Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => Discussing Photographic Styles => Topic started by: jhemp on January 30, 2015, 12:17:03 am
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I've been doing some research online trying to find landscape photographers that are producing interesting work, and I'm not finding much? I'm SOOOO tired of this 'Candy Rush' work I'm seeing everywhere like Peter Lik, Jim Patterson, Marc Adams, and etc... I'm not saying it's bad work but I'm sick of seeing the same type of images from all the same places. So I'd be happy to here peoples advise of some landscape photographers I should explore that are doing interesting work.
Thanks
www.jayhemphill.com
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You should be grateful for the "Candy Rush" style. It allows your style to stand out (a compliment).
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Thanks Slobodan Blagojevic! I guess it just seems like the landscape work I'm seeing is in either two camps. 'Candy Rush' style landscape images which are no doubt beautiful, and then I see landscape work on the complete other side of the spectrum thats very conceptual and in my opinion stale. Some of my fishing in this post is to start a conversation about the current state of landscape photography as a 'Fine Art'. These are issues I'm dealing with in my own work, where do landscape artist's fit in??
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I looked at your portfolio. Very nice, clean work. I especially liked the BW toning and rodeo pix. I'd tell you forget worrying about other landscapers that much. You have enough talent on your own. Good luck!
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Well. The guys like Peter Lik and Marc Adamus are making pictures to sell. Popped colors in one or two palettes (often blue/purple matched with orange/yellow) are what sells. Popped to catch the eye, narrow palettes to fit in with your Decorating Scheme at home. They haven't got a concept other than "pretty! bright! marketable!" and that's almost certainly on purpose.
Ultimately all photography is conceptual. If you can shoot it, I can duplicate it. Sometimes, I admit, only with heroic effort, and I'm never going to get the clouds literally the same. But the thing you bring as a photographer is not, ultimately, an image, but an idea. The commercial landscape guys have a concept, but it's pretty thin: colorful! sells well!
I like your photos, generally, but I'm not seeing any real consistency. You're pretty clearly looking for individual shots that are "good", whatever that means to you, not trying to create a coherent body of work.
My approach to everything, these days, is entirely conceptual, but perhaps not in the negative way you mean. If I were to shoot landscapes, which I don't, I would look at the landscape and try to imagine what it means to me, or how it could be re-imagined to mean something else. I might envision it in a literal way as a deadly arid desert, or a fecund rain forest teeming with life. I might imagine it as a post-apocalyptic hellscape. Then, from that concept, I work toward some pictures that try to encapsulate, to present, to show variations on, that idea.
The result doesn't have to be weird looking, the result could appear at first glance as purely a set of good representational landscapes. They might also be blurry black and white messes, depending on what approach I take. The whole collection, as a whole, should clarify the underlying idea, though.
Ideally. It always works *for* *me* but perhaps not for one other soul on earth.
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I guess it just seems like the landscape work I'm seeing is in either two camps.
Two audiences.
And as Susan Kismaric, curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, wryly observed, "Large color photographs decorate; small black-and-white photographs don't decorate." (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/arts/design/13geft.html?position=&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=print&adxnnlx=1390496568-rsTfioVKHmzVrnSQTdeKcg)
I make the work, and at the time I have absolutely no idea why anybody would be interested (http://www.seesawmagazine.com/southam_pages/southam_interview.html) in my serial photographs of rockfalls - it baffles me.
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Thanks for the replies!
Amolitor,
Thats my biggest issue in my own personal work I'm trying to deal with right now, creating a cohesive body of work. I'm all over the place, and cannot even answer the most basic question sincerely "Why do I shoot landscapes" or "why do I photograph" So right now I'd like to put some energy into reading about other contemporary photographers, primarily landscape, that are producing significant work. Richard Misrach, John sexton, Ansel Adams have always been an inspirations for me, but I'm just curious if I'm missing anyone else?
It gets hard for me to separate my commercial work, that pays the bills, from my personal work that feeds my soul. I've thought about creating two separate websites of my work. One site dedicated to my personal vision (whatever the F#$k that is???) and the other for commercial work. I dunno?
The most important thing I think is to define my personal work and vision. I'm close!
jay
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Read this: http://www.amazon.com/Landmark-Landscape-Photography-William-Ewing/dp/0500544336/
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Look at the landscape work of Mario Giacomelli. Unfortunately he died a few years ago but he had his own indelible style and beautiful images.
Brian
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Read this:
Thanks for mentioning Landmark: The Fields of Landscape Photography (https://books.google.com/books?id=kDdUnwEACAAJ) -- at first glance, it certainly looks interesting.
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Thanks for the heads up on the book 'Landmark'. I've almost finished reading it, great book. Nice to see some different work, and some of it I really like!
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Beautiful work Jay.
The Candyscapes are certainly what is selling right now, that and the "Dusseldorf School" of ultra large prints. Good luck and really enjoyed your website.
