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Mandy Guo
@bigmoonmandybot
Landscape photographer based in the US
As a senior in high school I started photographing for the cosplay club that I was in. That is where my interest in photography really started. Before that I only took tourist photos like everyone else, but taking photos for cosplay made me start thinking about how to position the object I was photographing, how to work with light, and how to create an interaction between the scene and the object.
This grew further when I became part of my college’s newspaper as a sports photographer, and my parents gave me my first camera so I could do a proper job. I got to improve my photography skills significantly from other photographers that were also shooting at the games I was covering and also learnt a lot from the editors of the newspaper. I was using a 70-200mm lens in order to incorporate background into the story and make it more appealing, that’s one of the reasons how I got to landscape photography.
I like photographing landscapes, especially snowy sceneries, night scapes (milky way, star trails, northern lights), and underwater. These subjects make me realize how vast nature is, and how we are just a tiny little bit of it. Photography helps me to appreciate and memorize nature’s splendor.
While shooting, I pay full attention to the subjects I find in nature, dedicate time to play with different settings, angles, and tricks (sunstars, long exposure, etc.), and frame the scene in a perspective that is unique and interesting. I believe nature deserves to be observed and investigated that way – too often we walk past without even really looking at it. For nightscapes and underwater photography specifically, I think not many people appreciate those scenes enough to be willing to go the extra miles to get scuba trained or to stay up late or even to not sleep at all to witness them and photograph them. But I do, and I hope to motivate people around me to go see these amazing views that they normally don’t get to see. It can be to photograph or simply to enjoy, but at least something so these places are not ignored or devalued. They are as important and as impressive as mountains and seascapes.
"With my photography I hope to help people realize that, get them going outside and being adventurous."
My trip to Alaska, where I first saw the northern lights, was the first time I did night photography and is still my most unforgettable trip. My friend and I would stay up the whole night in the observation hut on the mountain behind our hotel to wait for the northern lights to show up, sometimes a few hours, sometimes an entire night without sleep. I learned the basic techniques to do simple night photography – how to manually focus my lens, how to do long exposure, etc., but most importantly, it taught me that you do not always get what you want as a landscape photographer, and sometimes you need to wait for a long time in harsh conditions to get a shot that you are satisfied with.
"I fell in love with these challenges and uncertainty in doing landscape photography."
"My recent trip to Antarctica in winter 2019 is a perfect example of why I'm so passionate about it."
I went on a 21 days cruise going from Ushuaia to Falkland Islands, South Georgia, down the Antarctica peninsula to cross the circle, then back to Ushuaia along the peninsula coastline. During this trip I saw amazing landscapes and wildlife that you cannot see anywhere else; seeing the vast and emptiness of the Antarctic landscape and the abundance of diverse wildlife is an incredible experience beyond words. It was here that I took my favorite photo so far. It shows a humpback whale fluking in the early morning sunlight at around 4am in the Antarctic peninsula. I was the only person among the guests that were awake at the time on the deck. We had not been having very good weather for the past few days, all cloudy and gloomy, but that morning I decided to set an early morning alarm to wake up and try to see sunrise, and I was lucky enough to catch this moment of Antarctica that was so calm and warm.
"A couple of whales were swimming towards our ship, being very playful - that is a very unique and special moment to have with the wildlife and nature in Antarctica."
In general, extreme weathers, rough seas when we were on zodiac cruising and the distance we need to maintain with the wildlife (we do not get to freely move around to get the angle that we necessarily want) made it not easy to capture the shots I had in mind. But even so, I was able to spot all the penguin species I was supposed to see in this area of Antarctica, even including one lone Emperor penguin that we were not expecting to see, and an albino white king penguin. Lucky me! I’m not taking these encounters and scenes for granted, I feel deep respect for all the natural splendor and I truly appreciate it. It has not been always the case that I could share these feelings.
This trip was the first time I met so many photographers that are passionate about nature, landscape, and wildlife. I learned a lot of different skills from them, and was happy to share my passion in photography with a group of people that similarly understand why waking up at 3am in the morning to get a shot of the first sunlight is worth it. I used to always travel with a group of friends, but since Christmas in 2016, when I decided to do a road trip to New Mexico/Texas by myself, I began to travel solo frequently. That opened up a lot of opportunities for me to just go out by myself and photograph whenever and wherever I want. I don’t need to depend on other people’s interests and availability anymore, and I grew more independent, and learned a lot of planning skills necessary for photography. I would drive 10 hours by myself at night to get a milky way photo at Yosemite, or drive 8 hours to San Diego to get some shots of the bioluminescent activities earlier this year. It also opened up more chances to meet other similarly-minded photographers that are shooting at the same spot everywhere I go.
"If I'm not shooting, I like painting objects and views that I hope to photograph one day."
Or scenes that I have seen before but couldn’t capture because I did not have my camera with me at the time. I painted polar bears, orcas, manta rays, humpback whales, and emperor penguin chicks, hoping to photograph the real ones with my camera one day. Some of them I’ve already been able to capture – you can’t imagine the happiness that I felt when I could finally do that after having drawn it with my pencil already, while feeling a great desire to see it for real. Also, I have been to bioluminescent kayaking at Point Reyes National Seashore near San Francisco once, and had the luck to see the milky way together with the glowing water. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera with me at the time to record this beautiful moment, but I painted it down so that I keep the memory with me.
For me, both painting and photography are wonderful ways to create art, immortalize experiences and keep alive the beauty I have witnessed. For both I can choose different techniques, colors and composition, but whatever I do, I want to keep it real. I want my art to represent the art of nature.
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