Two principal ways to search for a landscape shot (or is your way different?)

[Heroique]

I put the tripod down where I have decided to and everything fits in. If I want a slightly wider lens, I take a step or two back, for a longer lens, pick up the tripod and move forward...

I suspect the armchair photographers will object to this. “Moving the camera changes your perspective!” I hear them shouting. “You’ve just altered your perspective & lost your shot!”

Usually, they’re shouting a cold (intellectual) fact about perspective, while remaining oblivious to how experienced field photographers manage limitations to get the shot. Next, they attribute the field photographer’s success to uninformed luck, not working knowledge.

[Vaughn]

The poll is useless. And so are answers like 'putting on a longer lens to get closer'. And some don't crop? What? That is so absurd since cropping is your MOST powerful compositional tool. And camera to subject distance is vitally important, although most people still don't know why...

Nothing is useless if it creates interesting and useful communication!

I do not crop negatives. But of course I do crop -- I just do it with the camera. If the image will not fit onto the entire piece of film, I move on to the next image. There is no shortage of great images! It is all a matter of seeing them.

Vaughn

[Jeffrey Sipress]

Vaughn,

I didn't mean cropping as in cutting negs with scissors! I meant, of course, doing it in post-processing, the enlarger stage or the matting and framing room.

[Vaughn]

That is what I assumed you meant, Jeffrery -- but I still do not do any post-processing cropping. I contact print showing the rebate as my artistic process.

Vaughn

[David_Senesac]

Two principal ways to search for a landscape shot (or is your way different?) How do you find your composition?

Well I'm not going to answer the question as intended because it ignores more important up front issues of finding landscapes.

Much depends on the situation as there are many types of landscapes and what works in one environment may not in another. For instance my approach in a dim deep redwood forest is much different than say in the Sierra timberline country. A given in the question is this ought to be about places one has not previously visited. Thus places one is approaching freshly. In most cases I do more homework about where I am visiting than probably 99% of the rest of you. Things are different for me today than before the Internet. I already have decades of experience out in landscapes so understand light at different times of day, at different orientations, and in different weather.

Before the Internet, I would go to a big university library, analyze topographic maps, analyze geological maps, maybe visit the USGS in Menlo Park not far from where I live, go down to book stores and look for current guide books. One of the most important issues is knowing what time of year to go when a location is most aesthetic. With a topo map and simple tools like a protractor, I can work out all the perspective views of my different lenses. So know what lens to already have on my 4x5 before I get up at dawn to ramble out 2 miles to some lake for a morning shot. In mountainous landscapes, I can calculate with some geometry and trig what can be seen in various locations and what cannot due to blocking elements like ridges.

Typical was my first visit to Utah canyon country 16 years ago, a 3-week road trip. When I drove out there in my Subaru, I had a tall stack of topo maps and books. After reaching the Colorado Plateau, sometimes I came upon things I had not expected like the geology or formations and just set out to ramble about. Then if possible would visit a local place where I might buy additional maps to analyze in evenings. Other times I saw areas, I already expected to be productive at and then ventured out and indeed sometimes brought back nice images and other times it was a dry well.

Landscapes are vast and enormous. Without some way to focus where one rambles about looking, one is going to waste a lot of time. If all one does is read usual guide books and or drive along paved highways looking about, one is going to miss most of the goods. There are a great many non-paved dirt roads in the West. My first trip was very productive. A few years later on a 2-weeker with another viewcamera photographer we really killed it with even better results. What I learned on the first trip really let me focus in on the best places during the second trip. Experience is gold if applied. We nailed quite a lot of material no other photographers before or since have ever seen. The proof of our success is in our images, many of which are on our websites.

Likewise in the Sierra I analyze maps etc per above. Today with the Internet things are considerable different. There are many photographs available for those that know where to look. Much more than simple going on Google Images and searching for those that think small. There are also many web boards and other informational sites about visiting various public lands and parks. Do your homework. By far the most important tool today once one has narrowed down an area and are looking for a focus is Google Earth. If you don't know understand why then you are asleep.

[Vaughn]

...We nailed quite a lot of material no other photographers before or since have ever seen. The proof of our success is in our images, many of which are on our websites.

...If you don't know understand why then you are asleep.

Nice work, David! And that arch, wow! I have never seen that before!

A little satire there, of course. But if I am asleep, then you are blinded by planning. And of course, neither it true. You have a way to approach the landscape that works for you, but that does not make it the best and only way to approach the landscape. For example I do not see the landscape as "goods" to be found and captured (nailed). I prefer to ramble and "waste" my time. That is the reason I am there.

