[Leica] Re: Landscapes and people

["Stephen H. Ellis" <sellis@zoomnet.net>]

> Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2000 10:14:22 +0200
> From: Robert Appleby <robert.appleby@tin.it>
> Subject: [Leica] landscapes and people
 
> I've been looking at a few luggers' websites and noticing that quite a few
> of them are full of landscape shots. For myself, I find it impossible to
> photograph anything that doesn't have a person in it, preferably within a
> couple of meters of the front of the lens. Nothing else really gets me
> going. This is a real weakness of my photography - one of the reasons I
> want to do panoramics is to break out of this. So do other people feel
> equally bound to or limited by one genre or type of subject? I find
> landscape incredibly dificult - I can spend ages looking at a beautiful
> scene (preferably with a g+t in one hand and my feet up on a stool) - but I
> can seldom get a coherent picture out of it. It's relatively easy, I
> suspect, to make the human face/behaviour interesting or arresting,
> compared to landscape.
> One of the reasons I'm impressed by people like Eggleston or Ghirri or
> Adams (not Ansel!) who can make a powerful picture of a quiet,
> unexceptional landscape. Inerestingly, all of them use normal lenses and
> normal perspective (as I recall - it's been a while since I looked at any
> of their pictures).
> Rob.
> Robert Appleby
> V. Bellentani 36
> 41100 MO
> Italy
> tel. (+39) 059 303436
> mob. (+39) 0348 336 7990
 
Rob, I do mostly landscapes, I enjoy the solitude of being out in 
the great outdoors.  One of the things that I think is key to 
landscapes is not too different from people pictures....they need a 
subject!  A pretty hill or lake is not too interesting when you get it 
on film if that is all there is.  I see a lot of "vacation pictures" where 
basically all they do is to document that the person was there, no 
subject, just a hill with pretty fall leaves ect. Nothing to draw your 
eye into the picture.  I think that if you look around at some of the 
great landscape potographers work, you will always find something 
interesting subject in their work.  I would suggest you look for 
something interesting in the landscape, ie, interesting tree, rock 
formation, fern, great clouds (especially for black & white).  Take a 
picture of the subject, and let the landscape surround it.  Keep in 
mind the rule of thirds but remember rules are to be broken 
sometimes.  I think if you really work on finding a subject in your 
landscape you will be rewarded with better results.  If you think 
about it, the subject is the key in people pictures, landscapes are 
no different.  Hope this helps.

Steve