That's an excellent question, and one that I've pondered for years. I'll try to answer with photos and text.
I've written several different Artist's Statements over the years, and have always found the process difficult. The most simple statement is that I travel to beautiful places and want to share and remember how those places looked when I visited them. Sure, that's true, but doesn't explain the thousands of dollars I've spent on film and cameras over the years. I need a deeper explanation.
Part of the difficulty, for me and many of us here on this forum, is that our photographs are just the latest in a long, very well-developed lineage of landscape photographers. Ansel Adams really created a new visual language. His eye and technique allowed him to create works that were new and unique. I'd argue the same of Galen Rowell (my saint), as well.
What's left for me? How can I possibly create anything unique or impressive in a marketplace of excellent images created by excellent photographers, some of whom use a truly impressive arsenal of state-of-the-art technology that I just can't afford? How can I possibly avoid simply copying my artistic influences?
My background in the arts is that of a professional musician, so I have a little training in this regard: following ones influences is not at all a bad way to get started. As Maurice Ravel said:"If you have nothing to say, you can not do better, until you decide to give up composing for good, than say again what has already been said. If you have something to say, that something will never emerge more distinctly than when you are being unwittingly unfaithful to your model."
So, that's exactly how I started out. I enjoyed hiking in mountains, and tried to emulate Rowell's style as best I could. I gave myself some limitations: I'd shoot with 35mm Velvia exclusively, and take the
slide itself to be the work of art. In other words, I'm no digital processing master- if the shot doesn't work on
one slide, it doesn't work. I scan the slides using a home-level scanner, process the slides using Aperture, and aim for a digital file (which I can share on the web) to match the slide, as I see it on my light table.
Here's a shot from this period, showing classic Rowell style mountain photography: a mountain portrait taken in fine light, exposed to accentuate color saturation, using a graduated neutral density filter (to balance exposure of highlights and shadows).
I worked on this long enough to start to feel an affinity for certain images I'd made. Notably, the period from sunset to sunrise was more interesting to me. Also, since my old lenses and small film format are not as high-resolving as those of modern DSLRs, if I tried to make a photo of a busy scene with lots of fine detail, it didn't look as sharp the shots I see on websites like 1x.com. As I shot more and more, my photos began to look less like rejects from a "Nature" calendar or Marc Adamus seminar, and more like something darker, and less obvious.
Over time, I began following a more restrictive artistic goal: to focus my lens on the mysterious, or enigmatic.
Don't get me wrong. When the clouds are awesome, and the light is beautiful, I can't resist shooting whatever is at hand. Generally, though, I let folks with DSLRs and Photoshop make those shots- they don't look as good when I try to do it with my twenty-year old camera.
As to the question of what I'm trying to "say" with my photographs, here are my two answers. I used to want to say "I was here, and this is what this place looked like." Now, I think I'm saying "We may not actually understand this world we live in. Our wild areas exist apart from our needs and desires. We are just a part of a very old, very powerful web of life." I'm aiming for something a little more intimidating, maybe even humbling. While this world has been very kind to our species, it's quite indifferent to the fate of any individual human. In spite of our grand cultures and outsized environmental impact we're just a medium sized species, outweighed on this planet by the ants who eat our trash. My darker photos are an attempt to convey the feeling of that realization.
Anyway, enough philosophy. If photography weren't fun, I wouldn't do it. That might be the real goal.
You can see more of my photos at reneauphoto.com.
Believe it or not, I barely ever ride a mountain bike.