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3 PLACES AND PEOPLE

Marshaw Wyre river, Lancashire (Jon) Shot with a wide-angle lens (16mm). The closest ice is in easy touching distance. Any small shift in position would have significantly changed the framing

First Thoughts

A good photo isn’t defined by being perfectly focused and perfectly exposed. It’s about feelings. What does it feel like to be in these places, with these people, doing these things? Of course if focusing and exposure are wrong they can ruin the picture, but today’s cameras are pretty good at getting them more or less right.

Perhaps all photography is about feelings; photographing places and people certainly is. Technical skill is great if it helps you express your feelings more clearly, but it clearly isn’t helpful if fretting about white balance or depth of field gets in the way of those feelings.

Places

Humphrey Head and Morecambe Bay, Cumbria (Jon) In the outdoors it’s not just what you do but where you do it that counts

In any outdoor activity, it’s not just what you do but where you do it that’s important. Even a short country stroll can take you to places unsuspected by those who never leave the roads. Mountaineers, cavers, sea-kayakers all get to places most people will never see and may never even have dreamed of. Whether it’s to show your less privileged friends, or just for your own memories, you’ll surely want pictures that capture the special qualities of these special places.

On the face of it, shooting landscapes should be easy. Landscape doesn’t run away when you approach, or start pulling silly faces: it just sits there and waits to be photographed. You don’t need expensive specialised gear either: an ordinary camera and an ordinary lens will do fine.

However, shooting landscapes well turns out to be less easy. There are a number of reasons for this. Some of them are technical, but a lot of technically competent pictures still don’t really get the message across. Indeed, in their obsessive pursuit of technical excellence some people seem to forget what the picture is actually about.

It is about the place, but places change their face. It’s also about time and light, weather and season. Returning to the same place time and again, to photograph it in different moods, can be immensely rewarding.

Seeing the landscape

Landscapes are big and complex. When you’re actively involved with landscape, you see much more of this richness than you can from a car window or TV screen. Outdoor activity brings you into close contact with the landscape and makes you much more aware of its detail and texture. A kayaker will be very aware of the way a river flows, of eddies and stoppers and calmer pools. A climber will be very focused on the fine detail of rock, its cracks and holds, the frictional qualities of its texture. A walker or a cyclist will be highly aware of gradients and path or track surfaces.

Wave, Isle of Harris (Chiz) Landscape is rarely completely static – sometimes it’s very dynamic indeed! (shutter speed 1/500s)

Many of these qualities are changeable. A lake which is a perfect mirror in a windless dawn may be all white-capped agitation a few hours later. Landscape does not, after all, ‘just sit there’. It changes constantly. There are gross physical changes like landslides and avalanches. Trees fall and rivers change their course.

Complete stillness is a rare and usually short-lived phenomenon. Most landscapes – and most landscape photographs – have movement in them somewhere. Even when there’s not a breath of wind, and no running water in sight, the sun moves continually across the sky: if nothing else appears to change, the light always does.

These things naturally affect the way you look at a landscape and the feelings you have about it – and, therefore, what you want to say about it in photographs. As with any photograph, the clearer you are about what you want to say with the shot, the better. ‘What a beautiful place’ is just a start. What makes it beautiful? What’s special about it? Is it inviting or forbidding? Does it awe you with its sheer scale and grandeur or does it seduce you with a quiet, delicate beauty?

Framing the landscape

Perhaps what makes landscape hard is exactly the quality that appears to make it easy: it’s just sitting there. It isn’t neatly parcelled up into photograph-sized chunks. With a portrait or an action shot it’s usually easy to identify what the subject is. Fill the frame with it, get it sharp and correctly exposed (which the camera can help with), and the subject will probably speak for itself.

Landscape photography doesn’t work like that. Landscape is all around you. It’s a big world, but we’re trying to catch it in a small rectangle. That’s the challenge. Put it another way: how do you place your subject in the frame if you can’t say exactly what your subject is? This returns us to some of the questions raised in Chapter 1. While ‘what to point at’ may be a no-brainer with action or wildlife, it can be the hardest decision you’ll have to make when taking a landscape photograph. In other words, framing is primary and fundamental.

