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Author Topic: ordinary locations - great landscapes  (Read 23957 times)

jmdr

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ordinary locations - great landscapes
« Reply #20 on: June 13, 2006, 04:44:05 pm »

Have a look at some of the stuff Edward Burtynsky does.  Some of the locations are a little less "ordinary" than what you might be looking for, but they are all remarkable, and not the usual landscape shots. He does a great job of reducing scenes like MarkM mentions.

Here is one of my favourite "simple" shots, taken in Jasper natl. park last winter as I was hiking around looking for the "bigger" landscapes (which you can see a selection of at www.borealisimages.ca).  It was the track of a small rodent that came out of it's hole, had a look around, and went straight back in...  It just goes to show that the most important thing is to keep you eyes (and mind) open.


Enjoy,

Jonathan
« Last Edit: June 13, 2006, 05:45:10 pm by jmdr »
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John_Black

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ordinary locations - great landscapes
« Reply #21 on: June 18, 2006, 04:09:21 am »

Dallas isn't know for sweeping views... so I can relate to this topic.  Instead of wide angle shots, I've been experimenting 50mm+.  I guess this is similar to the concept of simplifying the shot to its most basic element.  

For the past couple weeks it's been very hot & humid, skies are hazy and for the most part cloud-less.    Backgrounds are hazy, skies are a grey/white/blue...  Images look very washed out.  These shots were taken about 30 miles from our house, converted to black & white to minimize the boring sky and also so the contrast good be boosted without looking overly artificial -









I've also found that night shots don't need dramatic skies!  This area is about 20 minutes from our house -



And since I get home from work around 7:00 PM, lots & lots of practice with sunsets lately.  Unfortunately all sorts of ugly things pollute the view towards the sunsets - like power lines, contruction cranes, roof tops...  So, I've been experimenting with aiming into the sun and letting the foreround totally black-out such as this (about a month when we actually had clouds!):



But this still kinda bores me; looks like the other 9,999 shots I have like that!  So I started playing with intentionally OOF'ing a shot:





I like those because it makes the sun HUGE.  Wear sunglasses, or use a slow lens, or use ND filter when doing those.  That last one was with a 300/2.8 - talking about seeing spots...!...  Those OOF photo's led to some slight abstract shots:





Generally I have no idea what I'll shoot.  I'll just walk around for abit, see how the light looks, the skies, etc. and hope something looks interesting.  The nice about shooting things to close to home is that it's very easy to go back and re-shoot.  The light may not be identical, but in general you can try again.
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larkvi

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ordinary locations - great landscapes
« Reply #22 on: June 19, 2006, 02:28:04 pm »

I quite like the sunflower-in-front-of-sun shot--striking.
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John Camp

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ordinary locations - great landscapes
« Reply #23 on: June 19, 2006, 06:33:39 pm »

You might also take a look at paintings by Pierre Bonnard; 90 percent of them (that's just a guess, but a very large percentage, anyway) were done from within his house or garden. There's a Van Gogh book out right now called "Fields," about the fields that Van Gogh painted. There's an interesting diagram in the front of his book showing where he got a dozen or so famous landscapes during the period of time that he was confined to an asylum. They were done on the four different sides of the building, just looking in different directions.

Painting is different than photography, of course, but you don't have to travel far to be great. Joseph Sudek's most famous photos were of a window sill -- the same one, with a variety of things going on...

I believe that familiarity and intensity of feeling is more important than great landscape; and if you don't live in a landscape that you find sastisfying, you should probably move. Just don't move to New Mexico, or take any pictures of orange aspens on mountainsides or aspen tree trunks in early morning/late afternoon light.

JC
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Tristan

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ordinary locations - great landscapes
« Reply #24 on: October 12, 2006, 06:45:13 am »

Hi. I try to update my photoblog on a daily basis and almost all of my images are local. It's amazing how many different views you can find by repeated visits to the same location - different weather, seasons, wide landscapes, small details ... there is so much inspiration out there - you just have to find it.

All the images on this page are taken at the same place (Thruscross Reservoir) over the last year and a half:
http://www.absolutely-nothing.co.uk/thruscross/





Tristan
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