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Author Topic: In the Mountains  (Read 6112 times)

seamus finn

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Re: In the Mountains
« Reply #20 on: May 11, 2011, 01:37:10 pm »

Quote
Out of curiosity, what did you shoot this with?


Canon 5D, 70-200 L f4 lens, 1.250/f9

« Last Edit: May 13, 2011, 07:19:30 am by seamus finn »
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Ken Bennett

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Re: In the Mountains
« Reply #21 on: May 11, 2011, 01:55:53 pm »


Here's a reminder, Ken, same place, different day.

Thanks, Seamus!! We are celebrating our anniversary today, and I will share this with my lovely wife when I get home.
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seamus finn

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Re: In the Mountains
« Reply #22 on: May 11, 2011, 02:41:30 pm »



What a coincidence! Congratulations to you both. And I hope you two come back to Ireland sometime soon.
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Ken Bennett

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Re: In the Mountains
« Reply #23 on: May 11, 2011, 08:46:13 pm »


What a coincidence! Congratulations to you both. And I hope you two come back to Ireland sometime soon.

Thanks, we plan to do so. My wife's grandfather grew up outside Clifden, and we visited her great aunt and other relatives while we were there. Great trip.
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buggslife

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Re: In the Mountains
« Reply #24 on: May 16, 2011, 08:33:51 am »

Just chipping in to say I disagree with RSL's original comment here; yes, landscapes can be simply a backdrop for humanity but I much prefer photographing nature's backdrops where man has had less of an impact.  Both still landscapes but your statement just jumped out as being a little blinkered.
 ;)

Seamus, Splendid! This is what "landscape" should be: a background for people, their activities, and their artifacts. The greatest landscape painters knew this, but many landscape photographers never knew or have forgotten that this is what gives great landscape images their power.

Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: In the Mountains
« Reply #25 on: May 16, 2011, 09:35:02 am »

Just chipping in to say I disagree with RSL's original comment here; yes, landscapes can be simply a backdrop for humanity but I much prefer photographing nature's backdrops where man has had less of an impact.  Both still landscapes but your statement just jumped out as being a little blinkered.
 ;)

Very well put. I agree.

Eric
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dmerger

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Re: In the Mountains
« Reply #26 on: May 16, 2011, 01:48:03 pm »

+1
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Dean Erger

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Re: In the Mountains
« Reply #27 on: May 16, 2011, 03:43:30 pm »

Just chipping in to say I disagree with RSL's original comment here; yes, landscapes can be simply a backdrop for humanity but I much prefer photographing nature's backdrops where man has had less of an impact.  Both still landscapes but your statement just jumped out as being a little blinkered. ;)

Buggs, Eric, Dmer, You certainly should photograph the things that move you, but that doesn't invalidate what I said. The greatest landscape painters understood that man and his artifacts are the final touch that makes a landscape painting (or photograph) a great landscape painting (or photograph). But that doesn't mean you have to make landscape photographs with man and his artifacts in them.
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: In the Mountains
« Reply #28 on: May 16, 2011, 04:21:10 pm »

Buggs, Eric, Dmer, You certainly should photograph the things that move you, but that doesn't invalidate what I said. The greatest landscape painters understood that man and his artifacts are the final touch that makes a landscape painting (or photograph) a great landscape painting (or photograph). But that doesn't mean you have to make landscape photographs with man and his artifacts in them.

Russ,

Many, if not most, of my own landscapes include human artifacts, but I don't think that is what makes them any better (or worse) than those that don't.

Perhaps your definition of "The greatest landscape painters" is restricted to those that "understood that man and his artifacts are the final touch that makes a landscape painting (or photograph) a great landscape painting (or photograph)."

Even if it is true (I haven't tried to verify or refute this assertion) that "the greatest landscape painters" often or usually included human artifacts, that doesn't in any way prove that that fact is the sole basis for their greatness. As for photographers, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and Paul Caponigro all have landscapes with as well as without human artifacts in them, and the best ones that come to mind (in my opinion) are very often the ones without human artifacts (Weston's final images on Point Lobos, for example).

But, of course, you are entitled to your opinion, too, however misguided it may be.   ;)

Cheers,

Eric

P.S. It's true that I can't think of any good Cartier-Bresson landscapes that don't contain human artifacts.
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RSL

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Re: In the Mountains
« Reply #29 on: May 16, 2011, 05:48:51 pm »

...Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and Paul Caponigro all have landscapes ... without human artifacts in them...

Eric, Exactly, which is why so many of Ansel's, Edward's and Paul's landscapes are extended yawns. To see what I'm talking about check Constable and Turner for starters. I'd also add Thomas Cole on the American side. That's just for starters. If you'd like a more complete list, as soon as I have time to dig into my stuff I'll try to produce one for you. Unfortunately our more modern painters have transitioned from painting to dripping and spattering, which gives photographers a leg up.
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: In the Mountains
« Reply #30 on: May 17, 2011, 12:10:01 am »

Eric, Exactly, which is why so many of Ansel's, Edward's and Paul's landscapes are extended yawns.
Perhaps for you, but not at all for me.

Constable and Turner have some nice stuff but nothing that moves me as much as a good Weston. Your mileage quite obviously differs (you drive a Hummer?   ;)  )

Eric
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RSL

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Re: In the Mountains
« Reply #31 on: May 17, 2011, 11:00:44 am »

Eric, You're right, it's a personal thing, and I'm obviously overstating the case to make a point. In the late fifties and early sixties I doted on Ansel and Edward. Both were very good photographers and, in those days at least, Edward's sex life, especially, was very dotable, especially when it came to shots of Tina stretched out nude in the sun.

But you have to remember that those two guys were doing landscapes at the dawn of photography as a serious art form. They were originals, and most of their descendents are copying what they did. Every once in a while I see a photographic landscape that's original work, but very, very, very rarely. Most current landscapes are tedious at best, and virtually all the landscapes I see on LuLa fall into that category.

What Edward, and especially Ansel were doing was studio work, and the darkroom was their studio. Oh, yes, they made their careful, tedious, f/64 exposures outdoors, but most of the real work was done in the darkroom. In Brooks Jensen's Letting Go of the Camera there's an article titled "Project Work vs. Greatest Hits." In it, Brooks points out: "Most people aren't aware that a straight print of Moonrise Over Hernandez is almost unrecognizable compared to the finished print we've all seen published and reproduced so often. In the original, unmanipulated print, the sky is almost jet white and the moon is a perfect Zone X white disc in the middle of this almost-white sky. In the final print, this almost-white sky is printed to almost jet black and the moon becomes a detailed glow." In other words, as Ansel put it: "The negative is the score. The print is the performance." Or, to put it a different way, Ansel's, and to a lesser extent, Edward's real art was post-processing.

Somewhere in the early sixties I stumbled on HCB and my whole attitude changed. Yes, natural beauty is worth recording, but no photograph can even begin to approximate the natural beauty I see every day when I step outside my door. I keep coming back to what Brooks said in this month's LensWork: that a photographer's real job is to say, "look at this," and say it in a way that illuminates what the casual observer usually misses. To me that means a story: street photography to say "look at this" about something telling in people's behavior or attitude or interrelationships, or the ghosts of the departed left behind in abandoned structures and implements. None of this rules out landscape, but landscape that shows the relationship of people to the land is what makes a great landscape, as Turner, Constable, and Cole, and I suspect even Ansel and Edward all knew.

What's Ansel's most famous photograph? Clearly it's "Moonrise Over Hernandez." What's "Moonrise Over Hernandez" about? It's about the relationship of the little town of Hernandez to its surroundings.

I rest my case.
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