The doors closed Sunday 20 September at 11:59pm ET

For a passionate and committed landscape and outdoor photographer who loves to travel

The Doors Closed Sunday Night. The Week Is Running Without You.

Seven mornings, one award-worthy photograph from the trip already on your drive. The photographers who joined are working through theirs now.

Stanley Aryanto
Stanley Aryanto100+ international awards · Canon · Canadian Geographic
Published and featured byCanon, Global News, Canadian Geographic, PetaPixel, Reader's Digest, Focus

I get it.

You read it, you thought about it seriously, and the clock ran out while you were deciding.

Congratulations on getting this far. Most photographers never look this hard at their own work. The ones who do are the ones whose photographs change.

The frames from your last trip are still on the drive, and they are still nearly there. Nobody ever told you the decisions to make once you were standing in the place. So the frames came home sharp, correct and flat. That is the Technical Trap, and the way out of it has nothing to do with your camera.

Some of you read all of this and decided you were never going to be good enough for it anyway. I know that voice. I carried it for years. The gap it points at is a skill, and a skill is learnable.

Next time

When The Doors Open Again, You Hear First.

We run this again. When we do, the people on this list get the email before anybody else. You were here for this one.

Leave your address and you hear from me the day the doors open again.

Cracked ice leading to Mount Rundle at sunset, Vermilion Lakes, Banff
Vermilion Lakes, Banff. Photographed by me, Stanley, from a lake beside the road. Anyone can stand here. The photograph is the six decisions.

Meanwhile

Go And Shoot Something This Week Anyway.

Ask one question before you press the shutter: what should somebody notice first.

That question is the first of the six decisions in the Visual Impact Method. On its own it is worth more than most of the gear in the closet. A Visual Master asks it without thinking, because the photographers who get there train themselves to see differently. Every award-worthy photograph starts there.

Stanley Aryanto beside his own print, exhibited

Who is talking to you

I Am Stanley. I Made The Same Flat Photographs You Are Making.

Good camera, real effort, early mornings, and a folder of photographs that were correct and nothing else. That was me in 2018.

Today my work has earned more than 100 international awards. It has been published and sponsored by Canon and Canadian Geographic, and it has hung in exhibitions on three continents. Every one of those photographs was made with the six decisions.

Since 2018 I have helped more than 4,000 photographers go from guessing to seeing. None of that matters unless you walk away with a photograph you would hang. That is the only thing I am here for.