Is Half Dome is a joke God played on photographers ?

[Neal Shields]

Is Half Dome is a joke God played on photographers to teach us humility?

I just read an essay by Mark Citret in which he suggests that man and man?s stru ctures are as ?natural? as anything else in nature and it started me thinking, a s his essays have a tendency to do.

Edward Wesson took photographs of groceries and chemical plants and showed us mo re than we would see ourselves if we had been there. Moreover, once you see a W eston cabbage you will see more, everytime you look at a cabbage, for the rest of your life.

Ansel Adams took wonderful photographs of landscapes but (with exceptions) usual ly conveyed 1/10 (a kind estimate) of the visual experience that being there in person would provide to even the most obtuse observer.

Down deep, I think all landscape photographers know that they are failures. The re was an old movie called ?Hicky and Boggs? with Robert Culp and Bill Cosby. T hey played private detectives and the running joke was that they used huge 44 ma gnum pistols. Everytime they missed the bad guys they would turn to each other and say: ?we need to get a bigger gun?. It seems to me that people are packing more and bigger cameras into the wilderness, and coming back with wonderful phot ographs, compared to other photographs and pitiful abstractions compared the sce ne that they photographed.

Isn?t it a much higher calling to show our audience that there is beauty everywh ere in their everyday lives, then to convey the impression that beauty is reserv ed for the affluent that have the wealth and leisure to travel to remote ?unspo iled? places.

When I go to a Museum and look at an Ansel Adams print, and mentally compaire it to simular vistas that I have actually experienced, I feel like if this is the best, why should I bother to even try?

[Micah Marty]

"Down deep, I think all landscape photographers know that they are failures."

If their objective is to convey exactly what it's like to "be there," yes. But if the picture is meant to portray things that someone may not have seen (or at least not in that way) at the scene, I'm not so sure.

Your question seems to imply that the role of the landscape photographer is simply that of the postcard photographer: a pleasant depiction of impressive scenery that will substitute for "being there." But slides and color panoramas and videotape can do all of those things better than can a black-and-white landscape photo, which means the landscape photographer might be after something deeper and more meaningful than a postcard.

P.S. I agree that it's important to show that there is beauty everywhere. Actually, even Ansel agreed with this: plenty of his images (including many of his most famous ones) were made outside of the national parks. often in very mundane settings. It's probably safe to say that the demands of the buying public (rather than the efforts of Ansel himself) are responsible for the predominance of his Wagnerian wilderness scenes.

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[David R Munson]

I'm not going to say that all landscape photographers are failures, because failure is entirely relative to an attempted feat or goal, and what a photographer is trying to accomplish is entirely unpredictable. To me, trying to describe the beauty inherent to nature is like trying to describe God in finite detail using the limited means of modern English. I sure as hell can't do it, and I've yet to see someone who can. The best I can do is to photograph the landscape. I do it and I love doing it- I wouldn't have it any other way. Have I ever captured the essence of God and the full impact in a moment of time at a particular place? Not quite. Will I ever? Doubtful. But does that mean that I, as a landscape photographer, am a failure? Not in the least. My goal in photography is to do things to the best of my ability, and I do that nearly every day. I may not be able to create a photograph that, to me, has the same emotional impact on me that actually being there does, but that's not quat I'm trying to do. So I don't sweat it.

[Wayne_6692]

I guess your motto is "I can't fail if I don't try". It's a wonder you make it out of bed in the morning.

[Peter Brown]

Hi Neal,

It seems this is the time of year for these philosophical discussions. You have posed an interesting question.

I'm not sure if I agree with your tongue-in-cheek statement; "Down deep, I think all landscape photographers know that they are failures." . . but I think I see what you are getting at. I know from my own experience that I am never completely satisfied with my final image no matter how good or bad it is, but rather than feeling it is, or I am, a failure, I like to look at it as; "next time I'll do better" .

This urge to produce something better than the last image, is what gives me the drive to go out in the early hours of the morning or late in the day, lugging heavy equipment many kilometers across rugged countryside to find that elusive, "best" image.

