectives. I appreciate that diversity, and I’m glad to be contributing a viewpoint that sits somewhere between those worlds, grounded in experience rather than optimization.

If you’d like to attend the summit, you can register using the link below. This is an affiliate link, which helps support my work and allows me to continue sharing in this way:

Whether or not you decide to join, I hope these reflections are useful. They’re ideas I return to regularly, especially when things start to feel rushed or overly outcome-driven. Taking time, simplifying, and paying attention have proven far more reliable than any shortcut.

Thanks for reading,

Angel