Landscape photography - ethics and approaches

[vet173]

I recently discovered that by going back to the same spot six days in a row I finally got bored enough to start looking for something different and ended up with something better than my original vision.

 

[Bandicoot]

I do find I get something from re-visiting places, but I also like to go to new ones - partly for all the obvious reasons and partly because new subjects throw up new challenges. But familiar subjects can throw up new challenges, of a different sort, too: like how to find a new way - or a better way - to portray them.

One of my recurrent themes is the field across the road from my own front gate. The light on this field is so often beautiful and I love a number of the trees that stand in it. I have photographed this one field so many times, but I still feel there is a lifetime's worth of images still there waiting for me. This is quite an important 'anchoring' thing for me.

There is a particular place in Wales that is slowly beginning to acquire a similar power for me as I photograph it again and again.

In a different way, I tutored on a retreat at a place in January of last year and they asked me back in April of this. They've already booked me for August next year and have made enquires about October in the year following. This was their idea, not mine, but I am really excited by this idea of going back in each season of the year. Even after just two visits I've found I produced some very different work - seeing things that I hadn't seen the first time or that hadn't worked in the light of a different season, and finding new ways to look at things I had photographed before. Sometimes, with the things I photographed both times, my initial vision has proved to be the best, sometimes the second one has been an improvement.

This idea of both looking for new things and re-visiting familiar ones doesn't only apply to landscape. I do a lot of still life and a proportion of this is done with plant material much of which I grow myself. Several times I've found that I've photographed something I've grown, and then the following year when the same plant is at the same stage of leaf/bud/flower/whatever I've thought of a different way of interpreting it. Sometimes I've thought of it after looking at my films and then had to wait another year for the plant to flower again.

I do think that the quality of work I produce each time I go to a new place is improved by, and builds on, some of the things I learn when I work in or revisit familiar places.


Peter

 

[bjorke]

Remember, archetypal landscape shooters like O'Sullivan shot for the sake of exposing the undeveloped land to eastern developers. The goal of the photos was: here it is, let's exploit this!

(I won't rehash the modern version of the same sentiment, where landscapes are used as backdrops for SUV ads that promise your ability to "conquer any terrain")

One shot or twenty, the real "ethical" issue in landscape photography is what is your relationship to this land as expressed in these photographs?

The camera is a dumb instrument. If you do not think about what is in your pictures, it will also record your indifference.

 

[Shawn Dougherty]

Remember, archetypal landscape shooters like O'Sullivan shot for the sake of exposing the undeveloped land to eastern developers. The goal of the photos was: here it is, let's exploit this!

(I won't rehash the modern version of the same sentiment, where landscapes are used as backdrops for SUV ads that promise your ability to "conquer any terrain")

One shot or twenty, the real "ethical" issue in landscape photography is what is your relationship to this land as expressed in these photographs?

The camera is a dumb instrument. If you do not think about what is in your pictures, it will also record your indifference.

Well said. I especially liked the last line! Best. Shawn

 

[Daniel_OB]

it is old truth:
criminal always return to the place of his crime, and photographers always return to the point where they shot from.

www.Leica-R.com

 

[Stoo Batchelor]

Waffle away, I say!

Sustained commitment to a subject or theme often yields the best, most interesting results. No matter whether it's landscape, portraits, or whatever.

Perfectly said.

I think that to make a great photograph, you have to be 'IN THE ZONE' Some where that I never am when I first visit a location. Yes, I can come home with a great image, but its never the one that I saw in my mind before I left home.

Its always worth returning, IMO, to switch on to a place and find what I never felt on earlier visits.

Regards

Stoo