Is Half Dome is a joke God played on photographers ?

[neal_shields]

Is Half Dome is a joke God played on photographers to teach us humility?

 

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I just read an essay by Mark Citret in which he suggests that man and man�s structures are as �natural� as anything else in nature and it started me thinking, as his essays have a tendency to do.

 

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Edward Wesson took photographs of groceries and chemical plants and showed us more than we would see ourselves if we had been there. Moreover, once you see a Weston cabbage you will see more, everytime you look at a cabbage, for the rest of your life.

 

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Ansel Adams took wonderful photographs of landscapes but (with exceptions) usually conveyed 1/10 (a kind estimate) of the visual experience that being there in person would provide to even the most obtuse observer.

 

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Down deep, I think all landscape photographers know that they are failures. There was an old movie called �Hicky and Boggs� with Robert Culp and Bill Cosby. They played private detectives and the running joke was that they used huge 44 magnum pistols. Everytime they missed the bad guys they would turn to each other and say: �we need to get a bigger gun�. It seems to me that people are packing more and bigger cameras into the wilderness, and coming back with wonderful photographs, compared to other photographs and pitiful abstractions compared the scene that they photographed.

 

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Isn�t it a much higher calling to show our audience that there is beauty everywhere in their everyday lives, then to convey the impression that beauty is reserved for the affluent that have the wealth and leisure to travel to remote �unspoiled� places.

 

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When I go to a Museum and look at an Ansel Adams print, and mentally compaire it to simular vistas that I have actually experienced, I feel like if this is the best, why should I bother to even try?

[micah_marty1]

"Down deep, I think all landscape photographers know that they are

failures."

 

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If their objective is to convey exactly what it's like to "be there,"

yes. But if the picture is meant to portray things that someone may

not have seen (or at least not in that way) at the scene, I'm not so

sure.

 

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Your question seems to imply that the role of the landscape

photographer is simply that of the postcard photographer: a pleasant

depiction of impressive scenery that will substitute for "being

there." But slides and color panoramas and videotape can do all of

those things better than can a black-and-white landscape photo, which

means the landscape photographer might be after something deeper and

more meaningful than a postcard.

 

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P.S. I agree that it's important to show that there is beauty

everywhere. Actually, even Ansel agreed with this: plenty of his

images (including many of his most famous ones) were made outside of

the national parks. often in very mundane settings. It's probably safe

to say that the demands of the buying public (rather than the efforts

of Ansel himself) are responsible for the predominance of his

Wagnerian wilderness scenes.

 

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<><><><

[psychophoto]

I'm not going to say that all landscape photographers are

failures, because failure is entirely relative to an attempted feat

or goal, and what a photographer is trying to accomplish is

entirely unpredictable. To me, trying to describe the beauty

inherent to nature is like trying to describe God in finite detail

using the limited means of modern English. I sure as hell can't

do it, and I've yet to see someone who can. The best I can do is

to photograph the landscape. I do it and I love doing it- I wouldn't

have it any other way. Have I ever captured the essence of God

and the full impact in a moment of time at a particular place?

Not quite. Will I ever? Doubtful. But does that mean that I, as a

landscape photographer, am a failure? Not in the least. My goal

in photography is to do things to the best of my ability, and I do

that nearly every day. I may not be able to create a photograph

that, to me, has the same emotional impact on me that actually

being there does, but that's not quat I'm trying to do. So I don't

sweat it.

[dmin-99]

I guess your motto is "I can't fail if I don't try". It's a wonder

you make it out of bed in the morning.

[peter brown - www.peterbro]

Hi Neal,

 

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It seems this is the time of year for these philosophical discussions. You have

posed an interesting question.

 

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I'm not sure if I agree with your tongue-in-cheek statement; "Down deep, I

think all landscape photographers know that they are failures." . . but I think

I see what you are getting at. I know from my own experience that I am

never completely satisfied with my final image no matter how good or bad it

is, but rather than feeling it is, or I am, a failure, I like to look at it as; "next

time I'll do better" .

 

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This urge to produce something better than the last image, is what gives me

the drive to go out in the early hours of the morning or late in the day,

lugging heavy equipment many kilometers across rugged countryside to find

that elusive, "best" image.

 

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I take images of the landscape, primarily for myself and secondly for my

audience. If I am able to evoke an emotional response in my viewers, that is

a bonus, but ultimately my landscape photography is a personal experience.

 

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When I do shoot for an audience, it is to provide, for those less able or less

fortunate, a window into what it is like, "out there". I also shoot to educate

people about how beautiful these places are, but also how fragile they are as

well, and how we must protect what is left before it is too late.