I hiked a few miles up a popular canyon in Death Valley with the 8x10. I met a digital photographer and when I mentioned that it was my first time in that particular canyon he ask why I did not scout first, instead of carrying 60 lbs of equipment into an unknown place. I thought it was an odd question, but only because "scouting" itself seems so odd to me and the way I work.

While it is possible to return to a place at the same season and time, and find similar light, I will not be the same person tomorrow as I am right now. I will take a different image tomorrow than I would today...even of the same place, in the same light and with the same camera/lens/film. I am recording photographically my experience I am having with the light reflected off the landscape - not the experience I had the last time I was there, nor the experience I planned of having through prior research.

[Heroique]

Half-way through David’s post, I was under the impression it was partly satire. Then it struck me that maybe it wasn’t satire at all. I had to read it a second time to help me decide. Well, maybe it isn’t satire, but I’ve been fooled before.

The part about libraries, maps, protractors, trigonometry, and geometry to determine the correct lens before seeing the actual landscape – well, never mind about all that – perhaps Vaughn’s remark about being “blinded by planning” is all I would say, too. But then a bit later, David also recommends, it seems, spontaneity: “Forget the guide books,” “Leave the paved roads,” etc.

For now, I’ll only add that no other post in this forum has made me feel such a mixture of extreme annoyance & deep gratitude. It’s certainly a worthwhile read, and I’m still trying to sort it out!

[Vaughn]

Actually he said to forget the "usual guidebooks" (italics are mine). And I would have been fine with most of what he wrote if he had left off that last paragraph.

There are many photographs available for those that know where to look.

There are an infinite number of photographs available for those who know how to look (I prefer "to See"). And the most important tool is an open mind, not Goggle Earth.

But he does seem open to chance (rambling, as he put it), and makes an important point about the value of experiencing an area, "Experience is gold..."

[John Jarosz]

I don't think I make my best photographs the first time I'm at a location. My better stuff comes after I'm used to a place, maybe by my 3rd visit. And I don't have to photograph on the first 2 visits. I think I need time to process the images in my head.

John

[Brian Ellis]

Two principal ways to search for a landscape shot (or is your way different?) How do you find your composition?

Well I'm not going to answer the question as intended because it ignores more important up front issues of finding landscapes.

Much depends on the situation as there are many types of landscapes and what works in one environment may not in another. For instance my approach in a dim deep redwood forest is much different than say in the Sierra timberline country. A given in the question is this ought to be about places one has not previously visited. Thus places one is approaching freshly. In most cases I do more homework about where I am visiting than probably 99% of the rest of you. Things are different for me today than before the Internet. I already have decades of experience out in landscapes so understand light at different times of day, at different orientations, and in different weather.

Before the Internet, I would go to a big university library, analyze topographic maps, analyze geological maps, maybe visit the USGS in Menlo Park not far from where I live, go down to book stores and look for current guide books. One of the most important issues is knowing what time of year to go when a location is most aesthetic. With a topo map and simple tools like a protractor, I can work out all the perspective views of my different lenses. So know what lens to already have on my 4x5 before I get up at dawn to ramble out 2 miles to some lake for a morning shot. In mountainous landscapes, I can calculate with some geometry and trig what can be seen in various locations and what cannot due to blocking elements like ridges.

Typical was my first visit to Utah canyon country 16 years ago, a 3-week road trip. When I drove out there in my Subaru, I had a tall stack of topo maps and books. After reaching the Colorado Plateau, sometimes I came upon things I had not expected like the geology or formations and just set out to ramble about. Then if possible would visit a local place where I might buy additional maps to analyze in evenings. Other times I saw areas, I already expected to be productive at and then ventured out and indeed sometimes brought back nice images and other times it was a dry well.

Landscapes are vast and enormous. Without some way to focus where one rambles about looking, one is going to waste a lot of time. If all one does is read usual guide books and or drive along paved highways looking about, one is going to miss most of the goods. There are a great many non-paved dirt roads in the West. My first trip was very productive. A few years later on a 2-weeker with another viewcamera photographer we really killed it with even better results. What I learned on the first trip really let me focus in on the best places during the second trip. Experience is gold if applied. We nailed quite a lot of material no other photographers before or since have ever seen. The proof of our success is in our images, many of which are on our websites.

Likewise in the Sierra I analyze maps etc per above. Today with the Internet things are considerable different. There are many photographs available for those that know where to look. Much more than simple going on Google Images and searching for those that think small. There are also many web boards and other informational sites about visiting various public lands and parks. Do your homework. By far the most important tool today once one has narrowed down an area and are looking for a focus is Google Earth. If you don't know understand why then you are asleep.

If I thought it was necessary or even desirable to do all this stuff in order to make satisfying photographs I'd forget photography and take up bowling. One of the pleasures of photography for me is, to use your phrase, wasting a lot of time rambling around and looking.