Will the Real Landscape Photography Please Stand Up ?

[AreBee]

Isaac,

Too busy looking for the formulaic scene to see what's before us?

You've accidentally misquoted me. "How so?" applied only to the first of the two sentences in your quote. In addition, I'm unsure if your own question applies to the first, second or both sentences, though that is academic since I am unable to answer your question - if I knew the answer I would not originally have asked.

An open aspect, orientation and climate (how the scenes were noticed and selected in the first place).

Do you know that to be fact or are you speculating?

[Isaac]

I am trying to do what I can with familiar-to-me terrain, where I have "favorite" sites.

"Photography can easily degenerate into a pseudo-art, with millions of people all taking pictures of the same things and all thinking we are special. … it is only by seeking the extraordinary – which can be found in the ordinary – that photography becomes art."

[AreBee]

Isaac,

Perhaps two sentences were used to express a single thought.

I look forward to HSakols clarifying what was meant.

[HSakols]

I shouldn't even be looking at this site   Instead i should be getting my lessons together for the classroom.  On Monday I'm taking 31 kids to the ocean for a two night field trip. But, I always have time to chat photography. 

Today’s depiction of landscape photographs on the web also shows how detached we are from the natural world.  We all have trouble seeing anything else other than the same sunset.[/quote 
Geez your like a writing teacher.  This is exactly what I'm doing to my students to get them to write, but they are 11 years old.  What I mean (at least I think) is that with our busy lives we spend less time out of doors which influences how we see the world.  I know when I first arrive at a new national park I'm overwhelmed by the beauty that it takes some time before I can come up with original compositions.  Like I said earlier it takes a while to see the forest through the trees.  Much of our vision of the world today comes from the internet, because most of us spend most of our time inside.  Thus, when we first arrive in Yosemite with our sparkling new DSLRs we immediately take in the grand scene that we expect with possibly a hundred other photographers.  When I used to commute daily into Yosemite Valley, I did some of my best work.  I remember one afternoon stopping just to photograph a black oak tree against a granite boulder because the light was sublime.  Today I still love this composition- its texture- almost metalic.  Still that photograph represents a different understanding of my back yard.  No one wants it as art which is fine.  Some prints have to be for yourself.  Starting next week, we will have hordes of visitors come to see Horsetail Falls even though we have had no rain. It is an interesting phenomena and I admit that I too have tried to photograph the event, but it so strange to be around so many other people all looking at the same thing.  Now if all these people were to camp out in Yosemite Valley for say 10 days, I bet we all would start looking at the natural world differently.  I know given days of taking photos that I become much more focused when I compose. 

...I like to photograph icons because they typically get amazing light...
More so than non-icons? How so?

I'm always photographing Half Dome and El Capitan because they are hard to ignore.  My most memorable time photographing Half Dome was hiking to the diving board to get the famous Ansel Composition Monolith.  I've made many copies of this print because it is beautiful.  The print makes me reflect on what a hard man Ansel was just to get to that location with an 8x10 camera.  The print illustrates why I love scrambling through the mountains, that there is a physical element to photography as well.  We spent the night after watching the sun set and having some hot drinks.  I admit I still don't have a photograph of Inspiration Point that I'm super happy with.  If there are amazing clouds, I will make a sort trip up there and mingle with other photographers trying to get that shot. At least I'm not shooting buffalo.

I'll show you those photos but they are on my other computer. 

[HSakols]

Here are my examples. All of these were shot using Velvia.  Half Dome Monolith was with a Bronica Sqa.  The black oak was taken with a Horseman VHR, and the Half Dome Storm was taken with a Nikon F100. 

[RSL]

I do appreciate your point, but this might not actually be the best example - Willy Lott's cottage is still there, and remarkably similar to Constable's painting. It's actually one of the most irritatingly over-photographed places in England... 

This makes the point well: https://parodiesandvariations.wordpress.com/2012/06/11/constable-the-hay-wain-willy-lotts-cottage/

Maybe that's another aspect to this discussion, though.

Hi Ian, I hit the link and saw the "modern" version of Willy Lott's cottage. Interesting, but there doesn't seem to be any discussion associated with the two pictures. What the photograph of the cottage tells me is that it's been a long time between 1821 and 2015. I suspect things have changed a bit during that period.

