Composing a Harmonic Landscape

I love nature. There is nothing quite like looking at the horizon and being totally overwhelmed with the landscape. I’ve been to some awe-inspiring places and have always attempted to capture the essence with photographs. However, when I get home and look at the pictures they evoke fond memories but not the sense of wonderment. Most of them are just average outdoor pictures. As the memory of actually being there fades, the pictures become even less interesting.

Years ago when we bought our first digital camera, I thought my pictures would improve. They have to a degree, but I find myself wanting more. The reason for the improvement is that with a digital camera it isn’t wasteful to take several pictures of the same scene and delete all but the best one. I thought being able to crop the photo and zoom in after the fact would be the answer I was looking for. While these edits make the pictures better it doesn’t bring them to the level I was hoping they would. To me, the photograph should make me want to go to the place it was taken, not because of a memory but because of the scenery.

This summer we are heading west. The primary purpose for our upcoming vacation is to visit family but we plan on hitting several National Parks as well as the coast of Oregon. I want the pictures that I take on this trip to be fabulous. I want to be able to frame them and hang them on the wall. As we walk through Redwood National Forest I know I am going to see things that today I can only imagine. Taking pictures in a forest is quite different than taking them out my front door. The day after the forest we are heading to the coast of Oregon. Is taking pictures of the beach significantly different than taking pictures of the forest? Are there tips that will help me take better pictures in both of these environments? I would like to improve my ability to take a good picture of a landscape. The United States of America is home to some amazing views and I am going to have the opportunity to see some of them. The key to better pictures is knowledge.

For 30 days I have been taking pictures and editing them using Paint Shop Pro. This has forced me to spend time both taking pictures and learning to use photo-editing software. However, sometimes I feel like I am shooting blindfolded. When I am taking pictures of the surroundings how can I choose the best picture to take? I think improving the actual composition of the pictures and using the correct settings on my camera when I click the button to take the picture will have a huge impact on the quality of the pictures I take.

Determining what picture to take is the first thing I need to learn. John Hedgecoe, author of the ‘how to’ book Photographing Landscapes, states that visualizing how the camera will record what you are seeing is the most important skill for a photographer to develop (32). It is a talent to be able to take our three-dimensional world and predict how that will look in two dimensions. To work on this skill I am going to take a picture of a sunrise outside of my front door, print an 8x10 of this picture, and compare it to the three-dimensional landscape every day for a week. This will help me translate the world onto a piece of photo paper.

In The Ultimate Field Guide to Landscape Photography, Robert Caputo recommends thinking about what makes a particular location desirable to photograph. This may take some analysis of the area and what drew you to it. Since there is not normally a big rush to photograph a landscape, he recommends walking the scene and looking through the viewfinder to find the best location and angle for the picture (14). He also recommends practicing these skills to develop the ability to find interesting angles for your pictures (15). Practicing is something practical I can do to improve my proficiency with this skill, which will lead to better compositions. Alain Briot points out that not only do we see in three dimensions but also experience a location with all five of our senses. As landscape photographers we need to practice translating as much of that experience as possible into our two dimensional picture (18). This is what I am looking for in my photographs. I want to feel like I am actually at the place where the picture was taken.

One of the rules of composition for landscape photography is the Rule of Thirds. Caputo recommends the following “Imagine that your viewfinder has lines dividing the space into three horizontal and three vertical fields of nine equal-size rectangles. To use the rule of thirds, place your subject at one of the ‘sweet spots’ where a vertical and a horizontal line intersect.” (49). Fitzharris suggests the horizon at one of the “third” positions (86). My mom’s digital camera does have the lines on the viewing screen to make using the rule of thirds more natural.
Another important element in the composition of landscape photographs is color. “Color evokes the greatest emotional reaction of any graphic element,” states Fitzharris (83). If that is true, we need to spend some serious time considering it. Many of my recent landscape pictures have been gray due to our snow and weather. However, as Hedgecoe points out, the use of monochromatic color can be effective by balancing textures and tones (59).

The word photography comes from the Greek words and means “writing with light” (Briot 47). I have been to a photography class before and have heard that light is the most important aspect for a good picture. This has been something I have found difficult to apply, mostly because light is difficult to control. I can’t make a cloud move in front of the sun. Briot lists the three rules of light with respect to photography as the quality of light, reflected light, and the intensity of light. For landscape photographers the quality of light is the most important rule. The larger the source of light the softer the light. This rule is why the best times to take landscape pictures is at sunrise, sunset, and on overcast days (49). The solution seems to be adaptation to the light that exists since you can’t change it. Caputo adds that light is always changing and affects the color and mood of a scene and should be chosen carefully (84).

