Thinking Photography - 20 Mule Team Canyon
Apologies about being missing in action. Between the wedding, Covid, working, working on wedding photographs (almost 200 of them, they turned out fine) and moving my office back upstairs for the winter, things just got ahead of me. It’s not for lack of wanting, but damn, I’m starting to feel old. I keep telling myself that it’s all in the mind, but my body is vociferously arguing otherwise. Still, opportunities arise - you just have to grab them when you can.
Lately Ann has been going through her old images. It’s a good thing to do periodically to see where you’ve come from, see potential images that you might have missed and that deserve to be developed, and to make new discoveries about image making. For me, that means when I need a break and walk away from my desk for a few minutes, I can often find an interesting image on Ann’s monitor. Sometimes it starts a short conversation, other times it leads me to thinking, which in turn can lead into a blog post. All I have to do is make the time to write down my thoughts! And, of course, convince Ann to send me her image (which can be like pulling teeth).
I’d mentioned in the Terrell Brother Road Trip posts that I’d pushed myself to try and make more images that I consider “landscape” images. Just what that means, and how it can be distinguished from the images of the landscapes I’d made before is still a bit amorphous in my mind, but things like that are worth thinking about. As is the question, “What makes a good landscape image?” Or just, “What makes a good photograph?” So I’ve decided to take some of those ideas I’ve had bouncing around in my head and to try and put them in writing, which I’m sure will lead to a series of blog posts.
The first effort looks at a couple of images that are a pairing made roughly at the same time - first Ann’s image, then mine - that readily illustrate a couple of things.
The first is what I mean about “landscape” images. Ann tends to have a wider view of things when she’s making images than I do, and she finds a way to integrate an interesting aspect of the landscape within the greater landscape. To me, they’re what I mean by landscape images. As you’ll see in a bit, my natural focus tends to be much more narrow and, for lack of a better word, leaves out the surrounding context (i.e., landscape).
The second thing is what I think is really important to making a good landscape photograph when you can achieve it in an image. (I probably should really say a good photograph generally, but these are landscapes so . . . .) And that is expression. When you can make an image that goes beyond the surface of the landscape itself and that can reveal something about the landscape or its qualities at the time you made the image, I think the possibility becomes greater that the image is a good landscape image. Add to that, your interpretation of the scene before you, and then you have the opportunity of producing something truly unique.
The images below were made on Twenty Mule Team Canyon Road in Death Valley, well before sunrise. No, that’s not the sun in the image below, that’s the moon. Ann and I will often plan shoots (if not trips) around the phases of the moon (and the tides) because of the opportunity the moon as a light source can provide.
Ann’s interpretation of the scene is not just her traditional landscape view of the world, but it encompasses the landscape as you perceive it once you’ve let your eyes adjust to the darkness on a moon-lit night. There’s a reason war-time parachute drops are often timed with the full moon - you can easily see without the aid of flashlights. Here, you can see the detailed landscape features, even some of the desert coloring, enhanced by the moon light (Ann doesn’t like the flare of the moon in the image, I think it adds some character to the image). Upon looking at the image, you know it’s not daytime or, if it is, something’s not quite right. That’s part of what draws you into the image.
If you look at the top, center portion of the frame, you’ll see a small star-trail. It’s confirmation that this is a night image and that it took some seconds for the exposure to record on the sensor (the stars move much faster than one thinks). I think that the image, once one realizes it’s a night image, contributes even further to that feeling of being alone in this vast landscape one can often get in the desert. You can almost feel the stillness of the night, which adds to that feeling. There’s mystery in this image and it comes not just from the landscape and when the image was made, but also from Ann’s expression of the photograph.
Often, photography is about choices and decision-making. One choice gives you one effect, a different choice something altogether. You have to first decide what you want, and then make the choices (aesthetic and technical) that take you in the right direction. Or not.
My choices wound up being altogether different than Ann’s. Realizing that the moonlight was dumping a lot of light onto the hills, I realized I had the opportunity to create an image that felt like “darkness” yet allowed one to see the faintest trace of detail even in the darker, shadow areas. Often, night photographs have their shadow areas drop into deep blacks with no textures. Here, I could take advantage of a few very well-lit areas, but still allow one to see the textures of the landscape, all the while having it truly feel like it’s night time.
In some respects, it’s more of a lie than Ann’s image, the landscape felt much brighter than it appears in my image. But this is my expression of that particular landscape at that moment, and at the time I developed the image. And I would say that both images are expressive images. Landscapes that reveal something more about the landscape.
That idea of personal expression in photography is an important one. How does one see the landscape? Howe does one interpret what is before them? It isn’t just picking up a camera and pushing the shutter. Well, good photography isn’t. It isn’t always possible to be expressive in the ways one might want to be, because a lot of factors come into play that allows one to have that flexibility to be expressive, but if those factors aren’t there . . . well you have to work with what you have. But when there is that potential, one should take advantage of it because that is one of the things that makes for a good landscape image that you have under your control - what and how you see, and then how to express that.
Landscape photographers are forever at the whims of the landscape and Mother Nature. We can manage that in countless numbers of ways, but the thing we should never forget is that we too bring something to the image making, and it’s us that brings it all together. When we miss . . . well, it hurts. But when we get it right . . . well, that’s in part why we do it.