Close Up Landscape Photography

Image: By Stanier Images (copyright)

One of the most enjoyable aspects of landscape photography is that of observing more closely the small details of nature that most walkers would pass by with just the merest of glances, if noticed at all. Profound truths can be contemplated when one looks open-mindedly at the intricate patterns caused for instance by the formation of ice crystals or the orchestrated flow of water over an arrangement of rocks in a stream. One wonders which artist created such compositions, or what garden designer thought of such wondrous tapestries of colour! Indeed, much, if not most art is merely a reflection of nature, the character of nature. One only has to see the “organic” art works of Andy Goldsworthy to recognise this depth of relationship between nature and creator. This line is thinner than anyone might admit. All rhythms and sensuality, or even cold logic are all found within the structures of nature. Human yearnings and aspirations are often inspired by the works of nature. Business motivation posters often feature images of a person standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon’s vastness. Nature represents greatness. We look to it, we look into it and our whole being responds to it. It generates in us a full spectrum of emotional responses. Why? Because the creator of nature is the creator of man. Our relationship with nature is profound. We are intangibly bonded. The Christian bible says our bodies were created from the dust, but was elevated when God breathed His spirit into man bringing life.

So what has this to do with Close up photography? I hope that as a reader of these blogs you will see that my approach to photography is not just technical. Without real personal meaning in what I do photography would just be an exercise, and this does not interest me. I am an emotional, spiritual being, one who searches for significance in the person I am and the world around me. Close up photography reveals to me the sheer wonder of nature and makes me ask the question – how did it come to be so organised, so beautiful and so meaningful to me. Most strive for order in our gardens showing man’s intervention, man’s eagerness to bring nature into a structured aesthetic based on cultural, artistic tendencies of our age. But in close up photography my aim is to show that this order already existed before man ever attempted to tame and organise it. That in the seeming chaos of nature there is a profound order, and that it hooks into our very beings as we gaze into the beauty of it.

Using a spot meter for landscape photography

For many learning photographers the subject of exposure can be intimidating, or at least difficult to grasp. It is in fact an extremely simple concept. The difficulty lies in understanding the lighting situation you face and learning to make the correct decisions. Of course, automatic matrix exposure systems make even the most complicated lighting situation (e.g. wide contrast of light and dark within a scene) a “walk in the park” when wanting to render the scene correctly. But this is where the problem is. What is the correct exposure? Camera manufacturers spend years of development research to come up with ever more advanced exposure meters with complex computers built in to make that decision – what your exposure should be. Whilst such auto exposure meters are superb nowadays, there are situations where they are next to useless unless you can access their manual overrides, or even better, their spot meter mode. Why? Because ultimately, the photographer is the one who is creating the photograph, not the computer. The computer won’t know that you want to emphasise the shaft of light coming through the window, with deep black all around it. The computer will only see bright light and darkness and try to find the “middle” ground. What you have is a weakened exposure. What ought to be black will have unwanted shadow detail, and the details in the shaft of light will be too light. The computer takes over as author of your photograph, and this is wrong!

Exposure of light to film is not just a technical exercise and choice, but it is ultimately a creative one. You photograph a sunset at different exposures and you will get a radically different effect, none particularly wrong, but will hold a different emphasis and feel. A yellowish sunset will go very orange or red if you “under” expose. A decision you have made in exposure changes the final outcome of the image, for many unwittingly.

I am not going to try and explain how exposure works, i.e. the relationship between aperture, shutter and film speed. But for those who have a basic grasp of exposure I would like to advise you to look at using the “spot meter”. There are devices which are solely spot meters, and I use a Pentax digital spot meter which takes a 1 degree reading. In other words, I can take a reflected light reading from a minute area of the scene. If I take a light reading from every part of the image I know exactly what will happen to my final photograph based on my choice of exposure. There will far less chance of any nasty surprises when seeing the resulting image! Of course, I am speaking of film. With digital one can take and retake many exposures through “bracketing”. But sometimes, even then, you can misinterpret what result you are seeing on the small viewfinder of the camera with what you actually captured. Many digital cameras have spot meter modes, so why not use it? To be sure, a spot meter is the most effective method of working out exposure in landscape photography. A fine example that explores these principals is through Ansel Adam’s renowned Zone system. This system can be applied to colour, not just black and white.