Dave
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Thanks for the heads up on the book 'Landmark'. I've almost finished reading it, great book. Nice to see some different work, and some of it I really like!
One obvious difference, between Landmark: The Fields of Landscape Photography (https://books.google.com/books?id=kDdUnwEACAAJ) and the photographs in LuLa forums, is that - more than 40% of the photographs in Landmark seem to have been taken from some kind-of flying camera platform.
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Jay I really like your work. It's varied. So whats wrong with that? Why do people feel they have to "box" themselves into some sort of artificial theme, or style? There seems to be a "band wagon" effect that everyone claims to want to get on. As if you don't have a style, you're not a whole person yet or photographer.
We all have varied likes and dislikes. When I go out to eat, I don't always go to Italian restaurants or German. I like variety. Of course, if you're presenting your work commercially in a book or on line and want to keep to a theme or doing a photo essay, then it makes sense to group photos. But beyond that, just enjoy shooting what you like to see shot.
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When I go out to eat, I don't always go to Italian restaurants or German.
Do you go to restaurants that don't know if they are Italian restaurants or German restaurants?
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Ultimately all photography is conceptual. If you can shoot it, I can duplicate it. Sometimes, I admit, only with heroic effort, and I'm never going to get the clouds literally the same. But the thing you bring as a photographer is not, ultimately, an image, but an idea.
Very well said. Do you mind if I quote you on my blog?
Of course, the other thing you bring as a photographer is f/8 and being there.
Jim
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You absolutely may quote me on my blog!
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Ultimately all photography is conceptual. If you can shoot it, I can duplicate it.
That's certainly true of landscape, Andrew, but for street it won't hold water. Everybody can -- and everybody does -- shoot Half Dome, but nobody has shot "Behind the Gare St Lazare" lately.
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You absolutely may quote me on my blog!
I did:
http://blog.kasson.com/?p=8863
Thanks,
Jim
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But I could dupe St. Lazare!
I'd use actors and a set. It wouldn't even be hard. Tedious and expensive, yes.
The point is that there's no magic brush or chisel technique here. There are no mystery pigments or color mixing magic. There's no special technique that imparts an impossible to copy aspect.
In truth, there isn't in painting either, but we like to think there is.
This is perhaps not as deep or controversial an observation as it sounds.
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That's certainly true of landscape, Andrew, but for street it won't hold water. Everybody can -- and everybody does -- shoot Half Dome, but nobody has shot "Behind the Gare St Lazare" lately.
That brief fashion for puddle jumper snapshots reached fashion photography (http://www.artnet.com/artists/martin-munkacsi/the-puddle-jumper-8soVaeP4SGRF18T4j7NcbA2) and disappeared (and has reappeared occasionally in fashion photography as homage).
Meanwhile, people still want to make photographs of Half Dome.
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Munkaci's woman jumping is a long way from Behind the Gare St. Lazare, Isaac.
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Staging Oh! You've-caught-me jumping-a-puddle so knowingly (no puddle to be seen) is a long way from waiting-at-a-puddle for jumpers.
Meanwhile, people still want to make photographs of Half Dome.
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Meanwhile, people still want to make photographs of Half Dome.
Sure they do. They've been taught that any picture of Half Dome has to be a great picture.
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Photographers have an unhealthy fixation on subjects.
"What's a good subject to shoot, I need inspiration?"
"Where is the subject in this photograph?"
and so on. The thing we're pointing the camera is the important thing, and all the other clutter in the frame doesn't matter. More sophisticated amateurs try to minimize the clutter, or clone it out, or whatever.
Very few people approach the frame holistically, ignoring the idea that there has to be a Specific Thing I Am Photographing.
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… but nobody has shot "Behind the Gare St Lazare" lately.
Nobody has been interested in doing so - the fad for puddle jumpers ended a long long time ago.
The point is that there's no magic brush or chisel technique here.
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I've been doing some research online trying to find landscape photographers that are producing interesting work, and I'm not finding much? I'm SOOOO tired of this 'Candy Rush' work I'm seeing everywhere like Peter Lik, Jim Patterson, Marc Adams, and etc... I'm not saying it's bad work but I'm sick of seeing the same type of images from all the same places. So I'd be happy to here peoples advise of some landscape photographers I should explore that are doing interesting work.
Thanks
www.jayhemphill.com
Nice work Jay, my advice is continue to do what you love. There is no reason to be distracted by Mr. Lik :)
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Nobody has been interested in doing so - the fad for puddle jumpers ended a long long time ago.
So you see "Behind the Gare" as a puddle jumper picture. That's interesting, Isaac. It tells me a lot about you -- even more than I'd already guessed.
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Nobody is interested.
