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Just off the main road through the Lewis Pass in New Zealand's majestic South Island is an un-named, small lake. It's worth the stop at the carpark which marks the start of the St James Walkway as it's only a 20m walk to this wonderful sight which is otherwise hidden from the road!
Children amuse themselves on dry land as they await the start of the adult Hawaiian canoe races during the Aloha Spirit festival.
Since Aaron shook the bees' nest in his last post, I figured I wanted to take a moment to respond, but first a bit about this image.
I give this image one thumb up and one thumb down. It came together nicely, and the shape of the framing turned out just how I wanted, with the horizontal sweep accenting the horizon and the frames breaking out the top and bottom vertically emphasizing the wake from the ferry and the blue sky above Seattle. Unfortunately my Holga lens is too wide and I waited too long to snap these, as the Seattle skyline has been reduced to a mere strip. I really wanted to get the skyline a bit more imposing and interesting in the final photo. I also wanted to emphasize the wide open embrace of water all around and the blustery nature of the day. This photo sort of does those things.
But it tries, so I give it credit for that. And it is another step in my learning this technique, and when it comes to learning, often your failures are more valuable than your successes, not that I think this is a complete failure. I just think I have done others that were more successful.
Now on to the perfect photograph. Hehe, what a transition. My philosophy has always been that using the word perfect to describe photography is a giant waste of time. It is a pointless exercise. It is like describing a photo as good or bad. Those terms are so subjective. One person's perfection is another person's failure, and vice versa. I try to avoid labeling my photos, or even thinking of them, in such terms. I work instead on identifying what they do, how they do it, how other's respond to it, etc.
I think a landscape photograph's ultimate goal is to connect with its audience, whether that is an audience of one (the photographer himself) or many. If it does that, then it is successful. On a secondary level, these photos try to transport us there, make us feel how it was to be there, spark our imaginations, kindle our inspiration, open our eyes, or some combination of all of these.
Before I go any further, I want to make the disclaimer that I do not want to offend anybody if I describe their way of photography and then critique it. The wonderful thing about art, is we each have the right to do it as we please. My goal is rather to point out tendencies and boundaries, to try and poke people, shake them out of their comfort zones, make them think a bit, push them to push themselves creatively.
Because, I think a lot of landscape photography I see on Flickr has grown stagnant. It has become distilled into a science as opposed to an art. It is clinical in its approach, which is ironic because the photographers behind it are often not clinical at all, they are excited and inspired, but the photographs they produce don't seem to capture that as well.
I guess what I am talking about is how so much landscape photography here on Flickr looks the same. Wide angle lens, beautiful sunset/sunrise, snow capped mountain looming over its reflection in a lake, or sweep of ocean along the coast. Composed the same ways vertically or horizontally. Saturated. Exposures blended to be perfect. Everything sharp. Neutral density filter to increase blur, and so on. I am sure many of you reading this will recognize these heavy trends. And again, there is nothing wrong with this per se, photographers are using this checklist to produce some visually stunning imagery, no doubt about that.
But try this quick exercise, find 5-10 of these type of photographers, pull one or two images out of each of their streams, and see how easily it is to fit them all together into one cohesive portfolio. I noticed the same looking at the back of B&W Magazine and Lenswork Magazine. The ads in the back for various "fine art" photographers could have been taken by 2-3 people, the results are so similar. Either black and white landscape (two points if it is an abstract of a sand dune), a still life of flowers (two points if they are lilies or tulips) or a nude female study.
I think there are problems on two fronts with this. First of all, I sort of get turned off by the approach for technical perfection. Why? Simply because the world is not perfect, neither are we. Neither should our art. Modern landscape photography is rapidly leaning towards hyper-realistic renditions of natural scenes, and the result is an image that is so perfect in its sharpness and exposure that it no longer looks real. I have trouble looking at these landscape photos and imagining myself in that spot, because my brain is thinking, "this is not at all how it would look." We create fantasy versions of the Nature that so inspires us. Which is fine if that is your intent. Afterall I have never met an HDR photographer who claimed that style of photography was meant to me a realistic interpretation, but rather an exaggeration. The same with this hyper-real trend to perfection in modern landscape photography. It has become so hyper-realistic in its quest for perfection that it has become an exaggeration. Again, that is fine, as long as the photographer realizes this, and then uses it appropriate.
