Pages: 1 [2] 3   Go Down

Author Topic: Getting bored with current Landscape  (Read 47061 times)

Isaac

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3123
Re: Getting bored with current Landscape
« Reply #20 on: February 18, 2015, 02:10:30 pm »

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 and disappeared (and has reappeared occasionally in fashion photography as homage).

Meanwhile, people still want to make photographs of Half Dome.
Logged

RSL

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 16046
    • http://www.russ-lewis.com
Re: Getting bored with current Landscape
« Reply #21 on: February 18, 2015, 04:42:49 pm »

Munkaci's woman jumping is a long way from Behind the Gare St. Lazare, Isaac.
Logged
Russ Lewis  www.russ-lewis.com.

Isaac

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3123
Re: Getting bored with current Landscape
« Reply #22 on: February 18, 2015, 06:01:48 pm »

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.
« Last Edit: February 18, 2015, 06:40:39 pm by Isaac »
Logged

RSL

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 16046
    • http://www.russ-lewis.com
Re: Getting bored with current Landscape
« Reply #23 on: February 18, 2015, 07:31:10 pm »

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.
Logged
Russ Lewis  www.russ-lewis.com.

amolitor

  • Guest
Re: Getting bored with current Landscape
« Reply #24 on: February 18, 2015, 07:35:56 pm »

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.
Logged

Isaac

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3123
Re: Getting bored with current Landscape
« Reply #25 on: February 19, 2015, 12:48:05 pm »

… 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.
Logged

Hans Kruse

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2106
    • Hans Kruse Photography
Re: Getting bored with current Landscape
« Reply #26 on: February 19, 2015, 12:54:13 pm »

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 :)

RSL

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 16046
    • http://www.russ-lewis.com
Re: Getting bored with current Landscape
« Reply #27 on: February 19, 2015, 01:48:41 pm »

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.
« Last Edit: February 19, 2015, 01:58:38 pm by RSL »
Logged
Russ Lewis  www.russ-lewis.com.

Isaac

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3123
Re: Getting bored with current Landscape
« Reply #28 on: February 19, 2015, 02:02:58 pm »

Nobody is interested.
Logged

texshooter

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 575
Re: Getting bored with current Landscape
« Reply #29 on: March 01, 2015, 03:48:32 pm »

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
« Last Edit: March 01, 2015, 04:23:34 pm by texshooter »
Logged

RSL

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 16046
    • http://www.russ-lewis.com
Re: Getting bored with current Landscape
« Reply #30 on: March 01, 2015, 04:40:56 pm »

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.
Logged
Russ Lewis  www.russ-lewis.com.

mjcreedon

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 32
Re: Getting bored with current Landscape
« Reply #31 on: April 24, 2015, 09:56:02 pm »

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

   
Logged

Jim Kasson

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2370
    • The Last Word
Re: Getting bored with current Landscape
« Reply #32 on: April 24, 2015, 10:04:42 pm »

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

mjcreedon

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 32
Re: Getting bored with current Landscape
« Reply #33 on: April 24, 2015, 10:09:03 pm »

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
Logged

Gilgamesh

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 27
Re: Getting bored with current Landscape
« Reply #34 on: June 23, 2015, 04:45:26 am »

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.

Logged

torger

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3267
Re: Getting bored with current Landscape
« Reply #35 on: December 04, 2015, 03:30:15 am »

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.
Logged

Rob C

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 24074
Re: Getting bored with current Landscape
« Reply #36 on: December 04, 2015, 05:04:37 am »

“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

graeme

  • Guest
Re: Getting bored with current Landscape
« Reply #37 on: December 04, 2015, 05:13:23 am »


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.
Logged

bellimages

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 381
    • http://www.bellimages.com
Re: Getting bored with current Landscape
« Reply #38 on: December 04, 2015, 09:34:59 am »

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
Logged
Jan Bell, Owner/Photographer, Bell Image

LesPalenik

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 5339
    • advantica blog
Re: Getting bored with current Landscape
« Reply #39 on: December 15, 2015, 06:54:46 am »

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
Logged
Pages: 1 [2] 3   Go Up