When you’re on top of a mountain pass at the end or middle of a trail, and you can see the whole world before your eyes, your surroundings are a hard thing to describe with just words. Often alone, you are confronted with vast natural beauty that is further enhanced by the intense euphoria of physical exertion pumping through your veins. Everything you see is magnificent, everything feels so real, and yet, it’s completely incomprehensible. How could you possibly describe this hybrid combination of both views and feelings? It certainly isn’t something you can verbally relate to another person without them first having experienced the same concoction of mother nature’s blood in the veins first hand. What’s worse, is when they haven’t. You actually try to communicate the amazing reality of the world we live in and how transformative your experience was and they simply look at you like a crazy person. That is unless you are photographer and art director Daniel Kobi.

Daniel Kobi doesn’t need words to convey the awe-inspiring landscapes of the Swiss countryside. Even though you can’t feel what he felt at the exact moment he was capturing each of his images, it’s the closest you’ll ever get. Like a spell, his photographic art bestows a sense of wanderlust for the wilderness that I haven’t felt with landscape photography in quite a long while. With his style of tack sharp images that embrace the unadulterated colors of the backcountry, his work is true to life in an honest way that photographers of the younger generation have lost to color shifts, light leaks, and cross processing.

Using a variety of film and formats, most notably his Mamiya 7, Kobi captures crisp memories of the places he has traveled that instantly transport you to his exact location. Not only are his photographs beautiful and dreamlike, but his development and scanning technique is flawless: allowing the whole of his exposures to come to life in a way only professionals can. What’s weird is that he isn’t a professional photographer or even a professional wilderness guide...... and that’s what’s so refreshing. 

In the sea of artists trying to make it “big” with their photographic art, Kobi’s work is a humble hobbyist’s mission to master their craft for the sake of mastery. There are no grand visions, elongated artist statements, deep emotional ties to his past, or really any mantra at all. Well, besides the fact that he wants to “share the beauty and majesty of the mountains and maybe motivate others to "opt outside". These simple words are profound because they embrace the uncertainty that his work will have any effect on the general public and instead focuses on his own inward motivation, to capture the beauty and pursue nature.

This self-proclaimed “hobbyist” escapes the city of Zurich on the weekends and before and after business trips to take in the mountainsides around him armed with his camera. If we can learn one thing from Daniel Kobi it would be to simply shoot. Do it for the love of it, do it for yourself, and most importantly, do what you love with brutal honesty.

Connect with Dan Kobi on Instagram!

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Behlen is a photography enthusiast from Fresno, CA. He works in finance and spends his free time shooting instant film and backpacking in the California wilderness, usually a combination of the two.  He has been published, been interviewed, and been reviewed in a quantity of magazines and online publications, from F-Stop and Blur magazine to the Analog Talk Podcast. He loves the magic sensuality of instant film: its saturated, surreal colors; the unpredictability of the medium; it’s addictive qualities as you watch it develop. He is the founder of Analog Forever Magazine. Connect with Michael Behlen on his Website and on Instagram!

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