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Author Topic: What is 'landscape'?  (Read 63623 times)

ChrisS

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What is 'landscape'?
« on: April 01, 2011, 01:50:15 pm »

What do you understand by the word 'landscape' in relation to the practice of photography?
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Rob C

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Re: What is 'landscape'?
« Reply #1 on: April 01, 2011, 02:31:01 pm »

What do you understand by the word 'landscape' in relation to the practice of photography?



A photograph with or without people, where the main/sole object of interest is the location tself.

Rob C

ChrisS

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Re: What is 'landscape'?
« Reply #2 on: April 01, 2011, 02:50:17 pm »

What if the location is the inside of a building?
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michael

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Re: What is 'landscape'?
« Reply #3 on: April 01, 2011, 04:07:45 pm »

Then it's a buildingscape, otherwise known as architectural photography.

Or not.

Michael
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ChrisS

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Re: What is 'landscape'?
« Reply #4 on: April 01, 2011, 04:16:04 pm »

OK then, let's step back outside of the building. Now, what are the parameters of landscape (with regard to photography)?
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DiaAzul

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Re: What is 'landscape'?
« Reply #5 on: April 01, 2011, 05:11:33 pm »

I thought this was simple - it's a picture with land in it.

For parameters consider comparing with Seascape - a picture with sea in it.
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David Plummer    http://photo.tanzo.org/

Christoph C. Feldhaim

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Re: What is 'landscape'?
« Reply #6 on: April 01, 2011, 05:19:02 pm »

If you look inside your brain its a brainscape ... ;)

Rob C

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Re: What is 'landscape'?
« Reply #7 on: April 01, 2011, 06:14:02 pm »

If you look inside your brain its a brainscape ... ;)


Maybe we should keep this progression of inanity above the belt?

Rob C

Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: What is 'landscape'?
« Reply #8 on: April 01, 2011, 06:41:33 pm »


Maybe we should keep this progression of inanity above the belt?

Rob C

You mean that below the belt it would be considered a... moonscape? ;)

RSL

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Re: What is 'landscape'?
« Reply #9 on: April 01, 2011, 07:26:53 pm »

Seems to me the most appropriate response to this thread is escape.
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ChrisS

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Re: What is 'landscape'?
« Reply #10 on: April 02, 2011, 03:04:35 am »

Well, that told me, didn't it?

To conclude this interesting discussion so far, we could say that 'landscape' as a concept in relation to photography simply isn't worth discussing.

I wonder if that also means it isn't worth doing. I would imagine that a lot of people who read this forum produce landscape photography. In what ways do you think landscape photography is worth doing, or even important as a form of photography?
« Last Edit: April 02, 2011, 03:21:55 am by ChrisS »
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Rob C

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Re: What is 'landscape'?
« Reply #11 on: April 02, 2011, 03:32:57 am »

You mean that below the belt it would be considered a... moonscape? ;)


Did they invent that classy act whilst planting Hasselblads on the Moon?

Rob C

Rob C

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Re: What is 'landscape'?
« Reply #12 on: April 02, 2011, 04:02:19 am »

Well, that told me, didn't it?

To conclude this interesting discussion so far, we could say that 'landscape' as a concept in relation to photography simply isn't worth discussing.

I wonder if that also means it isn't worth doing.
I would imagine that a lot of people who read this forum produce landscape photography. In what ways do you think landscape photography is worth doing, or even important as a form of photography?


The problem with it is that it is often a subject of last resort. Folks might have the camera whilst lacking an idea of what to do with it. So, the most obvious answer to the moral dilemma is to point it and click at whatever's there. It's still a picture and can be perfectly executed too. Which doesn't make it worth doing for anyone other than the photographer. Which is valid enough: his baby. Amd just as people ooo and coo at other peoples' offspring they render similar homage to photography.

Again, it boils down to validity. And again back to Donovan and his claim that the most difficult thing facing the amateur is a reason  why to make a photograph. I don't at all think he was being flip; in retirement I face the same struggle every time I take the damned thing out of its box. Come to think of it, the days of the Kodachrome thrill provided many a solution at minimal cost to personal time and expended energy in pusuit of what?

Were more valid alternatives available...

Sex and the Camera.

You take it in your hands, you feel its shape and your imagination starts to probe the question of what the hell you are going to do.

It’s close to your face, snuggled against your cheekbone and your breath becomes that tiny bit faster, less controlled; concentration marks the lines on your forehead and a suspicion of sweat breaks out. Your lips are just a little parted and then, as the shapes begin to happen before you, you become half-aware of the tension in your mouth as you speak things that have no logic but are so very relevant to where you are going. Your head and your hands feel independent of the rest of you which belongs to the music on the system and the electricity of creation.

Her eyes are looking right back into yours through the machine; the smile that you are seeing is for you but not really for you because you are just the mirror, and you don’t care at all because what you’re doing is the passport you both share, the ticket to the never-never, the place where imagination is all that exists, where paths can cross and unspoken wishes shared or not and neither knows where the other one really is. What the sparks within the two minds? Does she care? Would there, could there be a brief future together? Has she ever thought about it – is she thinking that now? How often have you been right here before? Is it love, is it desire or even fear that it all will end as quietly as it began? Is this thing ever about love?

