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Author Topic: Will the Real Landscape Photography Please Stand Up ?  (Read 113130 times)

Gulag

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Re: Will the Real Landscape Photography Please Stand Up ?
« Reply #40 on: February 03, 2015, 12:23:42 am »

"Today we are witnessing the triumph of rationalist know how and yet, at the same time, we find ourselves confronted with emptiness. An esthetic void, desert of uniformity, criminal sterility, loss of creative power. Even creativity is prefabricated. We have become impotent. We are no longer able to create. That is our real illiteracy.”

— Friedensreich Hundertwasser
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"Photography is our exorcism. Primitive society had its masks, bourgeois society its mirrors. We have our images."

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Justinr

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Re: Will the Real Landscape Photography Please Stand Up ?
« Reply #41 on: February 03, 2015, 04:15:39 am »

"Today we are witnessing the triumph of rationalist know how and yet, at the same time, we find ourselves confronted with emptiness. An esthetic void, desert of uniformity, criminal sterility, loss of creative power. Even creativity is prefabricated. We have become impotent. We are no longer able to create. That is our real illiteracy.”

— Friedensreich Hundertwasser

Quite, there is nothing strange to us anymore.
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AreBee

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Re: Will the Real Landscape Photography Please Stand Up ?
« Reply #42 on: February 03, 2015, 05:55:27 am »

Isaac,

Quote
Given the topic is landscape photography; what furore over 'photoshopped' images, by non-photographers, do you have in mind?

Having discussed the topic with several friends and work colleagues yesterday and today the consensus of opinion has shown me to have been mistaken when I wrote "Non-photographers tend to expect what is portrayed in a landscape photo to be a representation of what they would have seen with their own eyes had they taken the place of the camera", which was my understanding from past discussions held with others.

Mea culpa.


Andrew,

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But surely part of the appeal of a beautiful landscape is the idea that there is a real place that is like that?

Speaking for myself, yes.


Justinr,

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Quite, there is nothing strange to us anymore.

Why is that important? Must a photo depict something unfamiliar to be of interest to us?
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stamper

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Re: Will the Real Landscape Photography Please Stand Up ?
« Reply #43 on: February 03, 2015, 06:13:19 am »

If you have seen a lot of photos, time and again, of the same subject then showing  something unfamiliar usually attracts someone's interest especially if they say "what is that"? The best way imo to improve is to photograph something unfamiliar or something well known taken from an unusual angle or substantially different light.

AreBee

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Re: Will the Real Landscape Photography Please Stand Up ?
« Reply #44 on: February 03, 2015, 07:16:17 am »

Stamper,

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If you have seen a lot of photos, time and again, of the same subject then showing something unfamiliar usually attracts someone's interest...

Showing something familiar in a strong composition has the same effect.
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RSL

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Re: Will the Real Landscape Photography Please Stand Up ?
« Reply #45 on: February 03, 2015, 09:23:40 am »

One problem landscape photography has is that it can't even begin to compete with competent landscape painting. Among other examples, I'm thinking about Bierstadt's "Among the Sierra Nevada." He used severe linear perspective distortion to make a contrast between high and forbidding mountains in the background and a gentle, idyllic scene centered on a lake in the foreground. The height of the mountains is very much exaggerated, but they give the viewer the feel of the mountains in certain atmospheric conditions. You simply can't distort linear perspective this way with a camera. If you use a long lens to raise the height of the mountains, the lake in the foreground becomes a creek and you lose the whole point of the scene.
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Russ Lewis  www.russ-lewis.com.

AreBee

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Re: Will the Real Landscape Photography Please Stand Up ?
« Reply #46 on: February 03, 2015, 10:35:02 am »

Russ,

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One problem landscape photography has is that it can't even begin to compete with competent landscape painting.

Why would they compete with each other? They are not the same.
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RSL

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Re: Will the Real Landscape Photography Please Stand Up ?
« Reply #47 on: February 03, 2015, 10:52:29 am »

You're right, Rob. And when you look at two different photographs, they're "not the same" either. Same problem with paintings. On the other hand, an awful lot of landscape photographs are awfully close to the same, and mass-market paintings suffer from the same problem.
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Russ Lewis  www.russ-lewis.com.

Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Will the Real Landscape Photography Please Stand Up ?
« Reply #48 on: February 03, 2015, 11:06:03 am »

One problem landscape photography has is that it can't even begin to compete with competent landscape painting. Among other examples, I'm thinking about Bierstadt's "Among the Sierra Nevada." He used severe linear perspective distortion to make a contrast between high and forbidding mountains in the background and a gentle, idyllic scene centered on a lake in the foreground. The height of the mountains is very much exaggerated, but they give the viewer the feel of the mountains in certain atmospheric conditions. You simply can't distort linear perspective this way with a camera. If you use a long lens to raise the height of the mountains, the lake in the foreground becomes a creek and you lose the whole point of the scene.

