I have a similar experience. Environments have a very strong effect on me, landscapes as well as man-made landscapes: cities, architecture, industry. In an attempt to record those effects and feelings, I take pictures. Sometimes, I'm disappointed by my results. They may very well be visually pleasing, but they do not reflect the feeling the environment invoked. This should not be surprising since those effects come from a wide range of impressions, the visual being only one of many. I call these pictures 'nice but cold'. They don't interest me much beyond having a kind of touristy record about 'how it looked like'. I have loved some images the most that did reflect feelings even though they might not have been the best visually. Yet, I could hear the silence, smell the misty rain in the forrest and so on just by looking at them. Is this so personal, that one could not transmit it to other viewers? Maybe. But looking for example at Wim's pictures, I get such a strong impression of the environments he is representing in his images, that I would love to experience some of it myself. That means, it is quite possible to use the material 'landscape', as David called it, to convey experience and feelings to others. Which is what photography (at least to me) is all about.
A.Weil