You sign one paper and she another. And then it’s done.

It’s colder now and the music seems irrelevant in your ears. You switch it off with a flick of anger that you really can’t explain; you become impatient and don’t want to spend any more time on where you’ve just been, but you have to, just so you can do it all over again another time to another tune.

The silence and loneliness are killing you. You wish you still smoked.

So you put the music back on but don’t even remember having switched it off.

Love your studio.

Rob C






ChrisS

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Re: What is 'landscape'?
« Reply #13 on: April 02, 2011, 01:37:30 pm »

I enjoyed reading that, Rob, but I'm not sure I understand in relation to what I'd written. Are you saying it's the making of the photograph that answers the question as to whether or not landscape photography is worth doing? If it is, I think I agree in part. For me, landscape isn't just the image that I produce; it's the process of walking and climbing (or being in the sea, if that's part of 'landscape') that I go through in the production of the image. And I want the image to refer to that process. Landscape for me is an embodied practice, not just an image.

But I understand others speak of landscape in other ways. In art's history, there are landscapes that speak of politics, economics, religion, the sublime, beauty etc.

Do landscape photographers in this forum take into account such concepts?
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Christoph C. Feldhaim

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Re: What is 'landscape'?
« Reply #14 on: April 02, 2011, 02:21:04 pm »

Landscape = Surrounding, Nature
I believe nature is an archetype - we have sort of inherited feeling connected with it.
Not necessary to find concepts - the concept is in us already.

Rob C

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Re: What is 'landscape'?
« Reply #15 on: April 02, 2011, 03:14:16 pm »

I enjoyed reading that, Rob, but I'm not sure I understand in relation to what I'd written. Are you saying it's the making of the photograph that answers the question as to whether or not landscape photography is worth doing? If it is, I think I agree in part. For me, landscape isn't just the image that I produce; it's the process of walking and climbing (or being in the sea, if that's part of 'landscape') that I go through in the production of the image. And I want the image to refer to that process. Landscape for me is an embodied practice, not just an image.

But I understand others speak of landscape in other ways. In art's history, there are landscapes that speak of politics, economics, religion, the sublime, beauty etc.

Do landscape photographers in this forum take into account such concepts?


Pretty much on the button, Chris. If you can get truly involved and it ¡s like a drug to you, then you're doing the right thing at the right time.

Rob C

ckimmerle

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Re: What is 'landscape'?
« Reply #16 on: April 05, 2011, 12:08:30 am »

...landscape isn't just the image that I produce; it's the process of walking and climbing (or being in the sea, if that's part of 'landscape') that I go through in the production of the image. And I want the image to refer to that process...

I'm a bit confused. Are you saying that you want your photos to remind YOU of the experiences you had at that time, or that you want those experiences to be communicated to a third-party viewer? Because if it's the latter, I think you may be asking for a bit too much. As photographers, we all have experiential ties to certain photos be they by blood, sweat, effort, danger, weather, or amazing luck. Those ties can be quite powerful and can irrationally warp the views we have of our work, often making us fond of otherwise unremarkable images. The difficulty we have is in realizing that those experiences are ours alone. They are not easily shared through images alone.

Consider the work of Galen Rowell. Many of his images were taken in exotic, remote and dangerous locations, but in no way do they convey the effort or danger that he experienced. Those experiences, as I have said, are his alone. Hell, the guy died while on a shoot, and I am guessing that his life was at risk many times before. If you look at his work, you simply don't feel anything remotely resembling what he must have been feeling.


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ChrisS

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Re: What is 'landscape'?
« Reply #17 on: April 05, 2011, 06:00:23 am »

Are you saying that you want your photos to remind YOU of the experiences you had at that time, or that you want those experiences to be communicated to a third-party viewer?

The way I think about it is that when we produce an image, we draw upon certain visual conventions that allow us to suggest aspects of the experience. This might include framing or composition (calling particular attention to certain aspects of a view, perhaps), depth of field (attention to a certain distance), tonal range (attention to form, perhaps), shutter speed (perhaps to suggest motion), and so on. (The list of possible signs with conventional significance is massive.) Those conventions are things we learn and therefore, others with similar cultural backgrounds might be expected to know the same, and interpret them in the same ways.

If this is right, it's reasonable to assume that a photographic image can communicate. Its conventions might not be as sophisticated as written or spoken language seem to be, but I think it can communicate complex messages. (And by communicate, I mean here that there's a correlation between what the maker and the viewer of the image understand from it.)

BUT, I think you are absolutely right in writing that such experiences aren't easily shared by images alone. Pushing the limit of what is communicable is one of the most important things that art can do/ has done over the last 150 years (at least). As soon as things get painful, even terrifying (I'm thinking of some of the spaces that land and seascape photographers get into), conventions of representation seem to become inadequate.

Maybe the answer is to combine images and words.
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Michael West

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Re: What is 'landscape'?
« Reply #18 on: May 08, 2011, 10:27:55 pm »

 hotos processed on a Mac must now be referred to as iScapes?
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Rob C

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Re: What is 'landscape'?
« Reply #19 on: May 09, 2011, 03:07:24 am »

hotos processed on a Mac must now be referred to as iScapes?



Well, the way things are going, probably yes.

;-(

Rob C
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