I am coming to the realization that taking excellent pictures isn’t as easy as it seems at first glance. It is much more than point and shoot. I can see the landscape pictures I have previously taken were a result of be being somewhere at a specific time. Not much thought has gone into the actual composition of the pictures. Just because I am in a beautiful place doesn’t automatically mean the camera will see things the same way. Improving my ability to “see” like a camera as well as using these tips and rules will enhance my pictures, hopefully making them worthy of a frame.

Works Cited

Briot, Alain. Mastering Landscape Photography, The Luminous-Landscape Essays. Ed. Gerhard Rossbach. Santa Barbara, CA. Rocky Nook Inc. 2007.

Caputo, Robert. The Ultimate Field Guide to Landscape Photography. Washington D.C. National Geographic. 2007.

Fitzharris, Tim. National Audubon Society Guide to Landscape Photography. Buffalo, NY: Firefly Books Inc. 2007

Hedgecoe, John. Photographing landscapes. London: Collins & Brown Limited, 2000.
“Landscape Photography: Capturing Scenery at its Best.”

Kaleidoscope

When I talk about my pictures I often mention that I want to hang them on the wall. I want them to be worthy of taking the time to frame them and look at them daily. When I say things like that I have pictures of the Smokey Mountains, the beach, or Yellowstone in my mind. However, the effect I played with has turned some plain pictures into some cool abstract art.

The first picture I did this with is of the red doors on St. Johns Lutheran Church downtown. The doors have always stood out to me so I thought I would take a picture. Initially I was going to try to remove the silver signs from the door. That turned out to be a big failure so I kept trying other effects. Below is the original picture.



I used the kaleidoscope effect and thought the results were neato.



Since the red doors turned out so cool I tried it on a picture of my backyard.



If you look really closely you can see the trees on the “arms” of the kaleidoscope.



The last picture I did this to was the macro picture of the purple flower.





All in all I think this a really cool effect.

My Backyard

I really enjoy our yard. There is nothing fancy about it but it relaxing to look at our yard after being cooped up all winter. I took a picture of our backyard as sunset. I tried to use the rule of thirds using the horizon and the tree but I’m not sure how well I did. I probably could have cropped the picture to make it a bit better.



Under the Effects menu is a submenu of Art Media Effects. I used the colored chalk effect for this picture. I think it makes the picture more interesting. Some of the other art media effects are pencil, colored pencil, and charcoal.

More 801

I was driving down Grand Avenue in downtown Des Moines heading west when I had to stop at a stop light and had the thought to take a picture. I rolled down the window stuck my arm out the window and snapped a picture of the tallest building in our great state. I can only imagine what the other drivers were thinking of me. Here is the picture that I took.



I didn't really have any idea what to do with this picture. I did a lot of experimenting. Here are a few of the results that I liked enough to save. This picture I used the Flood Fill tool and colored some parts of the building.



Then I found this Posterize effect and I liked the result better than the Flood Fill tool. When using the Flood Fill I got to choose what colors I wanted to use and where I wanted to use them. With the posterize effect you select it and the photo is edited.

Fill Flash

Spring is coming! I know this because last night I was out on the deck and I heard birds singing. It made me so happy. Anyhow, while I was on the deck I snapped a few pictures off to the north. Most of this view is my neighbors yard, the field behind his house, and the tree line by the creek. I actually saw some blue sky so I wanted to capture it in my picture.

I wrote a research paper about landscape photography and one of the “rules” I learned was the rule of thirds. I tried to use it when I took this picture - two-thirds sky and one-third land.



When I brought the picture up on my computer, it was a bit dark. It was evening so maybe it was too dark to take a picture beyond what my flash range. In the adjust menu of Paint Shop Pro is a Fill Flash feature that adds flash to the picture. I think it helped this picture out quite a bit. It brightened the grass and the sky. It was also a quick push of a button to do. I like how many of these features can improve a picture so quickly and easily.

Darkness

I went into work EARLY one day this past week. I decided to snap a picture of 801 Grand in the dark. The picture is below. It is pretty dark and really not a good picture.



There is a setting on my camera for darker picture. The symbol is a moon. Probably because of the cool moon rises that people (like me) always want to take a pictures of. This setting slows down the shutter speed. I took another picture of 801 Grand using this setting. The result is a really blurry picture but it is lighter.



I took another picture with this setting and it is better but I think a tripod is a necessity for this setting.

Positive....Um, I mean Negative

I went out to Yellow Banks Park and took this picture of the landscape. When I opened it up I thought it was a pretty cool picture and played around with different ways to edit it. However, it is a very gray picture. When I turned it black and white you could hardly see a change. Most of the effects I use are under the Adjust or Effects menu. While playing around I opened the image menu. I clicked the “Negative image” and got the result below. I like the change, especially the top of the tree against the sky and the bottom third of the picture. I think the middle of the picture, in both versions, gets muddled.



I added the "negative" picture frame at the end to finish it off and because I thought it was clever.