How to add emotion to a landscape

Weather conditions are rather 'useful' for an 'emotional dimension' in the landscape. I sometimes use the plastic bag technique. In the autumn, weather is ideal because it is changing fast.
When I see some bad weather coming in and I feel like the visual conditions (composition) are good, then I put op the camera on a tripod, hang a extra weight under it and put a good plastic bag over the camera to protect is against the rain or what so ever. Then I hide in the car and wait for the 'rubbish' to come over, and when it is just gone, then I take off the bag and shoot. This works particularly well in aria close to the sea because there is a lot of wind changing the weather quit fast.
I have used this technique rather a lot in the Golfe du Morbihan (France) wile shooting megaliths for my book 'De Stilte Der Stenen' see http://www.photoeil.be/books/megalyth/stilte.der.stenen.html

Philippe

Colours are tied to emotion and psychological states - thats what you might be looking for.

Vaughn said:

Sucked into an old thread!

Oh well, since I am here...

If you smile while you talk to someone on the phone, you will sound happier to them. If you want emotion in your images, then experience those emotions while photographing and printing.

Probably too simple and straight forward of an answer, but sounds a lot better to me than any technical explanations.

Vaughn

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Well, at least you will be happy to know that I am still reading this thread. On seeing the recent interview of Michael Kenna, I began to understand how he interacts with the landscape and feel that I can relate to this.

I have a place that I frequent

No one can answer this but you.

The landscape you photograph, assuming it is considered and not slapdash, will always have an inherent emotive element. It is contrived to want to introduce emotion or emotive pathos if they are not there i.e. through digital such a blur, soft focus, ripple etc., or more commonly photographing everyday pedestrian scenes at noon with no clear message or theme evident — evident to a nauseating degree by digital officionados shooting blithely at anything that blinks, moves or looks pretty. The visual appeal of the photograph afterward — and by association its emotion — is dependent on your skills and ability to transfer the emotive overlay to film. For me, there has to be a resonance with the scene before I can photograph it, very much like waiting until it has got hold of me. Prerequisites for my scenes are full colour saturation and atmosphere—the worse the weather, the better. This resonance is what draws me back repeatedly to the same scene to record not just one mood or emotion, but several, often over a long period of time, gradually telling a story of one place and its many 'faces'.

I fully understand the OP's thoughts. I have always found that I can take photographs I'm proud of when I isolate a piece of the landscape. When it comes to the beautiful vistas - it just seems I cannot do it justice.

Case in point - over the summer I visited the Western Isles of Scotland for the first time. I had great cloud formations, great lighting - and the vistas were just awe-inspiring and magnificent. In 20 or so rolls of 6x7 there are maybe five frames that I consider worth pursuing. These five frames are of what I consider detail - ships in a harbour, coiled rope by a fishing boat etc. None of the true landscapes comes even close to conveying what I saw - or thought I saw; and yet I had before me some of the most magnificent, "photogenic" scenery I have ever seen! And there I was with the orange filters and the polarizers making masterpiece after masterpiece.

I should have known better. After 30 odd years I have never taken a wide view scenic that matches what I felt at the time. Sure, I was "bummed" but, in the end, I suspect that I'm not a "big picture" photographer. Does that make me a bad photographer or a failed one? I don't think so. I just have to be prepared for disappointment when I take the big scene - 'cos I know I'll keep taking them

Bob H

Poisson Du Jour said:

It is contrived to want to introduce emotion or emotive pathos if they are not there i.e. through digital such a blur, soft focus, ripple etc., or more commonly photographing everyday pedestrian scenes at noon with no clear message or theme evident — evident to a nauseating degree by digital officionados shooting blithely at anything that blinks, moves or looks pretty.

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Then you'll agree that its exactly the same with film street photographers.

And also for film users that use polarising filters, or ND grads, or :gasp: sunset graduated or blue graduated filters, or diffusion filters, or cicular grad diffusion, or soft focus lenses.

Greetings Diane:

Regarding the potential for pulling emotion from the landscape. Here is something to contemplate.

Nature is the infinite and variable model that contains all styles. She surrounds us, but we do not see her. - Auguste Rodin -

Best
Charles

jbj,

I think has it nailed down, It is the essential element of pre-visualization with passion. I have been envisioning a moody landscape scene at a particular location and have been visiting and revisiting it hoping to find the right mood that I feel in my mind have been there 5 times so far, trying different angles, perspectives, today I brought a ladder to get above my subjects and adjust the background as an element that experiences and shares something meaningful with the foreground. I had to step through 5 inches of mud and water for 30 meters to get there as the water rose all around my spot.
I try using long exposures on Ilford Delta pro 100ISO BW with a Tiffen 25A filter, stopped down between f16-f32 for overall clarity and sharpness and then I slightly underexspose and overexpose for comparison, and when I want more drama than your mama I stack on a linear polarizer to render sky as black, More drama still? how about SFX infrared film that renders all green foliage white? of course there is no better mood than is captured and conveyed with a good BW Image, and the print even more impacting on the emotions. Color seems only to dazzle us with a broad range of hues but does not engage the abstracted emotion evident with composition and tone in its basic form. However Fuji Velvia 50 and the new 100ISO Velvia are also deliciously moody color films.

What really makes the mood is your ability to reflect and relate what your feeling is the mood for a given scene and then interpreting that in the world through your own unique perspective.

I would like to experiment with adding people myself but there is a certain solitude in believing for even a brief time that you are the only person seeing a grand view, even for the viewer of a reprinted image.

Best of luck finding your feelings and capturing it in a frame.

If amateur photographer unable to see a mood - he should sell his photo gear

colrehogan said:

How do you put emotion & feeling into a landscape (e.g. get the viewer to empathize with the shot)? I asked a somewhat related question on the f32 site and it led me to this question.

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Composition, lighting, contrast, filters for black & white, polarizer filter color and black & white can add to the emotion. There is no cookie cutter approach for adding emotion to landscapes.

JS MD said:

If amateur photographer unable to see a mood - he should sell his photo gear

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Thats a harsh statement. I think the OP can see the emotion, but like many he is unable to satisfactorily portray emotion. There are many components that need to be utilized in our magic bag of tricks, deciding on which and how is the hard part. Many amateurs may not have those skills and we should be there to help them learn them. I for one didn't have those skills for a long time, perserverance and many rolls of film later, I think I can get my viewer to feel what I saw. Not everybody is capable of it, but that doesn't mean he or she should give up, just means they are far better in other areas. Not everyone can pull out the emotion in grand scale, that's why there so many different aspects to photography. That is also why this forum exists, to help those seeking.

+ 1

These skills are learned, not inherited.

Steve

Check out Salgado's Alaska landscapes in today's NYT magazine:

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/20...ebastiao-salgado.html?scp=3&sq=salgado&st=cse

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/09/m...ebastiao-salgado.html?scp=1&sq=salgado&st=cse

These shots are not just majestic but alive. Emotion? It's everywhere in this series.

Elements in a photograph can evoke emotion from the viewer.

It is the art of knowing what the majority will be affected by.

Many people like glorious sunsets, others feel the expanse of a panoramic ... others require contrasts ... etc.
Look over all the images that evoke something from you ... then figure out the why.

National Geographic is good at picking out the images that get to the majority.