 

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As an aside, I am a Divemaster as well as a photographer and I have taken

many tourists out to photograph the wonders of the Great Barrier Reef.

Some of these tourists, the affluent and the not so affluent, particularly from

some of the larger Asian cities, have never even seen the sea until they

arrive in Cairns, for their "once-in--lifetime" five day holiday.

By showing them and educating them about the beauty of this wonder of the

world, I hope that they go back with a better appreciation of nature and

conservation. It has always amazed me how this experience changes people

and I have had comments about how they never realised how fragile this

ecosystem was and that they can now appreciate how we must protect these

unique systems.

With my landscape images I hope I can have the same effect, and educate

those people who are unable to visit these often, difficult to get to places.

 

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But, far from just taking the grand vistas I also look down at my feet, or at

the tree trunks or around the rocks, finding the small worlds within worlds,

which many pass by without even realising they're there. Just this morning I

photographed some stunning seed pods amongst the leaf litter on my own

bush property. Certainly the vistas are important, but so are the details .

 

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William Blake wrote;

 

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To see a world in a grain of sand

And heaven in a wild flower

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour.

 

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I prefer to photograph the beauty of nature and hopefully inspire people to

think about the folly of not protecting these wonderful areas. Others

photograph the destruction of nature, heavily logged areas, factories where

once stood trees, pollution, etc, etc. and their message is "look at what

we've done". Whether groceries and chemical plants are as "natural" as

anything else in nature is a debatable point, but for me they're certainly not

as beautiful.

 

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I'm sure you'll get some interesting comments.

 

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Kind regards

 

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Peter Brown

[glenn_kroeger]

John Fielder (and others) talks about three scales of landscapes, the

microcosm, the intimate landscape (no horizon) and the grand scenic.

I think that the first two enjoy every bit the success rate of

cabbages and chemical plants... but clearly the grand scenic is tough

to capture. On the other hand, if you consider the photograph as a

recording of light, not things, there are many grand scenics that

capture the majesty of the moment of light... and since we can't all

be there to witness every sunrise, sunset and clearing storm, efforts

to capture that light are well worth the effort.

[photomark]

Good question Neal. But I think you underestimate cabbage. I

love those Weston photos too, but I don't think for a moment that

he captured more than 1/10 of beauty and wonder of this

fantastic vegetable. That came out sounding kind of funny, but

I'm quite serious. It is easy to think that Weston is doing a better

job but comparing him to A. Adams is like comparing...well,

cabbages to half domes. A cabbage is something you can hold

in your hand, nature surrounds you. Although people tend to go

to places of high visual interest, the things that make the

experience of being in nature what it is are overwhelmingly

non-visual. It is the wind, smell, temperature, etc. It should come

as no more of a surprise that a lowly photographer can't capture

all of nature than it should that Weston photos don't taste good

(speculating).

[neal_shields]

Wayne, let's just say that if I take a picture of the sun on the

horizon, it is probably a sunset.

[qtluong]

I don't agree that a well executed landscape photograph

would provide 1/10 of the visual experience of beeing there.

In fact from a purely visual point of view, it can be more

satisfying than the actual experience, especially if unique

conditions are captured. However the experience of being in

a landscape far transcends the visual aspect, and this is what I

think is missing in landscape photographs. On the other hand,

there isn't much more in the experience of looking at a pepper,

than, well, looking at it.

[tim_atherton2]

I didn't think photography was about the visual experience of being

there anyway...? The photograph can never be a true representation -

it's two dimensional; in most of the cases we are talking about it's

not in "realistic" colour, we have manipulated it with focal length,

viewpoint, film, printing, filters etc. And is half-dome really 14"

or whatever tall...? so forget 1/10th - how about 1/500,000th or

something In fact it's often much further from the reality of the

scene than most of our conditioning allows us to realise.

 

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A better starting point is, perhaps, the emotional experience of

being there.

[edward_burlew]

Well isn't this just so much fun, To say that landscape photogos know

they are failures is just so much rubbish, plain and simple rubbish.

So dispensing with that rather rude insult to one type of

photographer, lets look at photography in genreal.

 

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Photography is a two dimensional representation in an chemical

reaction( OK digital too ) for a breif part of a second( I ignore

reciprocity failure, or any failure) as focused by a lense to limit

the field of view. Well of course that will not represent the whole

experience of a mountain or a leaf. The photo is a microcosm. The

mind of the viewer is what really brings a photgraph to life. The

famous masters of photography are able to bring to life our

imaginations so we can tune into the photo and remember or contrive

an experience that has meaning. I do not conjecture that the meaning

will be good or bad, but the most popular photos are usually

pleasant.