Framing begins with seeing. This means more than just looking in the right direction. It means really being aware of what you’re looking at. This sounds very simple, but simple isn’t quite the same as easy. It calls for concentration and full attention to what you see, both directly and through the viewfinder.

Many books talk about ‘rules of composition’, especially the notorious ‘Rule of Thirds’. However, in practice, many of the images presented as examples of that rule follow it loosely, if at all. These so-called rules aren’t as simple as they seem. Our experience strongly suggests that they aren’t that useful either, especially with no clear ‘subject’ to latch on to (many writers also refer to ‘the point of interest’, whatever that is). It seems like more than mere coincidence that ‘Rule of Thirds’ generates the acronym ROT.

It’s pretty hard to think about ‘rules’ and at the same time stay focused on the feeling and emotion of the moment – many of the greatest photos ever made don’t conform to any known rule, and neither does landscape itself.

Bending over backwards to be fair, some people do seem to find such rules helpful. Knowing what they are and trying them out from time to time can do no harm. But don’t think of them as rules, and definitely not as laws. A picture is good because it expresses the experience you had in the outdoors, not because it conforms to the rules. Think of these, at best, as suggestions which might sometimes be useful: and beware the short-cut that turns out to be a dead end.

In fact the very word ‘composition’ is contaminated by this obsession with rules. This is why we’re avoiding it as far as possible. The alternative term, ‘framing’, says exactly what we’re doing and doesn’t carry anywhere near as much baggage.

We’ve already dropped a few hints about framing in Chapter 1. The central skill is seeing the whole picture. And it is a skill that anyone can develop, not some mysterious gift given only to a few.

The image on screen or finder is different from the real world because it has two dimensions instead of three. It’s also different because it’s a rectangle. Long before photography, the vast majority of paintings and drawings were produced on rectangular paper or canvas and often placed in rectangular frames. Today we view many images on screens; whether computer, iPad or iPhone, they’re all rectangles. We can trim images to different shapes and present them in other forms, but in practice we rarely do so and it’s usually an afterthought. Film or digital, every image starts out as a rectangle. (OK, not every photograph: some fish-eye lenses generate a circular image.)

A rectangle is defined by its edges. If we’re trying to frame images consciously, we need to be aware of those edges. Think about them as you try different angles of view. If you use a zoom lens, objects can appear or disappear at the edges of the frame as you zoom in or out: make sure you’re aware of them.

Looking at what’s contained within those edges is the other side of the coin. Don’t forget that the camera can’t read your mind and doesn’t actually know which bits of the scene you are interested in. It’s no good blaming the camera if you get more than you thought you were getting.

Looking at the viewfinder is only part of the process. This can’t directly tell you what difference it will make to move back a few metres, or switch to a different lens. You can do this entirely by trial and error, but if you stop to check through the viewfinder after every little adjustment, it’ll take forever. Landscape photography isn’t supposed to be that slow! This is why looking at the scene directly is just as important as using the viewfinder. In fact, we can all anticipate, to some extent, what will happen when we shift position or change lenses. Step closer to that gap in the trees and we’ll see more of the landscape beyond. And the more we do it, the better we get at it.

This is the essence of visualisation. With practice you spend less of your time peering through that fiddly little viewfinder, and much more actually looking directly at the world. Increasingly, you will have a shrewd idea exactly where to stand, and which lens to use, before you ever raise the camera to your eye.

Visualisation means more than just seeing the raw ingredients of the shot. It also means being aware of the differences between the way the camera sees and the way the eye sees. We’ve already alluded to depth of field, and to the way the camera deals with movement, with colours, and with big differences in brightness.

One of the most important factors remains the ‘mental zoom lens.’ Physically, the human eye has an almost fixed focal length. It’s the brain which can switch almost instantaneously from ‘seeing’ a wide-angle view to a narrow ‘telephoto’ one. This ability is very powerful, and very useful to the photographer, as long as you’re aware of what’s going on.

Pinnacles, Namburg National Park, Perth, Western Australia (Chiz) OK, you tell us, where’s the ‘subject’ in this shot?

Different angles

Landscape photography largely deals with fixed objects. We could move the odd pebble, but not a tree or a mountain. But you can always move the camera.

Switching lenses, or using a zoom, is just one way to change the framing of a shot. Even with the simplest of cameras, with one fixed lens, you can move forward, back, left, right, up and down. Try all of these options, and observe the results carefully.

