The “earth” without art is just “eh.” Mother Nature is the greatest artist with the world as her canvas. The elements that surround us whether it’s terrain, lighting, wildlife or unpredictable weather; the world provides us with extraordinary color, texture, composition and inevitable beauty to capture and appreciate. Yet, how many times have you stood amidst an undeniably picturesque setting that seemed easy to capture yet when you look back at your photos they look so flat? (You can’t see me right now, but both of my hands are up in the air). While there are several techniques to explore when photographing landscapes, the following insight will discuss four techniques to help show more than is actually seen, allowing the camera to truly capture the moment. These techniques include: depth of field, foregrounds, water and weather.
Achieving sharpness in images that are closest to you and extending into the horizon is a significant and common component to landscape photography; it’s referred to as depth of field (or DOH). While practicing DOH can help isolate a subject from its immediate surroundings, this technique can dramatically enhance a landscape setting as it encompasses a subject matter with its environments, where the background and/or the foreground is in focus. This would be considered as having a large or deep depth of field, when you include a range that is several yards to infinity (Cutter, xx). A small or shallow depth of field is when the range of focus narrow which may be a few inches to several feet (Ramos, XX).
There are three main factors that contribute to the depth of field – aperture size, distance from the lens, and the focal length of the lens (Ramos, XX). The aperture which adjusts the opening of your came...
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...cliff with the waves crashing up, should the image portray the power of the surf? Including surrounding elements in the foreground or background (which will be touched on a bit later) helps sets the tone.
Looking beyond the physical elements of the water and seeing reflections can be quite magnificent and is an enhancement to the image you are trying to capture. Windless and calm conditions, typically early morning or evening hours work best; and Focusing on the real object versus the reflection is key to ensure the shot is in focus (Roth, XX). Beyond technique and timing, using a polarizing filter can help to reduce the reflection and increase contrast as it helps to polarized light that passes through (SOURCE, XX).
Foregrounds. Not immediately does this come to mind yet is an important factor to consider in landscape photography. Every photo merits a focal point
For Emerson, the reticent beauty of nature was the motivator. To him, photography should be recognized because its still-life beauty was able to persuade the public’s appreciation of the life and nourishment
She starts by bringing a pessimistic view to photographs of nature, by describing what may or may not lie just outside the boundaries of the picture. Mockingly she leads the reader to assume that there are no real nature photos left in the world, but rather only digitaly enhanced photos of nature wit...
An artwork will consist of different elements that artists bring together to create different forms of art from paintings, sculptures, movies and more. These elements make up what a viewer sees and to help them understand. In the painting Twilight in the Wilderness created by Frederic Edwin Church in 1860 on page 106, a landscape depicting a sun setting behind rows of mountains is seen. In this painting, Church used specific elements to draw the viewer’s attention directly to the middle of the painting that consisted of the sun. Church primarily uses contrast to attract attention, but it is the different aspects of contrast that he uses that makes the painting come together. In Twilight in the Wilderness, Church uses color, rhythm, and focal
For an eye to focus correctly on an object, it must be placed in a certain position in front of the eye. The primary focal point is the point along the optical axis where an object can be placed for parallel rays to come from the lens. The secondary focal point is the point along the optical axis where in coming parallel rays are brought into focus. The primary focal point has the object's image at infinity, where as the secondary focal point has the object at infinity. For people who have myopic eyes, the secondary focal point is anterior to the retina in the vitreous. Thus, the object must be moved forward from infinity, in order to be focused on the retina. The far point is determined by the object's distance where light rays focus on the retina while the eye is not accommodating. The far point in the myopic eye is between the cornea and infinity. The near point is determined by which an object will be in focus on the retina when the eye is accommodating. Thus, moving an object closer will cause the perception of the object to blur. The measurement of these refractive errors are in standard units called diopters (D). A diopter is the reciprocal of a distance of the far point in meters (Vander & Gault, 1998). The myopic condition manipulates these variables in order to ultimately make a nearsighted individual.
In "A Tale of the Ragged Mountains," it is pretty obvious that the landscape is going to play an important part in the story - we are given the setting right in the title. However, a majority of the story actually takes place in an "Orientalized" locale that has been transposed into the Ragged Mountains. This alone is a great juxtaposition: the title describes what seems to be a run-down, unappealing landscape, while the real action takes place in fantastical setting. But why is the landscape so important if the psychological aspect is what Poe is trying to focus on? Most likely it is because the landscape gives us clues about what is actually happening in the minds of the characters, and hints at things that make the story clearer. For example, Bedloe starts his tale by describing "the thic...
Edward Burtynsky is landscape photographer who focuses on finding unique locations that are barren with environmental degradation. He is concerned with the current state of our world and wants to change it by using photography as a medium. Burtynsky 's photolistic style often shows incredible scale and detail within his photos by using multiple vantage points. Burtynsky approaches his subject in a very urgent manner, each and every photo is taken to create a deep impression from its viewer. His work is housed in more than 50 museums including the Guggenheim Museum, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
Topography is the features of land in an area. Those features can include rivers, mountains, lakes, hills, forrests, etc. A White Heron is overflowing with references to the topography of Maine, and more specifically the coast of Maine. The first sentence of Jewett’s A White Heron gives the reader a preview into the appreciation Jewett has for her home state of Maine, “The woods were already filled with shadows one June evening, just before eight o’clock, though a bright sunset still glimmered faintly among the trunks of the trees” (413). While this description isn’t specific to Maine on the surface, it is specific to Jewett’s interpretation of the woods at sunset in Maine, and the beauty of color writing is that each reader will imagine their own sunset based on their own woods in their own region. Jewett was just beginning and her description of the land around her, and as the story progresses the d...
A. Line – An irregular soft line is used to establish the eye level/horizon in background between the sky and the field. The diagonal lines define the field and are in an opposite direction of the diagonal lines that define the trunk off the tree in the middle of the picture. The diagonal lines in the field, the horizon line, and the edge of the painting create a linear perspective.
What is depth, and what does it mean? Depth is the extent, the intensity, depth
“By combining two lenses ground to segments of arcs of different radii a reasonable flatness of field could be obtained. And by using lenses of different focal lengths, the angle of view could be made narrow for portraiture and wide of landscape work” (Newhall 9).
The human eye’s ability to view focused images of both nearby and distant objects is dependent upon its capacity to accommodate. When you want to look at something nearby, the lens in your eye assumes a large curvature, resulting in a shorter focal length. Conversely, your lens becomes flatter in shape and takes on a longer focal length when you want to look at a distant object. Accommodation is key in allowing your eyes to use its muscles to change focal lengths in order to see objects at a variety of distances. When you lose the ability to accommodate, the lenses in your eyes become locked to focus on either near or far away objects. In the case of nearsighted individuals, light entering the eye can only focus on objects nearby. As a result, distant objects appear blurry because light is focused in front of the retina, or the light-sensitive tissue layer at the back of the eye, instead of directly on it.
...isual attention within and around the field of focal attention: A zoom lens model. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 40(4): 225-240.
4. What to Cut (two visuals of coast shot – one cut and one not)
...rivers of paint rush across the dark black ground, creating writhing intertwining shapes that suggest figures in a landscape setting, but without any specificity whatsoever.
Hirsch, E. 1995. “Introduction, Landscape: between place and space” in Hirsch, E. (ed.) The Anthropology of Landscape: Perspectives on Place and Space. Oxford : New York: Clarendon Press.