Many of my shots are landscapes. In 2011 I took 20,846 pictures; 11,296 include the keyword landscape. This volume reflects a number of realities in my life, travel being one of them. I’ve found this type of photography to be accessible yet more difficult to master than anticipated. To get a shot that captures more than just the trees and rivers; that captures the moment; conveys a story; the feeling of the place is a challenge. In contrast, people photography benefits from the viewer’s innate ability to sense a subject’s feelings or emotion conveyed through the eyes or other physical attributes. Landscape photography has no eyes; no posture; no generally accepted interpretation. It suffers only mere beauty.
It is not to say that I have not shot some reasonable landscapes. However, the technique to enable repeatability or at least improve the margin of success is what I seek. It is in this context that I look for other sources of inspiration; it was with this in mind that I recently began reading Learning Landscape Photography from the Masters of Painting by Patrick Smith.
The book touches on Chinese Painting. This combined with other readings have offered some insights that I will explore in coming posts representing an Essay on Oriental Landscape. This is by no means a scholarly treatise; only a documentation of a few observations. Some of the observations I will explore:
- Simplification of the subject, as represented by the silhouette
- Layering to present depth through the use tone
- The reduced use of colour
- Shape, detail and water
While light is always an essential element, landscape photography is generally considered to be best practiced in and around sunrise and sunset. However, if colour is removed from the equation, so is the constraint on time of day opening a wider part of the day to landscape photography; shots aren’t discarded due to lack of good light (or more specifically, good colour). I expect Ansel Adams knew this.
However, to implement and realise these objectives in camera is beyond my level of mastery of the device and / or my ability to completely visualise the shot before I actually shoot. I need post processing.
Pine trees are a frequently drawn subject in oriental art, because of their symbolism (the gnarled pine tree may represent either survival in a harsh political environment or the unconquerable spirit of old age[1]). They are often drawn in abstract of their surroundings. In this shot I’ve chosen to present a single subject in silhouette as a means to simplify and highlight the shape and overall flow. The choice of black and white further simplifies, removing colour as a distracting and complicating factor. Yet detail remains both in the existence of the finer branches and the shadows of the pine needles. I could have darkened the shadows to limit that detail; it was a matter of choice. This style–silhouette–is particularly expressive of shape and form; flow if the subject has it.
In creating this picture I used:
- Lighroom: to establish the crop and the exposure
- Adobe Photoshop Elements: to remove extraneous branches from other trees encroaching in on the edges and to add my seal
- Nik Define: to reduce noise
- Nik Silver Efex: to convert to black and white
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