There is every difference between snapping on a longer lens to take a ‘closer’ picture of a scene, and actually walking forward into it. If there’s a tree fifty metres away and a mountain ten kilometres away, zooming in will enlarge both of them equally within your frame. Walking forward 25 metres makes no difference to the apparent size of the mountain, but makes the tree look much larger. Zooms and telephotos are wonderful things, but they don’t replace the need to move.

And as you move, remember the third dimension. Why take every shot from normal eye-level? Scrambling up a boulder or outcrop can expand your view considerably, while getting low draws in more foreground detail. We’re outdoor people: who cares about grubby knees?

Foregrounds and panoramas

Many cameras have a ‘panoramic’ option, which – usually – allows you to ‘stitch’ several frames together to produce a wider view than the lens can achieve in a single shot.

A good panorama can create a great sense of space. However, we still see a lot of ‘panoramas’ which apparently do no more than chop off the top and bottom of the picture. This normally cuts out the sky and the foreground, just leaving the middle to far distance. This may satisfy those deluded souls who think you can see it all from a car window, but the active outdoor person is aware of, and cares about, more than just ‘the view’. When shooting panoramas, it’s usually best to pre-focus on the area you want in sharpest focus, then switch the focus to manual as auto-focus may find alternative points of focus in successive shots.

Cabo Calheta, Porto Santo, Madeira Islands (Jon) Perspective changes with position, but changing the focal length is often the next step

‘Foreground’ is not just another bit of photographic jargon, or a goody-bag you can mine to improve your framing. The foreground is where you are. It’s where you walk or climb or bike. The foreground is grit under your boot soles, the icy stream you’ve just crossed, the crystal glinting on the corner of a rock, a bright mound of moss campion. The foreground is what says ‘I was there’.

Jeffrey Hill, Lancashire (Jon) ‘Foreground’ is where you are

To make the most of foregrounds, there’s no substitute for a wide-angle lens. (See Focal length and angle of view for what constitutes a ‘wide-angle’ on different camera formats). Wide-angles can encompass both the broad sweep of a landscape and the vital foreground detail. However, they’re also pretty good at taking in things you don’t want as well as those you do, so think about the whole frame. Keep it simple!

Foregrounds are also a great way to enhance a sense of scale. It’s funny, but it’s true: if you want a photo of a mountain that gives a sense of its awesome size, filling the picture with it may not be the best way. For most people, especially those with limited experience of mountains, a shot of a peak in isolation, without context, is hard to ‘read’.

Including a relatively familiar object, like a tree, helps us make sense of the unfamiliar. Human figures are also ideal for this, because we all know how big – or rather, how small – human beings are. Making the figure really tiny in the frame can be very effective – as long as it’s still recognisably human, not just a small black dot.

Helvellyn, Lake District (Jon) Even really tiny figures can be very significant in the shot, especially when they appear to be at the focal point

So how do you ensure that you get strong foregrounds in your pictures? Before you lift the camera, start looking. Flowering plants, interestingly shaped rocks, fence lines, trees, shrubs can all make good foregrounds. But beware – not all foreground objects work equally well! In particular, be wary of random objects such as a tree branch with no connection to the rest of the image: it will usually look more like an annoying distraction. The foreground needs to relate to the background in some way. If you can see the trunk of the tree, and the ground in which it’s rooted, which perhaps connects to the view beyond, it can work much better than just a branch apparently hovering in mid-air. It’s a complicated topic, and what works for one person may not work for another, but it’s definitely something to consider.

Rocks make such good foregrounds that in some circles they are referred to as JCBs – for ‘Joe Cornish boulders’ –after Joe Cornish, one of the UK’s foremost landscape photographers, who tended to home in on convenient boulders for foreground interest.

Some foregrounds are fairly incidental, others may become the dominant element in the shot. To really concentrate on the foreground, you usually need to work at close range and let it fill the frame. Very often the best way to get close is to get low. Sit, kneel, crouch, crawl – do whatever it takes. We take many pictures from a crouching or kneeling position, not because we’re lazy – all that crouching and getting up again is harder work than shooting everything from standing eye-level. It’s so we can get closer to the figurative eye-level of that butterfly on a thistle, or clump of grass, or hoar-frost encrusted boulder.