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I've been doing some research online trying to find landscape photographers that are producing interesting work, and I'm not finding much? I'm SOOOO tired of this 'Candy Rush' work I'm seeing everywhere like Peter Lik, Jim Patterson, Marc Adams, and etc... I'm not saying it's bad work but I'm sick of seeing the same type of images from all the same places. So I'd be happy to here peoples advise of some landscape photographers I should explore that are doing interesting work.
Thanks
www.jayhemphill.com
If a new style were possible somebody would have already invented it by now. Consider finding new subject material (like Joey Lawrence did). Otherwise, learn to love the craft more than the art.
That being said, Cole Thompson's style is one of my favorites. http://www.colethompsonphotography.com/Portfolios.htm (http://www.colethompsonphotography.com/Portfolios.htm)
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It's not a question of finding a "new style." It's a question of creating something that conveys a moving experience to the viewer. In this, there's an infinity of possibilities, and every one of them is damned hard to bring about.
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Jay,
Some of the photographers I respect are Linda Connor, Michael Kenna, Lyle Gomes, Olivia Parker, Richard Lohmann, Jack Welpott, Don Worth along with many others I've met over the years. Not all are landscape only photographers but all have a spirit and atmosphere in their work that goes far beyond mere photographic representation of the place.
I was an assistant instructor at a Friends of Photography Fall Landscape workshop in Carmel many years ago where Linda, Richard Misrach, Paul Caponigro, Olivia Parker and Ansel Adams were the instructors. This was so long ago that Charlie Cramer and Christopher Burkett were students with Bill Neill as their assistant instructor in Group C. My graduate school instructor Don Worth advised me to apply and it changed my life photographically. Meeting and seeing first hand these artists prints was a revelation.
Just recently a friend contacted me that my name popped up at the Random Photography website. I found that Michael Kenna was also recognized on this site and once I entered his website I found an interesting podcast Michael made some years ago. You might want to listen to this since it has some revealing remarks about how Michael has grown to become the person/photographer he is today. His representation throughout the world is next to none.
http://www.michaelkenna.net/interviews/039_Michael_Kenna.mp3
You are well on your way to finding the answers you are searching for. Enjoy the search.
Michael
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Some of the photographers I respect are Linda Connor, Michael Kenna, Lyle Gomes, Olivia Parker, Richard Lohmann, Jack Welpott, Don Worth along with many others I've met over the years. Not all are landscape only photographers but all have a spirit and atmosphere in their work that goes far beyond mere photographic representation of the place. next to none.
A while back, I interviewed 4 of the 7 photographers you mentioned.
Linda Connor: http://photography.org/interview/linda-connor/
Michael Kenna: http://photography.org/interview/michael-kenna/
Jack Welpott: http://photography.org/interview/jack-welpott/
Don Worth: http://photography.org/interview/don-worth/
Enjoy the trip down memory lane!
Jim
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Jim,
Outstanding! I love these friends and some I miss very much. It's funny how memory lane seems so very present and real sometimes. I live in the present, create in the present but always give thanks for my past.
All the best,
Michael
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Having browsed your on line Landscapes gallery, it's clear that's there are too many (to my mind) of the same location, taken at different times and different lighting conditions.
A major edit is in order. It's as you rightly observed, "it's all over the place". Mixing b&w and colour thus really is not cohesive either i this gallery as it stands.
It's not easy, culling images, but having also browsed the Rodeo work, this is far a stronger body of work than the landscapes.
Thus, to my mind, I'd cull the whole Landscape gallery until it comes up to par with your other photography as a cohesive body of work.
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There's lot of varied landscape photography styles out there, they're just not that easy to find.
What you see when you do planless browsing on the internet is the most clicked images, and sure then you get 500px.com/popular . The US and english-speaking world is also very dominating on the Internet so it's the commercial styles in those countries that you see on the surface, and all the enthusiast amateur photographers that copy these styles.
Everyone travels to Iceland, Toscana, Yosemite and shoot the same pictures. Maximize drama in the pictures, saturation, sunsets and perhaps some stormy weather and you get more clicks, so that's the styles we see.
If you go to the galleries (at least in Europe) you don't see that though, landscape photography is not so often represented at all as it's difficult to create something refreshing in that genre, and few do it. Sometimes you see it though. But also in that there's reoccurring styles and clichés, you almost never see sunsets, but very often foggy scenes. But sure, it's just landscape, there's only that many weather conditions to shoot in, repeating what someone else has done is unavoidable.
What is required to make good landscape photography art (at least I think) is to let go of the idea that one perfect picture that stands alone. You need an overall concept, a group of pictures that together creates a whole, an atmosphere, an artistic concept.
