I’ve been thinking about ‘nothingness’ the past few days. I think, in some ways, it’s much easier to photograph because we’re dealing with just form, light and shade. With photographs of definable landmarks, we’re caught by the limitations and (often) the fact that these places have been photographed so extensively, that it’s hard to see something new in it.

Glad you liked the post :-)

If the photo has no particular subject or subjects that are the heroes of the photo, then I think soft tone works much better. The eye is drawn to detail, so if there’s detail there, it better be interesting detail.

So we have the anonymous landscape and also the obvious landscape too.

I completely agree about the beach scenes. I live not far away from portobello beach and it’s often cluttered with visitors, dogs, children with ice creams. I cycle past it each day on my daily cycle and the beach often has something new to show me. If I wanted to, I could make portobello beach a study for a long time.

Perhaps if you’re struggling with visualisation, focusing on one landscape and going back a lot at different times, different seasons is worth a go.

I also completely agree with the tips Bruce has given when arriving on location. Arrive at a location and continually discard options until you have you arrive at the essence of what you want to achieve (bearing in mind that there is more than the physical terra firma to think about).

D

David – I love your input here. That’s a great example – a massive Pizza Hut on the beach and you managed to extract it. I think good photography is being able to ignore parts of the landscape and home right into one central theme.

I often find participants on workshops will walk right past some amazing part of the landscape, like someone walking through a forest declaring in a loud voice ‘there’s no animals here!’, they’re literally walking through the landscape with their eyes wide shut.

There are a couple of suggestions I can give you Gary, that may help you;

1. Refine your search for good locations. Start with a wide net: a large beach, and then get onto the beach, go for a walk. This will reduce your search to a much narrower part of the beach, then look at objects that have been washed up on the beach, this will reduce your search even further. Once you find something on the beach, a small log, a couple of pebbles, etc, stop and now start to work with that tiny segment of the beach.

Like all problems, looking at the bigger picture will only make the whole thing impossible to deal with. Reducing, refining, getting into one small part of the landscape will allow you to focus on that, and that alone.

2. Set your camera to one focal length. For most landscapes, wide angles tend to be used for most shots, so go for something like 24mm on full frame and 16mm (or there abouts) on APS. Tape the zoom ring in place so you can’t shift it.

This will make you ‘work your location’ by wandering around more, viewing through the viewfinder different vantage points.

3. Roam, stop, look through the view finder, try different heights – even get down onto your belly to see it from a crabs perspective.

Often I feel people just get to a location and stand on the edges of it and look into the entire thing and go ‘what do I shoot?’. You only find something of interest if you keep moving and start to look more for foreground interest.

Gary, one last thing, you said :

“Bruce has stated numerous times that his skill has changed (matured) over the years. Most people do not pursue photography fully (I don’t) so it takes longer to develop a visual eye or it may never develop as I so often feel.”

I didn’t pursue photography fully (as a profession anyway) for a long time, and even now, that I am fully professional, I still don’t get to shoot a lot. There is a lot of downtime between shoots, admin, office duties, paying people, researching places, business meetings, having a normal life. I do feel that there’s an assumption that shooting all the time improves your skill, but I don’t think so. You can shoot carelessly all the time and learn nothing, as I feel a lot of ’snappers’ do.

We all have our learning curves, and sometimes I feel some people simply need to be ’shown the way’ or given a push in the right direction and then they’re off…. others will never get it. I’ve seen both these kinds of people on my trips for instance and it’s very interesting to see that some people can learn, others had it in them but didn’t know, and others will never have an aptitude for it. I don’t know what this means, but I would suggest you need to ‘fall in love’ with a place and repeat visits to it. You’ll see new things every time, and sometimes nothing at all.

I often come home from trips with nothing to show. It’s just part of photography that you don’t always get, but I do think there’s something to be learned from this also. Be kind to yourself :-)

All places have tones, shapes and light. So while there are no domestic mountain ranges here these 3 things exist in abundance. I need to develop vision to see them and skill to take the image I see. So getting to a minimalist landscape has less to do with location and more about seeing. That is why it is so hard.

Gary

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The question isn’t would I or wouldn’t I shoot minimalist landscapes. It is, do I see the image in a minimalist landscape? Being new to photography I usually do not see images. Bruce has stated numerous times that his skill has changed (matured) over the years. Most people do not pursue photography fully (I don’t) so it takes longer to develop a visual eye or it may never develop as I so often feel. It would be nice if we could all say photography is a pursuit but for some we are standing still.

Would I shoot a minimalist landscape? I will as soon as I can get to one. I have read that we should learn to leave out of a photo what doesn’t add to it. I may do the reverse. Leave out everything and then add only what does add to it.

Thanks for the help. Hopefully it will lead to taking better photographs.

Gary

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