There is a difference between being interested in photography and being called to it. These four films convey it perfectly.
By Lucian Manthey·Landscape Photography·Conservation
Most people who pick up a camera are first drawn in by the technical side. They obsess over the gear, the settings, the sharpness in an image. Those aspects are essential, but somewhere along the way, something shifts for many photographers. The camera becomes a tool to respond to a place, not just another piece of gear to take hiking or camping. The work stops being about what you came home with and starts being about why you went.
I came across each of these films at different points in my own development as a landscape photographer, and together they have shaped how I think about this craft. They are not instructional. They will not teach you to expose correctly or edit better. What they might do is remind you why you go out at all, especially on the days when the sky is mundane, the drive was too long, and none of your photos felt as if the effort was worth it.
Film 01
Photographer John Fielder and His Approach to Life
CBS News · 2023
Legendary Colorado photographer John Fielder spent decades photographing Colorado with a patience and reverence that I try to carry into my own life. Fielder has had a huge influence on my own photographic voice and the approach I take to sharing my work.
In this CBS Saturday Morning story, reporter Barry Peterson sits down with Fielder after his diagnosis with terminal pancreatic cancer. What follows is not a somber interview about illness, but a deep conversation about a life spent paying attention to light, season, and the sensuousness of nature. Fielder reflects on what the land gave him and what he tried to give back through his photography and conservation.
If you have ever picked up one of his books and felt warmth in your chest, this interview will help you understand why. And if you have never encountered his photography, this is a good place to start.
Film 02
Peaks and Valleys: A Life Perspective from Behind the Lens
Ryan Smith Fine Art · 2021
I first watched this film not long after coincidentally crossing paths with Ryan Smith in the fall of 2025. I stumbled into Ryan and his workshop group while photographing the same forest of aspen trees deep in the San Juan Mountains. I did not know his work well at the time, but I recognized something in the way he talked with his students about being out there — like it was less a choice he made and more a thing he could not not do.
This film captures that same quality. Ryan reflects on how years of time in the field have shaped not just his images, but his sense of who he is. It is a good film to share with someone who asks why you hike for four hours in the dark for a photograph. It does not over-explain, it just shows you what that kind of commitment looks like from the inside.
Film 03
The Payoff
Chris Byrne Photography · 2021
This film gets at a truth that many people misunderstand about photography as a career: the long, unglamorous years that it takes to establish yourself in this industry. The years of making images no one sees, and the question of whether the images you care about so much will ever be the ones that sustain you.
I am living in that stretch right now while building a business alongside school, and figuring out what it means to take this seriously without losing the reason I started. Watching this film helped me sit with that uncertainty. The payoff the film describes is not fame or financial security, but a deep internal fulfillment that this path rewards.
Film 04
A Frame of Adventure
Directed by Van Wampler, featuring Tamara Šuša · 2021
This film is a little different in tone than the others. It's lighter, less meditative, but more kinetic. Tamara Šuša is a Colorado-based landscape photographer and adventure filmmaker working out of Snowmass Village, and this short biographical doc follows her through her practice with an energy that matches the terrain she photographs.
What stayed with me is the way she talks about wanting to seduce her viewer into falling in love with a place, and in the same breath, remind them of their responsibility to protect it. That pairing is something I think about a lot in my own work. It is easy to make images that inspire people to go somewhere. It is harder to make images that inspire them to care for it once they arrive. Šuša seems confident in how to do both, and watching someone live with that intention is definitely worth your time.
These four films represent very different photographers working in very different ways. But they share a belief that the work matters beyond the image itself. That where you go, how you show up, and what you do with what you find are all part of the same practice.
That is the kind of photographer I strive to be, and these films have helped me recognize it.
Lucian Manthey
Lucian Manthey is a 19-year-old nature photographer based in Denver, Colorado and a citizen of the Osage Nation of Oklahoma. His work has been featured in F-Stop Magazine, Summit Daily News, and the Colorado Springs Gazette, and he has collaborated with Rivian Automotive and Ikon Pass. Every print purchase supports his goal of making photography his full-time career.