Here's one example from a Swedish landscape photographer whose work I personally like very much: http://www.jantove.com/Jan_Tove/Silent_Landscape_.html
I don't consider Peter Lik, Rodney Lough Jr etc as great artists, but indeed very skilled craftsmen. Oh well, there's a sort of ironic performance art in their concept of selling very expensive images of saturated clichés, and actually pulling it off, few can do that. If you look at the galleries of the Las Vegas photographers you actually find the same scenes shot by all them, that tree in Oregon is perhaps the most striking example but there are many others. If it's a selling picture all of them wants to have their own version of it.
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“And as Susan Kismaric, curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, wryly observed, "Large color photographs decorate; small black-and-white photographs don't decorate." “
Thanks for that llnk, Isaac, it says petty much all there is to say about the 'value' of art.
Regarding the way an individual photographer should or should not work – that's a sort of crazy idea to begin with: you work (or should work) as your spirit moves you, and if it doesn't you're in the wrong hobby.
If you are good enough to do it professionally, then you have to decide if you want to be a GP or a specialist. In my view, specialists get the better deal if they can beat the opposition, otherwise they plough a lonely and probably poor furrow.
Being a professional 'art' photographer, on the other hand, strikes me as a paradox at best and a most doubtful way in which to attempt to earn a living. I believe that far fewer so-termed art photographers make it than commercial photographers. (Of course, should you already be independently wealthy, then that's immaterial to you.) Perhaps the greatest stumbling block for the 'professional' art photographer is deciding what to shoot – he puts himself into the position where there's no client asking him to complete a specific brief. So now he has to invent one for a person he doesn't even know?
In my view, if you are/were already a successful, top-tier commercial photographer, such as Bailey, Newton, Klein, Watson etc. etc. then your work gets picked up on by the galleries and you are on your way with a secondary career whilst still happily mining the commercial mother lode.
Regarding websites: if you are still doing commercial photography, I think you should keep your site limited to commercial work, in order to save clients-to-be time, and also to give them a concentrated taste of what you are about. The same, perhaps, holds for the photographer hoping to sell art prints; show what you hope to sell. If you do both, you need two sites. Unless, again, you are already world-famous.
In a situation where photography becomes or always was but a pastime, put whatever the hell you want to put into your website. It's there to please you and nobody else. That's precisely why my own is split into the sections that it is: the first gallery shows my old pro work, the rest being a vague divide into different genres that interested me at the time of following them. Better yet, having these things on one site saves me the bother of searching through external HDs etc. for pictures I have probably forgotten that I made, and offers me the interesting possibility of having a quick overview of where my own spirit or desire has led me through the past few years. It's not only quite gratifying, but also somewhat enlightening for me to realise the various moods etc. that have consumed me, that felt so important at the time, but become nothing more than temporary places my mind has inhabited.
Try to keep photography fun for yourself, and ignore the gallery stars: their fame and glory are built not even on sand but upon stardust.
Rob C
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Here's one example from a Swedish landscape photographer whose work I personally like very much: http://www.jantove.com/Jan_Tove/Silent_Landscape_.html
Thanks for that link Torger, there's some interesting stuff there.
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I've been doing some research online trying to find landscape photographers that are producing interesting work, and I'm not finding much? I'm SOOOO tired of this 'Candy Rush' work I'm seeing everywhere like Peter Lik, Jim Patterson, Marc Adams, and etc... I'm not saying it's bad work but I'm sick of seeing the same type of images from all the same places. So I'd be happy to here peoples advise of some landscape photographers I should explore that are doing interesting work.
Thanks
www.jayhemphill.com
I soooo agree with you Jay. Granted, typical landscape photographers put a lot of effort into their craft. But as you said, they all seem to mimic one another. We live in a time where it's easy to find 'exotic locations.' But the resulting images end up telling the same story. I often have referred to the colorful images as "picture postcards."
There are a multitude of photographers doing work today (and from the past) that are totally unique. Just start searching the internet. Once you find someone you like it will lead to another, and another.
BTW, I LOVE your work -- the landscapes, the Gila Fire Project. I recently purchased a book titled "Mount Saint Helens, Photographs by Frank Gohlke." You might want to take a look at it. It's similar to your fire project (although it's volcanic damage, rather than fire)
Jan Bell, Bell Images
www.bellimages.com
"Making the simple complicated is commonplace. Making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity." – Charles Mingus
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Here is a quite new angle from Jay Philbrick, something unseen before. Beautiful portraits and dramatic landscapes combined. Very distinctive.
http://philbrickphoto.com/wmur-new-hampshire-chronicle-segment/
Make sure, you'll watch the video
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Read this: http://www.amazon.com/Landmark-Landscape-Photography-William-Ewing/dp/0500544336/
Thank you very much for mentioning this book. I am very glad I purchased it (after you mentioned it). I have not "read" it from cover to cover, but I think it has already given me some sense/hope/direction/guidance/food-for-thought...
Here is a link to a video lecture given by the author/curator of the book which puts the collection of photographs and their groupings into perspective:
https://vimeo.com/122555569