What Photographing Every Texas State Park Taught a Landscape Photographer
At 1:45 a.m., photographer Maegan Lanham left camp and drove 54 miles down a backcountry road. She then hiked three and a half miles into a dark canyon, before gaining more than 1,300 feet to reach a ridge she had never stood on, for a sunrise that lasted minutes. She had no guarantee it would be worth the effort. That kind of dedication follows her everywhere, including a goal few photographers would think to chase, let alone finish: photographing every state park in Texas.
Full disclosure: This article was brought to you by OM SYSTEM.
At a Glance
“Growing up, my family took two and three-week-long road trips every summer, all over the country, visiting national parks,” OM SYSTEM photographer Maegan Lanham remembers. “My mom would take photos and make little albums, and I wanted to be like her, so I had this disposable camera. I couldn’t even see what I was shooting. I just took pictures of everything.”
The disposable camera gave way to real ones, but it took one trip to turn all that picture-taking into something more.
“Right after college, my roommate and I decided to spontaneously road-trip to the Grand Canyon,” Lanham recalls. “I’d been there as a kid, but seeing it as an adult, I couldn’t believe places like this existed. That last morning I woke up for the sunrise, and it was the most beautiful one I’d ever seen. I stood there thinking that many people don’t always make the effort to see this. That’s where my mindset shifted.”
She went looking for more of those mornings closer to home, in the Texas state park system.
“My first state park was Enchanted Rock. I went right after Christmas and it was freezing cold,” she says. “I took my very first night-sky photo there. I’d forgotten my tripod, so I propped the camera up on a rock. Even though the conditions weren’t ideal, I had the best time.”
A trip she took alone a few months later turned the hobby into a mission.
“Caprock Canyons was my first solo trip, about four and a half hours from home,” Lanham continues. “I saw the canyon views, I ran into bison, and I was hooked. I immediately loved that place, and that’s the moment I decided I wanted to visit all the state parks.”
“I’ve officially visited them all, and I’ve taken pictures at every single one,” she notes. “It took me about six and a half years.”
Her appreciation for Texas state parks turned into a career. A photojournalism degree from the University of North Texas led to a volunteer ambassador internship that got her foot in the door, then a staff photographer job at Texas Parks & Wildlife magazine. Solitude is part of the appeal.
“I like the outdoors more than I like people,” she says. “I prefer to be where the people aren’t.”
Lanham shares with PetaPixel the most important lessons she has learned while photographing and hiking every Texas state park with a camera.
Always Wake Up for Sunrise
Lanham’s most valuable lesson came from that first sunrise at the Grand Canyon.
“Ever since, I’ve had this rule for myself: always wake up for sunrise,” she explains. “I don’t care if it’s 20 degrees out and I’m warm in my tent, I’m still getting up. Nobody’s awake at that hour, so I get some one-on-one time with me and nature. It’s quiet, the wildlife’s starting to move, and honestly that’s when the light is the prettiest. Some of my favorite photos exist because of that rule.”
The rule met its hardest test in March of this year, on a single sunrise in Big Bend National Park. Another photographer’s image of the spot had pulled her there. She wanted to stand where he had stood, so she timed out the drive and the hike up 1,359 feet, and set an alarm for the middle of the night.
“I didn’t know if it’d be worth it. I hoped it was, but I figured the only way to find out was to go,” Lanham describes. “People thought I was crazy, out there by myself, but it was 100% worth it. That shot’s the wallpaper on my phone now.”
“Hiking was my first love before photography, so the experience is first and the photography is second,” she adds. “Up there I had to remind myself to put the camera down for a second and just take it in.”
“There’ve been plenty of mornings where I got up, walked out, and left the camera in the car,” Lanham reflects. “I just went to be there. Not every sunrise is a photo, and that’s fine by me.”