 

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The miniscule moment in time and the limited view of the horizon taht

the captured image portrays is tha clue to our mind's eye which is

stimulated and creates the rest of the experience by retrieving

memory o just letting the imagination contrive the rest of the

reality.

What is fun about large format is taht more detail is available for

the mind to assimilate and then to process and work with. This

conveys a higher sense of reality. Clearly a watercolour landscape

image painted on paper can please the eye and mind but has less

detail. I guess that too would be a failure. I guess too that a

portrait photo or painting would be a totoal failure by the first

author because the person aws not able to be heard, touched, smelled

etc....

 

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So the photo is the key to unlocking the eye of the ind that

completes the image. I will go out on a limb and compare it to a

fragrant smell that also unlocks the imagination or memory to trigger

a response.

 

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The response to a photo is a widely varied as the truth.

 

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ED

[doug_paramore]

Neal: It must be the season that brings all these great thought-

provoking posts to our forum. You mention Ansel Adams and his great

shots of Half Dome, etc. Thinks of this though...when you go to

photograph Half Dome, you have one or two days, you take what

lightings conditions nature throws at you, and do the best you can.

Ansel lived in the park for years. He was shooting in his own back

yard. If the light wasn't right, he could go home and drink coffee

until conditions improved. That doesn't take away from his

photography, but it sure makes things easier. As for me, I live in

the coastal plain of Alabama, where there aren't any hills over a

couple of hundred feet and certainly no great vistas stretching for

unlimited miles. Yet, I have make some good photographs by

concentrating on the small segments. I feel that I have make people

look at our area with a new appreciation. I am not a world famous

photographer, but my work sells reasonably well at the art shows

simply because I work hard to show that our part of the South has a

beauty of its own. I would be as lost photographing the Western parks

as Ansel was when he tried to photograph the South. As for Weston's

pepper series, he got a lot of flack, including some from Ansel

Adams, for photographing "vegatables". Have you priced a pepper print

lately?

 

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As photographers we can't always capture the overwhelming beauty of

great scenes, but we can intrepret and sometimes show things the

average person would never notice or think about.

 

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Regards,

[b.d.trabitz___]

Do we photograph a scene or do we create our emotion that we

experiance upon viewing a scene. If a viewer of the photograph

experiances an emotion ( not necessarily the same emotion as the

photographer) then the photograph is a work of art. IMO. I dont know

if it was Westons intention in his peppers and shells to express the

emotions these images create in me as the viewer, but these are among

the most erotic works of art I have ever seen. His nudes to me are

representations of the landscape.

 

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Adams has created a body of work that interprets the grandeur of the

SW. His later prints have been described as Wagnerian. I would

perhaps use Beethovans (th as a better example. Some of the earlier

prints aare more reminiscent of the 6th symphony.

 

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Some of us photograph our feelings aroused by the scene before us and

not the postcard image.(At least this is what we try to do- and on

occassion, succeed.

[jim_galli4]

Apples and oranges. The camera lens can capture a scene with more

detail than your eve can ever see. Sharp from corner to corner.

Ready to be studied and enjoyed. Your eye sees a very small narrow

field directly in front of you. But it can update that information a

billion times a minute. Your camera only updates once. God's

creation is "beyond finding out" both for your camera, and your eye.

[john_powers1]

Yes, at a certain philosophical level landscape images (as do all

images) fail. But it is the failures that we cultivate for they push and

prod and throw us out of the comfy little rooms that we busily build

for ourselves (and are built for us). I'd rather be free and failing in

the attempt to look beyond the "real" than caged and surrounded by

beauty.

Beware! Your assumptions (or is it your audience) are leading you

into a trap.

[stephen_vaughan3]

"Try again, fail again. Fail better."..........

[ellis_vener_photography]

I was under the impression that Half Dome was a practical joke

God (using a glacier) played on a rather large piece of granite.