The second problem relates to a post I made a long time ago about a three tiered system of learning photography. The first being the bottom, where you are a novice and know nothing really. The second being where you know all the rules and apply them heavily with the last tier being those photographers who have accepted that the rules only work some of the time, and the rest you venture out on your own and sort of operate off of instinct and vision. At the time, and I still do, I felt that it was easy to get out of the first tier. We hate not knowing things, so it is easy to push ourselves to learn the rules. But once we get to that second tier, many of us bog down. We know the rules, they are working for us to help us produce technically sound photographs, we lose our drive to push ourselves because the realm we are operating in has become comfortable and easy to work with. It is hard to push ourselves creatively to break those boundaries we have imposed upon ourselves, in fact we often do not even realize we have imposed them. But we have. For example, if you have a 10-20mm lens and use it for landscapes, go back and look at your last few dozen images. Were they all composed the same way? Two-thirds bottom, one third top. Strong foreground leading to the background. Nice light. Etc? This is after all how we are taught such a lens should be used. But certainly it is not the only way right? Or heck, how many of your photos are constrained to a rectangular or square frame? Just look at that little fact. What, 98% of our photographs are in little squares or rectangles. We have become so used to it, that many of us just accept that as natural. It is one of the reasons I like these Holga panos such, they break that stereotype. They allow me to match the frame with the subject. But most of the time we just take this for granted and go along with it, not thinking that we could possibly break this particular boundary.
Phew. I don't claim to be right about all of this. I am trying to put ideas I have out there in hopes that they may spark other ideas in those that read this, and I always welcome discussion. I think too much of Flickr is way too blindly supportive with too little thoughtful critique. Because sharing ideas and photos, getting feedback, responding and adapting, that is how we learn afterall.
As far as perfection, if it is perfection you think you are trying to capture in your photographs I would warn you to re-evaluate, you will be searching a long time and will never find what you are looking for. Or worse, believe you have. And in the course of that odyssey you will miss a lot of other important things.
That is my take on perfect photography anyway. Thanks for sticking along all this way, sorry I have been sort of absent from Flickr for a bit. I hope for that to change.
And one quick shout out to Rob to congratulate him on finally getting to go home from the hospital. Keep it up Rob!
If you are interested in pricing for my images, or just plain curious, more info can be found at my website: www.zebandrews.com
Day 99 of 365.
There will come a day where the odd ones out will be the new "in".
Life... well college is textpensive. Like textbooks.. get it? Ah, yeah, that was really bad.
The poem by Mr. Oakum fit best for this:
Upon the ocean so blue,
The diminutive boat floats, alone.
With no land in sight,
It drifts aimlessly on the currents.
Dark foreboding clouds gather on the horizon.
With a menacing persistence
They advance on the boat.
Eventually eveloping it in the violent fury of the dark storm.
Tossed around and ravaged by the rough seas,
The insignificant boat flounders.
Pitching persistently it vainly tries to ride out the storm.
Fighting for its very existence, upon the sea.
The storm passes,
Leaving the boat battered and torn.
Barely afloat on the sea sheathed in waves.
It limps ever on.
Another storm approaches.
Will it survive another onslaught?
Will it find the safe haven it seeks?
Perhaps only the future can tell.
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Image - this is one of the more simplified edits I've done. Strictly only using ACR (PS only to downsize). Single image, Lee .9 ND + Lee .6 GND + Singh-Ray .9 GND
Thanks for viewing and commenting! I hope everyone is doing well (and staying dry!). We had a wonderful summer but overall, a very wet year. They say it will easily get to the top 10 in rainfall since they started recording.
'Afloat' is a huge 250cm diameter circular donut shaped globe cast in bronze. Situated at the seaward end of the Groyne on the seafront, near to Brighton's Palace Pier, its centre at eye level allows a view of our world through the sculpture.
The donut or torus (a shape that has a continuous surface with a hole in it) has been posed as a possible model by scientists of how our universe may look. The sculpture was generated by taking a world globe and pressing the south and north poles together to form a torus. Now placed on its side the lines of longitude radiate from the central hole, linking the sea and sky. Across its surface are the shrunken shapes of the major continents, adrift like dark shadows.
This much photographed sculpture has also become a meeting point and has even been the site of marriage proposals.
www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/content/leisure-and-libraries/ar...
This was a tough picture, and still has flaws - see if you can spot them. This is the 3rd day taking this car to the same spot at the river Schwentine.
What I really wanted to show were these two minifigures with very similar jackets. The girl is from the soapbox racer, the guy... I don't even remember, must be old age or so.
He had been sitting in the Schwimmwagen, so it got an airing (and watering) after quite some break.
Toy Project Day 3512
Leica M6 / Summarit-M 35mm f2.5 / Fujicolor Superia X-tra 400
Afloat by Hamish Black (1998)
Brighton, East Sussex, UK
Cully by lake Léman in the fall, canton of Vaud, Switzerland.
Shot with compact automatic (shutter priority) Minolta Hi-Matic 7SII & Rokkor 40mm f/1.7 lens at 1/125sec, ~f/13 on CineStill 50D 35mm film.
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Hippo ..
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Have a nice night everyone!