What is 'landscape'?

[petermfiore]

Peter,

The clouds are never in the right place, and then the light is poor. Painters place light and shapes as needed.

Have you considered simply painting landscape from the comfort of your home?

Only my entire 40 year career and still going.

Peter

[AreBee]

The painter and the fashion shooter are projecting their vision during the event. What i am suggesting is " art" is the vision that the photographer has to tell us about some part of life. If that doesn't come across when i view the image, there's no communication, no "art".

Then painting and fashion photography are about: the painter and fashion photographer respectively; what they have to tell us about some part of life.

Perhaps a landscape photograph is about: the landscape.

[RSL]

Exactly! And there's the rub. A landscape painting can be something that grabs you. Most landscape photographs induce a "ZZZZ" response. Even St. Ansel's landscapes tend to be boring. The only ones that grab you are the ones with the hand of man in them. Moonrise over Hernandez comes to mind, and that was more darkroom art than photography.

[Rob C]

Exactly! And there's the rub. A landscape painting can be something that grabs you. Most landscape photographs induce a "ZZZZ" response. Even St. Ansel's landscapes tend to be boring. The only ones that grab you are the ones with the hand of man in them. Moonrise over Hernandez comes to mind, and that was more darkroom art than photography.

Even worse, from my personal experience the genre only comes to life when it plays backdrop to a human model. But I don't claim to be a landscape photographer.

The painter always wins, and that's because he just can't avoid injecting himself into the strokes. The best that a photographer can do is hope to have his image look 'different' to the many others made via similar lenses. So he perhaps adopts unusual focal lengths...

The problem is, I think, basic: landscape is always available and you don't have to pay it; that can make it irresistible to some, giving them a subject they can latch onto in order to use the toys they've bought, and it's not confrontational.

Rob C

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Anti-landscape photography orgy   

[MattBurt]

I agree that the majority of landscape photos are boring but the really good ones are images I can spend time looking at again and again. I hope every now and then I might capture one that gives someone else that same enjoyment. And if I don't it's something to strive for.

[AreBee]

The painter always wins, and that's because he just can't avoid injecting himself into the strokes.

Then landscape painting is a misnomer, and if a landscape photograph is about the landscape then a painter always loses.

[RSL]

But it's never about the stupid landscape, Rob. By itself a landscape is about as interesting as a room full of people asleep and snoring (a barracks). To make it interesting you have to make it reach out and grab you. Yes, a painter does that because, as Rob C says he injects himself into the strokes. It's pretty damned hard to inject yourself into a button-push.

[MattBurt]

It's pretty damned hard to inject yourself into a button-push.

Maybe not the button push but you might be able to with your composition and timing (although not usually to the same degree as a a painter would).

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

...It's pretty damned hard to inject yourself into a button-push.

Which is what can be said for HCB too.

[AreBee]

Russ,

...it's never about the stupid landscape...

Is the clue not in the name: landscape photography?

If you wish a landscape photograph to be about the photographer then stand in front of the camera at the time of capture. If you mount a wide angle lens or stand back a sufficient distance the photograph will even include the hand of man. However, viewers of the photograph may consider it to bear an uncanny resemblance to a self-portrait.

...stupid landscape...

Anthropomorphic, which is ironic.

[Rob C]

See what I mean?

Rob C

[RSL]

Maybe not the button push but you might be able to with your composition and timing (although not usually to the same degree as a a painter would).

I agree, Matt, but the timing thing applies especially to street photography. That's where Slobodan jumps the track.

With landscape you go out in wretched weather and set up your tripod; hoist your 11 x 14 view camera onto it and try to get it pinned down without dropping it on the rocks and smashing the ground glass. You attach your cable release, get your head under the hood and zoom the bellows back and forth until you think you've nailed the focus, pull a film holder out of the case you've carried over the rocks on your back, shove it into the camera, and wait for the "decisive moment," otherwise known as when the sun pops out. When that moment arrives you pull the slide on the film holder and "push the button," otherwise known as the knob on the cable release. Then you push the slide back into the film holder, hoping to hell you got the shot because the sun just disappeared again, pack up your gear and walk two miles back to the car.

On the street (HCB) you have a small, 35mm or equivalent camera in your hand. You go about your business, nosing into various establishments and turning corners, until you see what looks like an interesting situation developing. You grip the camera and wait, holding your breath and hoping what you thought would come together will come together. If it does, you quickly lift the camera, watch for the "decisive moment," which is the moment when YOU decide it's time to shoot, and shoot.

In the first instance, whatever there is of you in the picture was there when you framed the thing and busted your butt getting all that equipment into place. The button push is nothing. In the second instance what you put into the picture was your choice of the instant you chose to push the button on a very transient scene. It's a different kind of thing. In the first case those rocks looked the same fifty years ago when St. Ansel shot then as they looked this morning when you shot them, and they'll still look the same fifty years from now when the next would be St. Ansel comes along to shoot them. In the second case the people in the picture you shot -- along with you -- probably will be dead.

[AreBee]

Russ,

By itself a landscape is about as interesting as a room full of people asleep and snoring (a barracks). To make it interesting you have to make it reach out and grab you.

How do you do that?

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Only a hand can "reach out and grab you," thus the need to have a hand of man in landscape. According to Russ, anyway. 

[RSL]

Slobodan's got the picture. People are a lot more interesting to people than, as Wordsworth had it: rocks and stones and trees. And photography has an edge over painting in that area. People tend to think a photograph is more real than a painting, though it ain't necessarily so.

But if you want to record beauty in landscape get a canvas and a brush. Then you can cheat (or as Peter has it, design) to your heart's content.

[Rob C]

I see we drift into further adventures in obtusity...

The hand of man is actually quite useful, in its way, especially if you happen to find yourself drowning. But certainly not as delightful as that of woman or mermaid, in those wet situations.

This one is about to be chopped off.



Rob

[GrahamBy]

Russ,

How do you do that?

Brett Whitely said he looked for landscapes shaped like a woman's body. Subliminally it works, if not subliminal, it's amusing :-)

[RSL]

I see we drift into further adventures in obtusity...

The hand of man is actually quite useful, in its way, especially if you happen to find yourself drowning. But certainly not as delightful as that of woman or mermaid, in those wet situations.

This one is about to be chopped off.

Rob

The problem is, Rob, that that's not a particularly attractive hand. Like the picture, though. Good shooting.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Rob,

That is unquestionably the best "Hand of Man" picture I've come across. Bravo!

Eric