I take images of the landscape, primarily for myself and secondly for my audience. If I am able to evoke an emotional response in my viewers, that is a bonus, but ultimately my landscape photography is a personal experience.

When I do shoot for an audience, it is to provide, for those less able or less fortunate, a window into what it is like, "out there". I also shoot to educate people about how beautiful these places are, but also how fragile they are as well, and how we must protect what is left before it is too late.

As an aside, I am a Divemaster as well as a photographer and I have taken many tourists out to photograph the wonders of the Great Barrier Reef. Some of these tourists, the affluent and the not so affluent, particularly from some of the larger Asian cities, have never even seen the sea until they arrive in Cairns, for their "once-in--lifetime" five day holiday. By showing them and educating them about the beauty of this wonder of the world, I hope that they go back with a better appreciation of nature and conservation. It has always amazed me how this experience changes people and I have had comments about how they never realised how fragile this ecosystem was and that they can now appreciate how we must protect these unique systems. With my landscape images I hope I can have the same effect, and educate those people who are unable to visit these often, difficult to get to places.

But, far from just taking the grand vistas I also look down at my feet, or at the tree trunks or around the rocks, finding the small worlds within worlds, which many pass by without even realising they're there. Just this morning I photographed some stunning seed pods amongst the leaf litter on my own bush property. Certainly the vistas are important, but so are the details .

William Blake wrote;

To see a world in a grain of sand And heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour.

I prefer to photograph the beauty of nature and hopefully inspire people to think about the folly of not protecting these wonderful areas. Others photograph the destruction of nature, heavily logged areas, factories where once stood trees, pollution, etc, etc. and their message is "look at what we've done". Whether groceries and chemical plants are as "natural" as anything else in nature is a debatable point, but for me they're certainly not as beautiful.

I'm sure you'll get some interesting comments.

Kind regards

Peter Brown

[Glenn Kroeger]

John Fielder (and others) talks about three scales of landscapes, the microcosm, the intimate landscape (no horizon) and the grand scenic. I think that the first two enjoy every bit the success rate of cabbages and chemical plants... but clearly the grand scenic is tough to capture. On the other hand, if you consider the photograph as a recording of light, not things, there are many grand scenics that capture the majesty of the moment of light... and since we can't all be there to witness every sunrise, sunset and clearing storm, efforts to capture that light are well worth the effort.

[Mark Meyer]

Good question Neal. But I think you underestimate cabbage. I love those Weston photos too, but I don't think for a moment that he captured more than 1/10 of beauty and wonder of this fantastic vegetable. That came out sounding kind of funny, but I'm quite serious. It is easy to think that Weston is doing a better job but comparing him to A. Adams is like comparing...well, cabbages to half domes. A cabbage is something you can hold in your hand, nature surrounds you. Although people tend to go to places of high visual interest, the things that make the experience of being in nature what it is are overwhelmingly non-visual. It is the wind, smell, temperature, etc. It should come as no more of a surprise that a lowly photographer can't capture all of nature than it should that Weston photos don't taste good (speculating).

[Neal Shields]

Wayne, let's just say that if I take a picture of the sun on the horizon, it is probably a sunset.

[QT Luong]

I don't agree that a well executed landscape photograph would provide 1/10 of the visual experience of beeing there. In fact from a purely visual point of view, it can be more satisfying than the actual experience, especially if unique conditions are captured. However the experience of being in a landscape far transcends the visual aspect, and this is what I think is missing in landscape photographs. On the other hand, there isn't much more in the experience of looking at a pepper, than, well, looking at it.

[tim atherton]

I didn't think photography was about the visual experience of being there anyway...? The photograph can never be a true representation - it's two dimensional; in most of the cases we are talking about it's not in "realistic" colour, we have manipulated it with focal length, viewpoint, film, printing, filters etc. And is half-dome really 14" or whatever tall...? so forget 1/10th - how about 1/500,000th or something In fact it's often much further from the reality of the scene than most of our conditioning allows us to realise.

A better starting point is, perhaps, the emotional experience of being there.