Beyond the Lens: Navigating the Beauty of Wildlife and Landscapes - Jake Padilla
In this weeks feature blog we'll take a journey through the lens of our new friend Jake Padilla! Jake excels in wildlife and landscape photography and has an incredible portfolio to prove it. He's been into photography since the young age of 10 years old and we're happy to show you just a small taste of his amazing captures. We highly recommend giving his Instagram and website a visit after you're finished reading this short story about his spectacular work.
Photography is a beautiful mixture of skill and artistic ability. Every photographer has their own keen eye for their style of photography and every photographer must do what they can to pull inspiration to improve their work. As a landscape and wildlife photographer it makes sense for Jake to pull inspiration from the nature around him. Nature of course is his main subject, but there's another source he uses during his post-processing and that is music! Music allows Jake to harness the emotions from the songs and allows those emotions to bleed into his editing process, and the results are tremendous! If you haven't yet, give this tactic a try and see what sort of results you can get by listening to a variety of genres while editing. You may find styles you didn't even know you had in you!
As always we like to ask our featured photographer about their favorite memory. Jake has a fond memory of a time where he was on his way home from an overlanding trip, if you're unsure what that entails; an overlanding trip is done autonomously in a remote place that's not saturated by tourists. Typically you'll be experiencing challenging terrain and taking your sweet time while you bask in all the moments of the trip. While on his way back from his trip he spotted an amazing scene of a refreshing lake surrounded by a lush mountain pass. As you'll see below it's one of those photos that looks picture perfect for a post card, and not a bad place to enjoy lunch which is exactly what he did!
In his long journey of being a photographer, Jake has certainly run into his fair share of challenges. His most compelling challenge revolves around gear and what is really needed vs the itch to always have the best of the best. One of his favorite photos he's taken was with his moms old point and shoot. It's what sparked his passion for over 15 years. We all think the top of the line gear is what separates our skillset and abilities, but there's a lot of beauty that an be captured with just about anything. To me, the important part is to just get out there and enjoy your time. Especially if you're just getting started! You can upgrade down the line slowly, but really focus on your craft at the start and as you find your passion upgrade accordingly!
Jake is a busy man and has a few projects in the works! One of them is starting a YouTube channel which will allow you to follow along his overlanding and photography adventures in video form. He's still in the process of gathering enough media before he launches so once he does we'll update this blog accordingly so you can find the link. He's also interested in learning studio photography and we cannot wait to see how that process goes for him. We hope you enjoyed reading a small sample of Jake's photography adventures and really suggest you support him with a follow so you can stay up to date with his portfolio! Underneath this last capture of a wildlife friend you'll find links to his website and Instagram handle.
1 comment
Great read! I love the gallery on Jake’s website too. It’s nice to see his photos in a larger view versus on a small scale like Instagram (: