Ideas about landscapes, Part 2

The "landscape" formally has always been about the "stage." Perhaps the greatest creator of landscapes, Frederick Law Olmsted, made a career out of creating stages, not the least of which was Central Park in New York City, the most contrived of "natural" landscapes that ever has been. Poetic landscapes have been the subject matter of painters and landscape architects alike. While the painting genre was formally recognized in the 15th Century it wasn't until the early 19th Century that the idealistic scenes as depicted in most landscape paintings began to impress on the ideals of society. The elements of compositional rules were similar with forgrounds competing with backdrops, standards in proportion, and even when complete wilderness was depicted there was often an allowance for human occupation or a destination within the image or quite often a description of a voyage from one part of the image to another.

This photograph is another study in this medium that I previously proclaimed little affinity for. The elements of the composition in the forground act to frame the background and the bench is quite a literal invitation to occupy the space but its position and orientation directs the viewer to look back or out of the frame. The elements seem, well, elemental. This (the image in the top right corner) seems nearly identical compostionally though it's not a painting I would say I like. But also consider that Asher B Durand, a 19th Century landscape painter did this similarly composed image a long time before I took that photograph today.

The landscape as a formal exploration is something that continues to be a challenge. Looking at the work of Vancouver photographer Roy Arden is a good example of that, the compositional building blocks are distorted or minimalized and yet the proportions and framing are all too familiar in his photographs, Landfill, being one such example.

I suspect there will be more to this tangent than I first anticipated when I rode out into the bush with a camera on my back a week or so ago.

Ideas about green and landscapes

I am first and foremost not a landscape photographer and it's something I rarely try. And a dark and misty day is probably the worst day to attempt something that at the best of times I am dismissive of. Trees. Big whup. A babbling brook. So what. But it should be said that taking pictures, err, photographs of landscapes is no easy task. These are proof. You can haul a bag full of exotic lenses out into the bush on your back and Photoshop the greens to boggle the mind because the photos rarely do them justice and in the end still get moderately reasonable photographs but certainly nothing mind boggling. So why post them? Well, probably to keep myself honest. I'll attempt this sort of thing again probably sooner than I care to admit. There has to be merit in understanding the subject matter and capturing it effectively, it can only make one a better photographer.

Organic Matters

You can't use a box of crayons if you're going to create a masterpiece though that is probably giving this one too much credit. I took this picture with a different camera for a different project and there is a large difference in quality. The other picture has more to do with this and the pictures that I take along those lines aren't about technique or metaphors or much really, but more about pretty things I see along the way. Hugh Crawford took a Polaroid every day from 1979 until he died in 1997. His photographs tell an amazing story without words. There are no names, no addresses, just pictures but, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words and after 18 years of daily photographs there are a lot of words implied.

More random images

Tree


Storage

I may take this one off of here, it's a little...

Ivy



Night Sky


Fireworks


There's little direction to these images. There's little consistency in subject matter, style, theme. I suspect I'm distracted by other things but I still carry my camera, or two cameras, with me everywhere. The days are getting exceptionally short and, of course, we passed the day that it was figured it would be a good idea to shift the clocks an hour so it's getting dark at around 5pm. The light we get in winter is often delightful, the soft, cool, low light, but it's scarce and there's the rain to deal with here in Vancouver which isn't the best thing to expose cameras to. Still, the pictures are coming, slowly, and the metaphors are there, the little narratives.