Just be aware it can occasionally lead to embarrassment; both of us have had concerned strangers asking if we’re alright as they find us lying on the ground; and your so-called friends may find it amusing to pretend they’re about to put their boot on your head!

Really wide lenses let you work very close to foreground objects. Even tiny shifts in your camera position can have a big effect on where or how large they appear, while making negligible difference to distant skylines. Get close, get involved, but keep looking at the whole frame.

Middle management

Of course the real world is not divided neatly into ‘foreground’ and ‘background’. An image consisting solely of two disparate segments with no connection between them will often look odd, like a Photoshopped collision of two unrelated images. The bit in between is easily overlooked, but it’s what connects the foreground interest with the wider background landscape.

However, striving to ensure a strong middle-ground in every shot can make the image just too full and complex. The middle-ground can often be hinted at or suggested, while strong lines – rivers, paths, walls, even a line of people or sheep – can keep it simple but set up a clear connection.

Focus and Depth of Field

We introduced depth of field on Chapter 1. That’s a measure of its importance. In all of photography, there’s no technical concept that’s more vital to grasp. And by tradition, landscape photography – photography of places – aims to maximise depth of field.

This is not an arbitrary diktat. There’s sound reasoning behind it. As we’ve already suggested, when the shot has a clearly defined subject, like a portrait, it may not matter – it may even be a plus – if other elements in the frame are out of focus. But with general landscape views, everything is the subject. (Maybe the word ‘subject’ is almost as treacherous as that other word, ‘composition’.) In this kind of shot, a picture which is sharp throughout matches what we see, and looks more natural.

In TTL viewing the lens is wide open, which gives us the minimum depth of field, but if the picture’s taken at a smaller aperture, other objects, both closer and more distant, come into focus. But how do you know what will be in focus? And how do you control it?

Traditionally, every SLR had a depth of field preview button, which manually stopped the lens down to the required aperture. This also made the viewfinder image darker, but it was still helpful in giving at least an indication of the effect on depth of field. These are relatively rare now, but digital photography does give us an instant review instead, and we can zoom in and examine this more closely if we’re really concerned about sharpness.

Depth of field is influenced by three main factors.

 The aperture Depth of field is smallest at the widest aperture, and increases as you stop down. There’s much more depth of field at f/16 than at f/4 (remember, they’re fractions). Most cameras have a Landscape mode, one of whose main aims is to set a small aperture. You can also use Aperture-priority for direct control. Just remember that aperture is only one of the factors in play.

 The focal length of the lens The wider the angle (in other words, the shorter the focal length), the greater the depth of field. A 20mm lens has much greater depth of field than a 200mm.

 The distance to the point of focus Depth of field is greater when you’re focused on more distant objects. In real close-up work depth of field is minuscule.

We might assume that an aperture of f/16 or even f/22 would be best. However, due to diffraction, overall sharpness tends to fall off at the smallest apertures. The best compromise between depth of field and sharpest results is often with the lens roughly half way open (eg at f/11 for a lens whose minimum aperture is f/22). At lower ISO ratings this means a slow shutter speed, which in turn means using a tripod or risking camera-shake. Today we have both image stabilisation and the option to turn up the ISO a few notches.

The difference in depth of field is caused by changing the aperture from f/4 to f/8 (Chiz)

Making the most of depth of field

Remember that depth of field extends both behind and in front of the principal point of focus. If you focus on the most distant object in a scene, although depth of field is theoretically greatest, you’re only using half of its potential. The fact that more distant objects would be in focus – if there were any – is immaterial. In a typical landscape shot, the most distant part of the scene will be a skyline or horizon. Focusing on this is, as near as makes no difference, focusing on ‘infinity’. (Infinity has a somewhat specialised meaning in optics.) Depth of field theoretically extends beyond infinity, but this isn’t much use to anyone except Buzz Lightyear.

You’ll often see advice in books and magazines to focus ‘a third of the way into the view’. The trouble is that no-one ever explains what they mean by this, probably because they can’t. I’ve never yet found an interpretation that really makes mathematical or optical sense. After all, what is a third of the way from here to infinity?

With some very conventionally framed landscape images, focusing a third of the way up from the bottom of the frame can work, but this too breaks down as soon as you’re more imaginative about framing.