Capturing the intimate landscape
Ian Rolfe discusses the many ways we can photograph the more intimate details within a wider landscape?
Often when we start out in landscape photography we venture out with preconceived notions of what will be a wonderful photographic composition.
However, the seasoned photographer has learnt from experience that when you arrive at a scene you really need to concentrate on the reality of what you find there and not on what you had simply hoped would greet you.
Often we can quite literally walk over a lovely composition to arrive at the wider view. In doing so, we miss out on a wonderful opportunity to photograph the intimate details beneath our feet. More photographs are ruined by what they contain rather than what they leave out.
Elliot Porter, an American Photographer famous for his intimate pictures, stressed the importance of composing with colour. If you study his photographs, you will see how sophisticated his use of colour was. There?s a shade of brown here and there?s a little shade of brown over there, and that blends with a shade of green, and there?s a little shade of green here a little different than the other green. Porter didn?t photograph bright, garish colours. His colour compositions were subtle and he used colour as a compositional element within the frame.
The intimate view is the humble version of the grand vista. It simplifies the complexity of a scene and reveals our aesthetic sensibilities. Intimate compositions that really work have two key elements – form and colour. With colour, we need to examine colours that pleasantly co-exist. Colour also adds a more three dimensional effect. If your image consists of yellows in the foreground, browns in the mid ground and blues in the background, the colours separate the elements and provide a three dimensional appearance.
With form, we should concentrate on texture. Something that works extremely well is a combination of ruggedness with delicacy. An example often seen in photographs is volcanic rocks with the sublime delicacy of flowers growing in amongst them. In the natural world order exists within chaos. Elliot Porter?s photography strongly reflects that notion.
The seasons provide endless opportunities to practise a more intimate kind of landscape photography as each season provides different forms and textures to look for. Vary your focal lengths and lenses. Use only wider angled lenses for unusual compositions and perhaps medium telephoto lenses for greater control over the sharpness of the background.
It?s best to photograph directly from above or from the side and – assuming we want all the details to be sharp – it is also beneficial to make use of the available depth of field by paralleling the film plane with the principle plane of the subject.
Overcast or flat light is the best as hard, contrasty light is extremely difficult to work with when we concentrate on intimate details. Early morning light is often quite lovely too and even the weaker sunlight in these early hours can have a dazzling affect on our images.
Capturing the intimate details within the landscape is a steady process of exclusion and refinement until all that is left within the frame is the essence of the subject. It is an absorbing discipline, somewhat different from the excitement of chasing light in the grander landscape.
Ian Rolfe can be contacted via his website at ian-rolfe-photography.com.au
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