On the other hand, Russ, there is Paul Cézanne, whose paintings are practically identical with photographs taken of the same place (in terms of perspective).
« Last Edit: February 03, 2015, 12:21:31 pm by Slobodan Blagojevic »
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RSL

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Re: Will the Real Landscape Photography Please Stand Up ?
« Reply #49 on: February 03, 2015, 11:17:12 am »

Absolutely, Slobodan. Cézanne should have been a photographer. Could have saved himself a lot of work.
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Russ Lewis  www.russ-lewis.com.

AreBee

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Re: Will the Real Landscape Photography Please Stand Up ?
« Reply #50 on: February 03, 2015, 11:18:59 am »

Russ,

Quote
...when you look at two different photographs, they're "not the same" either. Same problem with paintings.

In your previous post you compared photography to painting, whereas in the above quote, each of pairs belong to the same class - photo with photo and painting with painting respectively.
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RSL

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Re: Will the Real Landscape Photography Please Stand Up ?
« Reply #51 on: February 03, 2015, 11:21:34 am »

Right, Rob. And they're still not the same.
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Russ Lewis  www.russ-lewis.com.

AreBee

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Re: Will the Real Landscape Photography Please Stand Up ?
« Reply #52 on: February 03, 2015, 11:24:33 am »

Russ,

Quote
And they're still not the same.

Sorry for my continued confusion. If they are not the same why would they compete?
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RSL

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Re: Will the Real Landscape Photography Please Stand Up ?
« Reply #53 on: February 03, 2015, 11:33:49 am »

I'm really going to have to explain this? You pointed out that a photograph and a painting are "not the same." I pointed out that two different photographs are "not the same," and that two different paintings are "not the same." Sameness has nothing to do with it. My point was that a landscape photograph can't really come up to the standard set by a well-done painting.
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Russ Lewis  www.russ-lewis.com.

AreBee

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Re: Will the Real Landscape Photography Please Stand Up ?
« Reply #54 on: February 03, 2015, 12:04:24 pm »

Russ,

Quote
Sameness has nothing to do with it. My point was that a landscape photograph can't really come up to the standard set by a well-done painting.

I understand now, thanks.
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amolitor

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Re: Will the Real Landscape Photography Please Stand Up ?
« Reply #55 on: February 03, 2015, 12:12:17 pm »

Russ, I think you're taking a somewhat limited and old fashioned view of landscape. One of the things landscape seeks to do is to capture a sense on the sublime, and paintings arguably have a leg up there.

But there is more to it. Gursky's Rhine is landscape and gains a great deal of its effect from the fact that it begins with a real thing. As a painting it would be nothing. As digital art based on a photograph, it has something.

In general, photography has that core strength, that there was a real thing in front of the lens. Whenever the power of a piece relies on that, photography wins.

And that can include landscape.
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Isaac

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Re: Will the Real Landscape Photography Please Stand Up ?
« Reply #56 on: February 03, 2015, 12:18:41 pm »

My point was that a landscape photograph can't really come up to the standard set by a well-done painting.

A painting is a better painting than a photograph can be; and a photograph is a better photograph than a painting can be.


You simply can't distort linear perspective this way with a camera.

Why can't you choose the kind-of projection and parameters used to map the digital image acquired by your camera to a 2d surface?

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Isaac

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Re: Will the Real Landscape Photography Please Stand Up ?
« Reply #57 on: February 03, 2015, 12:39:08 pm »

Quite, there is nothing strange to us anymore.

Au contraire!

"The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery." Anaïs Nin
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Misirlou

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Re: Will the Real Landscape Photography Please Stand Up ?
« Reply #58 on: February 03, 2015, 12:39:26 pm »

Of the prints I've sold lately, all the images were heavily manipulated. And the people who purchased them all knew that. In some cases, the manipulation was done to make them look more believable and realistic. In other cases, to look purposely surreal.

The last print I sold was shot and processed on commission, and I was ordered to specifically put my kind of "look" on it. I guess, in a way then, digital has become something like painting.

I know I can't compete with the great photographers, either in skill or vision. So I just concentrate on shooting things that look interesting or unusual to me, and then manipulating the image in a way that expresses how I feel about the subject, or what it was like to have been there at that moment.

I won't be quitting my day job of course, but I do have fun.
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Isaac

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Re: Will the Real Landscape Photography Please Stand Up ?
« Reply #59 on: February 03, 2015, 12:45:12 pm »

…mistaken when I wrote "Non-photographers tend to expect what is portrayed in a landscape photo to be a representation of what they would have seen with their own eyes had they taken the place of the camera"

Thanks, was there any kind-of agreement in your small sample of expectations?
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