ESSAYS

How Instagram Consumed the Photography It Once Loved — and Why Landscape Photography Is No Longer Economically Sustainable For a brief moment in recent cultural history, photography—especially landscape photography—occupied a position of unusual visibility and relevance. Images were not merely shared; they circulated, resonated, and mattered. Platforms like Instagram gave photography a public stage, transforming solitary visual practices into collective experiences and, for s

My work does not originate from an attraction to places, nor from a desire to describe them. It originates from a deliberate distance taken from the contemporary visual environment, where images are consumed rapidly, stripped of depth, and reduced to interchangeable motifs. What I construct through photography is not a response to visibility, nor an attempt to participate in the continuous circulation of familiar scenes. It is an effort to suspend the viewer inside a visual s

Forging Atmosphere: Building Worlds with AI and Topaz Bloom Introduction — A Note of Gratitude Before diving into tools, workflows, or technical considerations, I want to begin with a sincere thank you. Over the past months, The Midnight Lodge  has entered a new and important phase of development, made possible in part by a meaningful collaboration with Topaz Labs . Being invited to join their Creative Partner Program (CPP)  is something I deeply value, not only as a professi

Photography, profit, and the normalisation of damage Landscape photography has not collapsed because of technology. It has collapsed because of behavior . Over the last decade, the role of the photographer has quietly shifted.From observer to promoter.From interpreter to amplifier. Images are no longer made primarily to express, but to perform.And places were never designed to survive virality. From authors to amplifiers The rise of the photographer-influencer has profoundly

There are places where photography becomes inseparable from the environment itself.Forests saturated with moisture, narrow paths close to waterfalls, damp ground, fog that never fully lifts. These are the conditions I often seek and also the ones that put the greatest stress on both photographer and equipment. When NYA-EVO   provided me with the Fjord 60 , I tested it exactly where I normally work: in humid woods, near cascading water, and during multi-day outings where wea

The Midnight Lodge did not begin as a project .It began as a possibility. When Midjourney v3  was released, something fundamental shifted.For the first time, artificial intelligence was not merely assembling textures or generating abstract visuals — it was capable of shaping fantasy landscapes . Coherent, atmospheric, imperfect, but alive. For someone coming from photography, painting, cinema, and fantasy imagery, that moment felt less like a disruption and more like a long-a

There has never been a time when creating images was easier.And rarely has it been harder to create images that truly mean  something. We live surrounded by photographs.Endless, polished, spectacular.Images designed to impress for a second, to scroll past, to be replaced immediately by something louder, sharper, more extreme. The pace is relentless.The rhythm imposed.The attention span compressed. In a system that rewards speed, repetition and immediate impact, photography is