Perhaps one of the most useful reasons for using a spot meter is to assess what strength neutral density filters are needed to balance out contrast in the scene. If the contrast is too high, then neither film or digital can cope with it. The most typical example of high contrast is when the foreground is much darker than the sky. Again, I am not going to get technical, but you generally have only 5 stops to work with when considering your exposure starting from the “average”. By saying that, I may have lost the majority of those reading this. Don’t worry. As a rule of thumb, if you are taking a scene with sky and foreground in it, your image will almost certainly benefit from a neutral density filter. Such a filter has half of it “painted” with a tint, like sunglasses if you will! It stops some light getting into the upper half of the image, thus balancing out the bright light of the sky with the darker foreground, resulting in an image that is well exposued. No automatic exposure meter has yet been able to duplicate this effect (although I would anticipate this happening one day!). A collection of different strength neutral density filters is standard essential kit for any professional landscape photographer. It makes or breaks a superb image. If you can only afford one filter, buy this one!

If you want a more thorough treatment on either exposure or use of a spot meter then please comment on this blog and I will do my best to explain the principals in layman’s terms, using practical working examples.

The art of landscape photography

The Art of Landscape Photography
www.stanierimages.co.uk

>>> Understanding your goals
If you look at many successful landscape photographers you will find individuals who came into the art through their deep passion of all things natural. In the biographical pages you will often see they have come from a background of geology, ecology and other jobs with “ology” at the end. Their journey into landscape photography is born by their passion for nature and its workings. It is the wonder generated through their work that inspires them to express their experiences through photography. The goal of every good photographer should not be to make pretty, even spectacular pictures. The same can be said in business. It is said that in setting up a business, if money is your goal then you won’t understand how to set up your business. Like business, good photography must be built upon principals of passion, conviction and knowledge.

>>>The real meaning of creativity
They key to good landscape photography is to understand the processes that go on in nature that cause you to be in the place to make a photograph. This is why those “ologists” are good at their photography. You can go on workshops, read photo magazines, copy others techniques to discover the secret to success, but ultimately this will never point you to truly successful landscape photography. It will only show you how to take pictures like most people take pictures; you will have no style of your own, your images looking like a common picture postcard instead. For some that is all they want. If that is so, then this article isn’t for you. I am talking about the real meaning of creativity, which is a true expression of the self, the limits of which depend on your God given ability. This is not as mysterious as it sounds. It’s about being honest with yourself and recording on film (or flashcard ☺) those things which are of genuine interest to you, not just the pretty view using the rule of thirds.

>>>Your style
Being honest with yourself may result in images that no one else will be interested in. In fact, people may think you are a little odd! I once did a photograph of a hairline crack in the wall’s plaster. It has no meaning or reason for anyone, except me. But it is a process one walks, and it is for a season. That crack in the wall had a weight and curve to it, and if you look at my images of ice for instance you will see a rhythm in the shapes on the ice surface, and it is that same sense of rhythm that caused me to photograph that crack in the wall earlier. For me it was identifying with a force I had to put onto film. I can’t explain it, but abstract artists will certainly know what I am talking of. I don’t mean to be pretentious, but there is more in nature than just ensuring good foreground interest and polarised skies. It is about nurturing a personal relationship with your environment, and everybody, and I mean everybody, has their own style when it comes to translating that into a photograph.

>>>False security
I realise I am perhaps jumping the gun. For many the obstacle is perhaps technical. Yet with today’s technological advances in digital photography it has never been so easy to take well exposed and focussed pictures. Yet this expert technology can give a false sense of security. After all, how can the camera know exactly what you want? Even the best cameras can easily get caught out. So in truth, photo magazines and workshops are excellent places to understand the f-stops and shutter speed dials of photography. Understanding how to manipulate exposure to your own gain is vital. So learn how to switch off your camera’s auto pilot.

>>>Journey of self-discovery
In expressing yourself honestly in your photographs you will take pictures that suddenly mean a great deal to you. They are personal. Few will understand what you are doing. This is because you are on a journey of self discovery. After a short while you will take pictures that are so special to you that you will want to frame them, irrespective of their merit in photographic fraternities. As you walk down the path of creativity and discovery you will begin to develop a distinctive personal style, looking at the world in ways that others don’t. It will be subtle, but like fragrance the small change will be immediately noticeable to others. And folks, what you have is true art. A refined way of seeing. For those with natural ability that personal style will eventually be so refined that they can create images of beauty appreciated by the mainstream public. Personal style and insight into the subject is made accessible to others by layering their style over conventional means of expressing the landscape. It is this fusion that creates images of distinction appreciated by the many.

