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The essence of landscape photography
As a travel and landscape photographer, I'm always on the lookout for images that define a particular landscape, for unique features that set it apart from other places in the world. I live in the north of Holland, a very open landscape, flat, almost featureless. Folks that live there don't like trees; they get in the way of their view of the horizon. The good news is, here you can breathe. Defining a landscape involves finding elements that identify it, features that are unique to this particular area. Features such as the old dikes across the province that have all but lost their original function. Farms that proudly stand their ground in heavy storms. Mud flats outside the dikes, where new land is formed. And of course the sky, everywhere you look, for lack of mountains and hills. Lately I've come to discover that in my photography, the landscape itself presents me with a choice of two options. Either I choose to record the feel of the landscape, the atmosphere and nothing else - or I choose to dissect the landscape, like a surgeon, to record even the minutest detail. There is no in-between. Motion - no detail In the first approach, I show as little detail as possible - the fewer the better. I choose this approach when I'm struck by the feel of the landscape, the light, the smell, the air - rather than what's actually there to see. In this instance I use a small digital camera that I move about while I'm taking pictures, without focussing. This creates patterns and colours that are unpredictable, and that's what makes it exciting. There are no details that distract you as a viewer - you can almost inhale the landscape.
Large format - a great deal of detail I choose the second approach when I'm struck by details and patterns in the landscape, such as the veins in the leaves, raindrops on a meadow, cracks in the walls, furrows in a newly ploughed field. You can do this by making a composite image of several smaller digital shots (for a description of this technique click here). But many subjects do not lend themselves well to this technique; I generally prefer to use a large format camera, a view camera.
This is a camera of a type that's been around for 150-odd years. The image is projected onto a ground glass of about 4" x 5" (9 x 12 cm), that's why this is usually referred to as a 4x5 view camera, or in the UK also as a 5x4 view camera. When you're satisfied with the composition, you replace the ground glass with a piece of film of 4x5" and you make your exposure. You have the film developed, and you scan the resulting image, so that you can post-process the image on the computer and send it to a printer. The resulting digital version corresponds to an image from a (hypothetical) digital camera of 105 megapixels. The image therefore contains about 20 times more detail than a picture from an ordinary 5 megapixel digital camera. You can print the end result easily at 24" x 28" (60 x 70 cm) without any loss of detail. You can even study the print with a magnifying glass and discover new details every day... Unfortunately, there is no way this level of detail can be represented on a website. I specifically choose this technique in order to make large prints that I can show at an exhibition (and of course you can order such prints through this website - please click here).
Both approaches change the viewer's perception of reality as it was recorded photographically. With motion blur, I remove detail; with large format photography I show details that you would ordinarily never notice in passing. With both approaches I try to get closer to my ultimate goal in landscape photography: to show what a particular landscape truly is about. Gerard Kingma
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