Revisit the Same Locations
Most photographers go looking for new places to shoot. Lanham gets more out of returning to the same ones, because a familiar spot is never the same twice. The light, the weather, and the land itself are always changing what she finds there.
“I’ve been to Caprock Canyons probably 20 times over the past couple of years, because it’s my favorite place in all of Texas,” Lanham recalls. “I always camp in the same campsite, and luckily, it’s the one with the best views. There’s this cliff structure on the side of the canyon, and I’ve photographed it almost 10 times, all from different angles. Sometimes, I’ll shoot it from the other side of the canyon, or I’ll get higher up on the other side and shoot down on it. It’s the same subject every time, but I always get a different photo, because the landscape’s changed, the light’s changed, the sky’s changed.”
“Stand in one spot, move 20 yards to the right, and it’s a whole different composition,” she explains. “It’s almost like a challenge now to see how I can shoot it differently.”
The habit follows her to other parks.
“Monahans is the same way for me,” she notes. “Every time I go out to shoot the sand dunes, it’s different, because the wind’s always blowing them around and reshaping everything. It’s never the same as the last time, and honestly that’s what I love about it.”
“I never get bored of going to the same place and photographing it,” Lanham adds. “If I ever do feel bored, that’s my cue to call it quits.”
Match Your Gear to Where You Shoot
Those same familiar places change with the season and the weather, and that changes what a camera has to handle. The best camera for a photographer is the one built for the conditions they actually shoot in.
“My photography takes me to freezing canyons, blowing sand, and out onto the water, so my camera has to handle all of it,” Lanham emphasizes. “Once I had a kit that could keep up with where I wanted to go, I stopped worrying about the gear and started paying attention to the photo.”
Nowhere tests that harder than a kayak, and some of her favorite places can only be reached by water.
“I love to shoot from a kayak at Caddo Lake in East Texas,” Lanham describes. “It’s a big swamp that has huge cypress trees with Spanish moss hanging off them. You can’t capture Caddo Lake from land. You have to be in the water.”
On shore a photographer has solid ground, but a kayak never holds still, and the moving water moves the camera with it. A tripod is no help in a kayak, so every frame is handheld. Lanham’s OM SYSTEM OM-1 Mark II compensates for that with in-body image stabilization rated up to 8.5 stops, enough to keep a handheld frame sharp on an unsteady boat.
“What’s saved me is how steady the camera holds the shot on its own,” Lanham notes. “I can be wobbling around and still come back with a sharp frame I’d never have gotten otherwise. I’m still the one who has to stay calm in the boat, but my camera forgives a lot.”
Getting a sharp frame is one thing; keeping the camera working in the wet and the grit is another. The OM-1 Mark II carries an IP53 weather-sealing rating that makes it dustproof and splashproof.
“I’ve flipped out of boats before, so I’m always scared I’m going to wreck my gear,” she admits. “The first rule is a dry bag. My camera is small enough that it fits right into one. I tie it up and I’m good to go, and that dry bag is what saves me if I go all the way in. The rest of the time I’m getting splashed and rained on out there, and the camera handles that fine, so I’m not white-knuckling it trying to get back to shore. When I’m not worried about having to protect my gear, I actually pay attention to the photo. Luckily, I haven’t drowned anything yet.”
Lanham’s kayak reaches parks the shore cannot. “Another place I love is Devils River out in West Texas,” she adds. “It’s private property on every side, so my only option is a boat. And honestly, that’s the best way to experience it anyway. There are places like this all over Texas, but a lot of people don’t know about them.”
Wildlife Is the Side Quest
Lanham is a landscape photographer first, but she keeps coming back to the wildlife. The hours she spends watching these animals have taught her to respect how they survive the places she photographs.
“This past winter I went down to the Rio Grande Valley, which is basically bird central,” Lanham says. “I wanted to see a green kingfisher all week, this tiny bird you only find in South Texas. Somebody pointed me to a little pond at a nature preserve, so I hiked out and found him, but he wasn’t anywhere I could get a good shot. So I sat there for three hours and waited for him to land on a branch close enough.”