>>>Don’t be intimidated
In this blog I have tried to explain a creative process and in doing so may have intimidated you. Please don’t be. Explaining creativity is rather like explaining the way the brain causes your arm to move. In reality you just do it and don’t consider the steps to make it happen. For those whose creativity seems to be standing still, I hope explaining the process as I see it has helped. Don’t think whether what you are photographing will look good, think instead, “does this interest me”. Later, try to understand why it interested you. The answer to that question will be your guide.

www.stanierimages.co.uk

DIGITAL VS FILM in LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY

DIGITAL VS FILM in LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY
www.stanierimages.co.uk

>>> Herald the digital age
The digital versus film argument has for many been already settled. Digital has taken precedence. Even the movie world industry has moved more and more deeply into the digital age, many companies now producing their "films" on high definition digital cameras. There is no doubting the breathtaking pace of technological development in digital image capture. For sure, consumer 35mm film is practically finished, the quality of digital cameras offering extraordinary quality to even the most technophobic user.

>>> So what about Digital in the genre of landscape photography?
I have owned and used a large format 5x4" camera for almost 14 years, splashing out on expensive sheet film and processing through all those years. The business of large format photography is one of expense, hard work and specialisation. So with the herald of digital photography one might think the old fashioned bellows, dark cloth and ground glass screen after more than a century of service, is finally finished. Not yet. For sure, many photographers will be looking to maximise their time and effort to get their images into both their personal portfolios as well as into stock libraries and magazines. Digital is the most efficient method of producing photographs, and the quality of digital cameras is such that an A4 enlargement published in a magazine can look extremely impressive.

However, for all the bells and whistles of digital cameras, there is at present a compromise, should one use it for landscape photography and follow the route of increased productivity. Landscape photography offers a very wide range of lighting situations as well as a broad spectrum of colours, many of which are extremely subtle. It is clear to me that digital still cannot render properly the incredible detail of a landscape in sharpness and colour. It is true that film has it's limitations too, and the photographer either gets around them or exploits them where possible. But the principal reason for large format photography is to get maximum sharpness/resolution of the image, with fairly controllable colour rendition (to an extent controlled either by choice of film, or through colour balance filters that personally I rarely use). The question to ask is this: if you had the most dramatic scene your eyes had so far witnessed and had the choice to render that scene on one format, which would it be? The answer for anyone sensible should be the same - a 5x4 inch transparency (or even 10x8" if you can carry it!). It would certainly not be on a digital camera, even the new medium format ones. The truth is, where quality counts nothing yet competes with large format photography for landscape photography.

It is true though that much of the quality gained using a large format camera is lost when the image is produced in a magazine. Hence why prominent landscape photographer Colin Pryor has, controversially, switched to digital, despite being renowned for using panoramic format cameras to great effect. But the publishng world is a hungry giant and I am sure the commercial pressures to be productive have caused Colin to go the digital route. And why not, if his images are mostly used and seen in magazines.

So if one of Britain's most recognised landscape photographers uses digital for landscape photography then why this blog? The answer is simple. I produce original prints (original meaning the prints are produced directly from the original transparency for maximum quality) for display in frames. The prints I produce are cibachromes, bringing the best qualities out of large format transparencies. In my opinion digital does not compete with this level of sharpness and rendition of detail. The prints I produce are of the highest quality attainable. Moreover, the resolution of a large format transparency would, in my opinion, still attract those advertising agencies which want to produce large scale projects.

I am not defending film, or the traditional ways. I embrace technology wholeheartedly. I use digital for documentary and publicity work. It is has changed the face of the image market completely. Should digital exceed the quality of large format film one day and is affordable, I will be the first in the queue to buy that camera. Interestingly, that raises a question for another blog. Does the instant, non-methodological use of digital cameras and limitless exposure count mean the photographers eye becomes lazy? There is something special, unique and intensely involving when photographing something with a large format camera, looking at an upside down image on the ground glass with a black cloth over your head, while trying to hold it in a wind, calculating bellows extension and taking spot readings, manually cocking the shutter and aperture and loading a film holder etc. Perhaps this wonderful and skilled practice is reason alone to never completely abandon my large format camera, and until digital betters it, I won't.