Landscape Photography

First, a little background info. Photography and I go back to the day my mum bought me a Kodak Twin 20 in 1960, when I was 14. I soon learnt how coloured filters could affect black and white photographs. I also joined the school camera club run by our metalwork teacher and we did a little development and enlarging, learning how to crop photographs for the best effect. Like many people unable to afford the then still expensive Japanese and German cameras of that time, I bought my first 'real' camera, a meterless Russian Zenit B, in 1972.

Although the cost of processing prints was falling in the early 1970s, colour was still expensive, even to develop it yourself either by additive or subtractive (was that it?) colour systems. So I stuck with doing my own B/W and I still have the enlarger and lens to this day. For colour I moved over to slides.

As you know with slides, what you see is what you get, in terms of composition, that is. So, you always have to select very carefully what you want to shoot and where the main elements are going to go in the frame. This uncompromising stance toward cropping and composition may seem less important in digital imaging, but the skills honed by years of working with slides does make you less of a 'fix it in Photoshop' kind of photographer. Well, that's the theory at least.

Ten years ago I also took up art; mostly watercolour and sketching, although I have dabbled in all media. It is particularly interesting to study the compositions of the masters - Cézanne, Van Gogh, Renoir, Constable and Turner among others. This not only reinforced my earlier thoughts on landscape composition, but gave me new insights as well by setting out rules.

Cliveden

I want to start with a series of four pictures that I quickly shot off the other day. They were taken with a Fujifilm FinePix S9600 set on P (program mode).

This first shot was taken on full wide angle. Cliveden (the house) sits on the hill in the far distance, but this was more to capture the river bank of the Thames and people walking along it. It's framed on the right by what I think (didn't notice at the time) by a beech and a pair of trees to the left.

What draws your attention in this shot are the two people walking along and the reason for this is that they are dressing in a nice bright red. Really strong warm colours draw the eye and in this case the couple feature roughly a third in from the right hand side. This is better than having them dead centre where they would hold you eye… you would never notice anything else.

In this case I didn't mind them being there, but if I wanted to feature the boats on the other side, for example, I would have had to wait until the people passed so I got the reds out of the way. So first point - warm colours attract the eye, watch out for them!

The next point is that there is not an awful lot going on in the shot other than the people. The horizon, not the skyline, is close to halfway up the picture. It's not good to have it there, especially when there's little else in the picture. If I was thinking of cropping this, I'd probably take out a bit of the sky. Why?

Firstly, there's a sign on the tree that I honestly didn't notice (it should have read 'Please notice this notice' perhaps). I could crop that out and compensate, to keep the same ratio, by removing some of the left hand side. That would reduce the sky and raise the horizon at the same time. I like the cool shadows in the foreground so they can stay as they move the eye further up the shot and it includes the gnarled old root of the beech which adds a little extra interest.

Cropping is only what you would do if you were enlarging from film. Bear in mind also that even on very expensive cameras, you tend to get a little more than you can see in the viewfinder and that is sometimes something you might not want. All you need is perhaps three megapixels to produce a good quality A5 image so if your camera has four or more megapixels - you can have room to crop out the dross.

Well, what other improvements would you make or what faults have you spotted? Feel free to criticize because I want to know what you are thinking. Put your comments in the thread that should attach itself to this article. You can even copy the picture, doctor it and post your 'improved' version back in if you wish.

I then focused on Cliveden. The famous house from the 1960s scandal sits right on top of the hill and I thought it might make a slightly interesting, if not distant shot. I took this picture on the camera's maximum zoom of around 300mm, but even so, this first attempt is a really boring picture. It is intended as an example.

I have put the house bang in the middle of the skyline. BIG MISTAKE! The bridge now runs straight across the middle ground with no change at either side, in other words, it's hanging there and you can't see where it's anchored to the land. It appears like a hurdle preventing you going further and the rest of the picture has nothing interesting about it whatsoever.

That's better! The bridge now ends on the left side and people can get off it without getting their feet wet. You think I'm joking, but such things do go through your mind, even if only on an unconscious level. The house is nicely tucked on the right side, just enough showing to identify it as Cliveden.

The big problem with this picture is that the water is running downhill to the left and as everyone knows, water can't do that. It explains why the boats are all on that side, perhaps, all crashed into one another I expect. Oh, and I did take that one on purpose, I wasn't the worse for drink on this occasion although you might think so.

Always keep the waterline level:

So now we've got it, or as good as it gets (or is it?) The water is level, the bridge is tucked into the land, the house is nicely positioned, and even the horizon is just over one/third up the shot. Can you spot it?

The horizon is just below the bridge, but above the boats. To judge this you have to look at the whole picture without focusing on one particular area. Eventually, your (now trained) eye will find it and it's along that horizon line that you would also find the vanishing point, often referred to as simply 'VP'.

So, please feel free to criticize, copy, play around with them and repost them. Point out anything I've missed, by all means, otherwise, how will we learn?