She took one frame.
“I thought to myself, ‘I got it. That’s it. I’m done. I can go home now.'”
“Honestly, the best part wasn’t even the photo,” Lanham reflects. “While I waited for the shot, I got to watch him fly around and see how he behaves, how he interacts with his environment. That’s a big part of how I got into wildlife in the first place, just observing animals. It gives me a better connection to the landscapes I shoot, because I appreciate the creatures that live in them.”
The bird was shot on a borrowed M.Zuiko Digital ED 150-400mm F4.5 TC1.25x IS PRO, a telephoto with the kind of reach that usually demands a much larger lens.
A green kingfisher is small and quick, and after a three-hour wait there is no second chance to nail focus. The OM-1 Mark II’s AI Subject Detection AF for birds locks onto the eye and holds it, so the one frame she took came back sharp.
“Wildlife is honestly just a little side hobby for me. Landscape is my bread and butter,” Lanham observes. “But before a trip I look up what animals live in the area, so I know what I might run into. I keep my pack light, so if nothing out there grabs me, the long lens stays home. When something does, the reach earns its spot in my pack. It lets me hang back and still fill the frame, which is easier on the animal and on me.”
Her history with wildlife goes back further than the camera. Years before, she helped move 77 desert bighorn sheep across West Texas, returning them to a mountain park where disease had wiped them out.
“I’d never done anything like that,” Lanham acknowledges. “Helping return a whole herd to where they belonged is something I won’t forget.”
Pack Lighter Than You Think You Can
All those miles in the backcountry, with and without a camera, taught her to take weight seriously.
“My old full-frame kit was probably four or five pounds heavier than what I carry now, with the same kind of lens,” Lanham recalls. “You don’t realize how much that weight is holding you down until you’re deep into a long hike. It tires you out way quicker than you’d think.”
“I think of weight as a trade-off,” she stresses. “Every piece of gear has to earn its place, and the weight I save on the camera is weight I can put toward what keeps me safe out there: water, a first aid kit, a headlamp for the hike in, and a satellite messenger so someone always knows where I am when I’m alone. I’ll take all of that over a lens I’m probably not going to touch.”
That math is what pushed her to a smaller system. She now shoots an OM-1 Mark II , and the two lenses she carries split the work: an M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-40mm F2.8 PRO II that handles her landscapes, and an M.Zuiko Digital ED 7-14mm F2.8 PRO OM that goes wide enough for canyon walls and the night sky. The body is small enough to change the weight of a full pack.
“This past spring I did a big backpacking project and took the smaller kit with me, and it saved so much weight in my pack,” Lanham describes. “The screw-on filters stayed home, because the camera does that part itself now. With a body that small I can use a smaller pack and still have room for water and snacks.”
In place of screw-on filters, the OM-1 Mark II has Live ND and Live GND. These in-camera modes recreate the effect of a neutral-density or graduated ND filter, darkening a scene or evening out a bright sky without any glass. That is one less pouch on her back.
Be Ready to Throw Out the Plan
In March, Lanham drove all the way out to Big Bend Ranch State Park, in remote far West Texas, to shoot a lunar eclipse.
“I had the whole thing mapped out,” Lanham remembers. “This is going to be the photo, and it’ll be perfect. So I’m out there sleeping on the side of the road, setting an alarm, getting up to take a frame every 10 minutes, then laying back down to nap. I did that the entire stretch of the eclipse.”
“The clouds rolled in right at the main eclipse and ruined the sequence I’d planned. I figured I’d slept on the side of the road for nothing,” she admits. “But the clouds were just wispy enough to give me some hope, so I grabbed my pack and hustled up a tall hill. The lighter kit helped me get up there in time to shoot the river with the moon coming through the clouds. It turned out to be a really great photo.”
She was in the park less than a day.