But regarding over-photographed places, I'd vote for Half Dome over Willy's cottage any day. Whole generations of camera-equipped copycats have rushed to the place.

[WannabeTilt]

Here are my examples. All of these were shot using Velvia.  Half Dome Monolith was with a Bronica Sqa.  The black oak was taken with a Horseman VHR, and the Half Dome Storm was taken with a Nikon F100. 

Love the storm - thanks!

[HSakols]

And here is the morning after on the diving board.  My father once gave me about 20 white tyvak clean room suits. 

[Isaac]

What I mean (at least I think) is that with our busy lives we spend less time out of doors which influences how we see the world.

"Half of Britons admit to taking the country’s surroundings for granted… The majority (62%) blame this on a lack of time in their busy lives…

The study of 2,000 adults in the UK …a fifth blame living too far from a place of natural beauty (19%) for their failure to admire their own habitat.

…a third admitting to watching a sunset just once a year or less. Two-thirds blame this on not knowing where to watch the sunset in the UK…"

[amolitor]

There ARE no sunsets in the British Empire.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... Two-thirds blame this on not knowing where to watch the sunset in the UK…"[/i]

Uhmm... in the east? You know, given that they drive on the opposite side of the road

[amolitor]

That famous social research firm, Grand Marnier..

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

That famous social research firm, Grand Marnier..

If Michelin can be that famous cuisine expert...

[jjj]

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.

*cough* Photoshop *cough*  

[jjj]

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

Indeed.

[RSL]

Don't strangle on that cough, Jeremy. Show me an example.

[Ray]

It's colorful, but it looks like 2 separate images to me, divided by a horizontal line. There's not enough connection between those two segments. 

[jjj]

Don't strangle on that cough, Jeremy. Show me an example.

You need an example of reality altered by photoshop? Plenty of examples online Russ. Numbering in the many, many millions I'd guess.
I don't have a landscape on my doorstep that matches your exact description, so I can hardly go out and shoot it and then spends hours in PS altering it so you can then say, "That's not quite what I meant and it proves nothing anyway". But here's a cityscape with perspective and other stuff all messed up.

[RSL]

That's interesting, Jeremy, and I'm quite familiar with Photoshop, though I, like all other users, have never used everything that's in it. But what you need to show me is the equivalent of Bierstadt's "Among the Sierra Nevada." If you can get that kind of placid and extensive foreground in front of towering mountains, you'll have made your point, though I'll still probably suggest that what you've done is not, strictly, photography. Don't misunderstand what I'm saying. I think it can be done in Photoshop. But I have to wonder why it would be worthwhile.

[jjj]

That's interesting, Jeremy, and I'm quite familiar with Photoshop, though I, like all other users, have never used everything that's in it. But what you need to show me is the equivalent of Bierstadt's "Among the Sierra Nevada." If you can get that kind of placid and extensive foreground in front of towering mountains, you'll have made your point, though I'll still probably suggest that what you've done is not, strictly, photography. Don't misunderstand what I'm saying. I think it can be done in Photoshop. But I have to wonder why it would be worthwhile.

Why do anything if that's your attitude Russ?
People can do whatever they want and for whatever reason suits them and if they enjoy it, so what? Not talking about breaking laws etc here.

As for the painting you mention, why would I want to recreate that as it already exists and just because you never photographed anything like that proves nothing. But it reminds me of work by Hag who created fantastical photographic images via composites long before PS existed. Or you simply find a location that looks like that and wait for some crazy clouds, failing that create using photoshop instead of with oils. That's basically what Biestadt did anyway.

Bierstadt painted Among the Sierra Nevada, California in his Rome studio, then showed the canvas in Berlin and London before shipping it to the United States. Works such as this fueled the image of America as a promised land just when Europeans were immigrating to this country in great numbers. When the painting was shown in Boston, one critic recognized that the landscape was a fiction invented from Bierstadt’s sketches of the West. Nevertheless, the writer felt that it represented “what our scenery ought to be, if it is not so in reality.”
Yup sounds like he did photoshop style compositing using oils.