Good vs. Bad Landscape Photos/PeterD

[David Hay Jones]

pbu...@aol.com (PBurian) wrote:

> In our summer issue, there are some landscape photos that were made by a stock
> shooter specializing in the advertising market. He uses filters extensively (so
> did Ansel Adams) His photos have created quite a controversy.
>
> They are hot sellers for advertising, but some folks HATE the use of filters.

There are a number of rules which must be observed if you are to take
photographs. For example, put film in your camera; remove the lens
cap. Beyond that there are guidelines, advice, tips, the "master's voice"
and so on. Unfortunately, or fortunately - whichever way you look at it -
these guidelines are often taken as dogma, which can limit creativity.
How often have we heard, "You must photograph in golden light in early
morning or late in the afternoon. Or, if the sky is dull, you must use a
graduated grey filter, or if a scene lacks warmth, add a warm-up filter."
But here's a challenge: how do we portray the dull days, the grey
rainy days when there's little color or contrast? Should we ignore
such days? Do we have to beef up lifeless skies with filters? Surely
there's a case within documentary photography for depicting the dull
days because dull is part of the complete picture.
As to your question about the commercial landscapes, good luck to the
photographer. Presumably he or she was not briefed to produce a neutral
rendition of a landscape but to come up with something striking and
different. That's fine.
But if the brief is to photograph, say, a landscape in a neutral,
documentary style, as the eye saw it at the time, then yes, filters
might be wrong. So would Velvia probably, which gives larger than life
colours and as I have often found does not faithfully produce the subtle
and often subdued colors of nature.
In other words, photography is diverse and we all bring what we
want and can to the table. Long live freedom of expression!
David

[Don Baccus]

In article <35829...@d2o31.telia.com>,

David Hay Jones <trv....@okkmokk.mail.telia.com> wrote:

> But here's a challenge: how do we portray the dull days, the grey
>rainy days when there's little color or contrast? Should we ignore
>such days?

The gray, rainy days are precisely those when there's the best,
saturated, colors and nice, soft light to boot, which is why it is
the favorite light for so many nature shooters.

Of course, if you're shooting snow geese floating in water, gray skies
and gray water make for a monochromatic, boring scene but there are
many instances where this light makes shooting easier, not harder.

My first published photograph was of a barn owl sitting on a post
in the fog, it ran in The Oregonian, my local daily. My first published
magazine photo was of an eastern Oregon field filled with weedy mustard,
a fence cutting the skyline, with a dark gray, cloudy, threatening sky.

Who needs sun? :)

--

- Don Baccus, Portland OR <dho...@pacifier.com>
Nature photos, on-line guides, at http://donb.photo.net