“It really taught me to be flexible,” she cautions. “Don’t count on the photo you wanted being the photo you get. You’ve got to know how to pivot, and you’ve got to be okay with failing, because you’re not going to get the shot every single time. I’ve learned that one many times.”
The Landscape Is the Subject, the Sky Is a Bonus
“Most people chase the stars when they shoot the night sky, but the sky’s not actually my subject, ever,” Lanham explains. “The subject is the landscape. The sky’s just a bonus.”
“Sometimes it’s hard to look at a pitch black landscape and figure out what the subject even is,” she stresses. “You can’t just point the camera out at the dark and call it a photo, you need something to anchor it. Living in Texas, I’ve got missions and old structures everywhere, and they solve that problem. There’s a barn at South Llano River, and I wanted to shoot the Milky Way there, so I just threw the barn in the foreground. That structure makes the whole landscape read. It seems like such an obvious thing, but a lot of great photos of the sky lack earth elements, and I think including them adds a story to the image.”
A subject close to the camera and a sky far behind create a problem: a single frame cannot hold both in focus. Lanham’s OM-1 Mark II solves that with in-camera focus stacking, which combines several frames focused at different distances so the near and far subjects stay sharp.
“I shot the mission at Goliad the day I got my camera, because I’d heard about the in-camera focus stacking and had to try it somewhere,” she reflects. “I captured the foreground during blue hour, right after sunset, so there was still a little light on the mission, and the focus stacking got it sharp from the near lanterns all the way back to the mission. I was so excited to be out with the new camera that I completely forgot it could have done the star trails for me, right in-camera.”
That feature is Live Composite. The OM-1 Mark II can hold a single exposure for up to six hours and only adds new light as it arrives, so a lit foreground never burns out while the star trails build on the screen in real time. It does the whole thing in the camera and saves it as one finished file. For this photo, however, Lanham made the star trails the old-fashioned way.
“Once it was fully dark, I set my camera’s intervalometer to take a 30-second shot every 30 seconds for about an hour, so it caught the stars rotating the whole time,” Lanham recounts. “That gave me around 120 frames. Later I layered the focus-stacked foreground together with all those star shots in Photoshop, and that stack is where the trails come from. It looks like one photo, but there’s a lot of work hiding in it.”
“My astrophotography honestly starts at my computer,” she admits. “Before I head out, I’m looking up where the Milky Way’s going to fall and whether the skies are going to be clear. When I get to a spot, I give myself a lot of extra time to scout it, so I know the shot I want is one I can actually get.”
The fussiest part of the night itself used to be locking focus on the stars. Starry Sky AF, an autofocus mode built to find and hold focus on stars, takes that off her hands.
“On an old lens I’d have to crank to infinity and keep checking the viewfinder,” she points out. “Now the star-point focus just pinpoints the stars and stays locked.”
The Experience Is the Whole Point
“The thing I love about the state parks is they’re just in your backyard. You don’t have to travel very far,” Lanham stresses. “That’s where I learned all my photography, and there’s still always something new to find close to home. Honestly, I just want to get more people outside, experiencing the same places I do.”
She has photographed every park in the system, and she still explores them every chance she gets.
“For me the experience is the whole point,” she concludes. “The photos aren’t going to mean anything if you didn’t have a great time. I love hiking, I love the outdoors, and I think that shows in my photos. Love what you do and it’s going to show in the photos.”
She has another reason for shooting these places. Texas has little public land, and protecting what is left matters to her. Her way of getting there is to bring more people to the parks first.
“I push hard for preserving what we’ve got,” she emphasizes. “That’s a big part of why I’m intentional with my photos. I want people to see these places, go fall in love with them the way I did, and want to protect them like I do. A hundred years from now, two hundred years from now, I want these places to still be here as they are now.”
See more from Maegan Lanham on her Instagram.
Full disclosure: This article was brought to you by OM SYSTEM.
