HOUGAARD
MALAN

ABOUT HOUGAARD

Ever since I can remember, I’ve been obsessed with beautiful natural scenery and dramatic weather. I believe my passion for landscape photography was initiated by two elements;

The first was parents with a love of nature, particularly a family obsessed with indigenous flora. My father made sure that I saw the country and all its most beautiful landscapes in my childhood years. His passion for indigenous flora instilled a great ap
preciation in me for pristine wilderness by always pointing out alien plants in landscapes where they don’t belong. Certain experiences during these holidays left a profound mark and love of nature on me – seeing the sunset over Namibia’s desert coastline on a perfect winter’s day, experiencing a super-cell thunderstorm in the Drakensberg on a summer night, to name just two examples.

The second was countless natural history coffee-table books from my grandmother, filled with what was likely the world’s best landscape photography during the nineties. Although I had no connection with the places shown in these books, I could see that they were of moments similar to the ones that I so fondly remember. When I see such special photos, the combination of emotional triggers and an ever-wandering brain can take me on a euphoric visual journey within my mind – a.k.a “get lost in the photo”.

These moments, when the light, clouds and land combine to produce scenes so beautiful that they etch a profound place in viewers’ memories, are what I chase and endeavour to capture. I believe the essence of a landscape photograph is allowing the viewer to experience that place without ever being there. Witnessing such moments unfold over earth’s most beautiful landscapes is, for me, one of the highlights of living.