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Who had the bright idea to label horizontal images “landscape,” and vertical images “portrait”? To that person let me just say, “Huh?” As a landscape-only photographer, about half of my images use “portrait” orientation. I wonder if this arbitrary naming bias subconsciously encourages photographers to default to a horizontal orientation for their landscape images, even when a vertical orientation might be best. Every image contains implicit visual motion that’s independent of the…
One of my photographic goals is to create images that allow viewers to imagine our world untouched by human hands. That goal sometimes conflicts with the expectations of my photo workshop students, who want to visit the iconic locations they’ve traveled so far to photograph. For the most part I’ve learned to balance those conflicting goals by mixing the popular views with hidden perspectives I’ve found over the years, but in…
My relationship with Yosemite doesn’t have a beginning or end. Rather, it’s a collection of asynchronous memories that are still forming. In fact, some of my Yosemite experience actually predates my memory. The earliest memories, like following bobbing flashlights to Camp Curry to watch the Firefall spring from Glacier Point, or warm evenings in lawn chairs at the garbage dump, waiting for the bears to come…
A few days ago Sony asked me to write a couple of small pieces on “my favorite landscape lenses.” Hmmm. My answer? My favorite lens is the lens that allows me to do what I need to do at that moment. In fact, to avoid biasing my creativity, I consciously avoid approaching a scene with a preconceived notion of the lens to use. What…
True story: I once had a woman in a workshop who put her camera in Continuous mode and every time she clicked her shutter, she held it down and waved her camera in the general direction of a scene until the buffer was full. When I asked what she was doing, she said, “There’s bound to be a good one in there somewhere.” We were in…
I was hungry, wet, and cold. With the blacktop obscured by a slippery white veneer, I carefully followed my headlights and a faint set of parallel tire tracks through the Northside Drive tree tunnel. Though the storm that had lured me to Yosemite was finally clearing, that show was lost to the night and dense forest canopy. But even without another clearing storm to add to my Yosemite portfolio, I was quite…
In my Snow day post a few days ago, I shared the story of an overnight dash to Yosemite to photograph snow. I wrapped up that long day photographing various Yosemite Valley views in the frigid damp, bundled at Tunnel View, waiting in vain for the storm to clear. The sky was darkening quickly, and when a dense cloud engulfed my view I decided my (pretty sweet) day was…
From my front door I can be in Yosemite Valley in less than four hours (including a stop for gas and another for Starbucks). I enjoy the drive and am not averse to doing a one day up-and-back when I think something special is in store. And nothing is more special than a chance to photograph Yosemite with fresh snow. My most recent Yosemite…
Inexperienced photographers tend to approach every scene with the idea that there’s one “best” shot, and that other photographers already know what that shot is. This might explain why there’s no better way to meet other photographers than to set up a tripod (I’ve learned that this even works on the shoulder of a busy highway with no obvious view). It might also explain why the most frequent question asked in…
If you’re content with derivative snaps of pretty scenes, a tripod may not be for you. But for those who agree that, rather than regurgitating a rough representation of the world as we know it, landscape photography should reveal deeper, less obvious natural truths—things like relationships between diverse elements, an intimate exploration of larger scenes, detail and pattern lost in the blur of motion—there is no substitute for a…
Eloquent Images by Gary Hart 