[ellis_vener_photography]

<I>"When I go to a Museum and look at an Ansel Adams print,

and mentally compaire it to simular vistas that I have actually

experienced."</I> That makes sense, since virtually every Ansel

Adams image you'll see in a museum is in black & white. Reality

is color. <P>Tuan said it best in his post, but let me add some of

my early morning thoughts: <P>

large format photography at its best, for it's practioners, is to me

about spendingthe time really contemplating and being in the

moment of contemplation. It is about abstracting out some

aspect ofthat experiencethat i can either contemplate again later,

or share with another person for them to contemplate what I saw

and abstracted out.<P>Photography is an abstraction, not a

recreation of reality. At its best all art is an abstraction that

resonates outwards, a photograph is its own reality, an object to

be dealt with not to be confused with reality. After all we don't

expect "Hamlet" to be an accurate depiction of the Danish royal

court at some point in the middle ages, or a Rembrandt portrait

to be a four dimensional (height x width x depth x time) depiction

of say, a Polish knight or a Dutch burgher -- so why should we

expect a photograph to compete with an experience of

reality.<P>How can any photograph compete with the realness

of an experience? You are in Yosemite Valley, looking up at Half

Dome: the wind is blowing, you hear moving in the trees, you

see it in clouds are moving across the sky. There are all of the

millions of other things going on, outside of you and inside of

you; time is flowing. The photograph sits (or hangs there in front

of you in your home or in a gallery. all ofthose other million of

things are going on again in a seperate time-space now, you are

now looking at a print of Half Dome. Maybe it was made while

you were there, maybe it was made at another time by other eyes

and hands and experiences, but either way you are no longer

contemplating Half Dome itself, you are looking at a frozen

instant (or maybe it is made over several minutes and depicts a

longer passage of time - but still a particular passage of time,)

seen from a particular vantage point, framed a certain way, seen

with a certain intent, recorded with a particular media,

reproduced a certain way, printed to a certain size, presented in

a particular way, seen now by a particular set of eyes --your

eyes-- processed in your mind with your own particular set of

emotions (I mention this first as I believe very strongly that

photography is foremost comprehended in your emotions),

intellectual constructs, and imaginings.<P>"A higher calling"?

May be, but you have to make people listen. And that is what

Adams was doing with his photography. Saying "look at these

places, these places should not be taken for granted, they need

to be preserved, set aside, perhaps revered. I agree with you that

we would all be better off if we treated all of every day life with

such attention.

[skygzr]

Ansel Adams had the good fortune to see Half Dome frequently, in all

kinds of conditions. Knowing it intimately was not a problem.

Rather, his challenge was to see this beautiful mountain every day

and not take it for granite.

 

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I'll be good next year, I promise.

[neal_shields]

I think Ellis Vener�s answer has helped me most because this really

was a question. I didn�t mean to be rude or insult anyone�s work.

Obviously �failure� was a poor choice of words. Photography is a

hobby for me and one that I don�t spend enough time on. Someday when

I retire, maybe. Most of you could drop your camera and accidentally

take a better picture than my best work.

 

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What I like about photography as a hobby, is that if forces the

photographer to look at things that everyone else�s brain has been

trained to ignore. Somewhat recapturing some of the child like wonder

that most of us tend to lose as we get older.

 

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I was raised in South Texas, the beauty of which I will defend to the

death, but grand vistas aren�t around every corner. On a visit to

New Zealand, I shot frame after frame of breathtaking vistas, only

to get some of the most boring prints that I have ever seen. That

pretty much got me out of the grand vista business.

 

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What Ellis says about abstracting something out rather than trying to

capture the whole may be what I needed to hear.

[chris_jordan]

I think strong photographs are the result of an intimate visual

dialogue beteen the artist and subject. The photograph is the

material product of this interchange, and if it can be characterized

as "beautiful" in and of itself, then I think it has succeeded,

regardless of how it compares to the original "scene".

[hyperfocal]

I think Neal is right on the money. The almost complete fixation

photographers and photo editors have on the cliché is beyond pathetic

and represents the complete failure of imagination. I mean does the

world really need one more picture of halfdoom, the Tetons, or the

Grand Canyon rim with the obligatory gnarled juniper tree in the

foreground? All these people rush off to phtoograph the landscape

and end up taking the same worn out �icon photos� that have been done

a million times before. In short, a lot of landscpae photography is

nothing more than pretty scenery realistically captured in good light

�.ZZZZZZZZZZZZ. It replicates looking out a window rather than into

a dreamy painting. But each to his own.

 

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The really talented photographers can achive visual impact in their

Backyards and don�t need to rely on �perfect� and pristine

landscapes, or exotic places. If you can�t take good shots in the

local park, what makes you think you�ll do better by lugging the gear

into the unspoiled backcountry? Do you want a record, or art?

 

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Think about this: The pristine Sierra Club calander shot of a place

untouched by mankind DOES NOT represent how most view the landscape;

not the way most people encounter. So why are so few photographers

interested in documenting the landscape from a human interaction

standpoint - how people usually see it? Doesn�t this approach have

potential?

[pat_kearns1]

I guess if being a landscape photographer is being a "failure", I

hope one day I will be as big a "failure" as Adams.

[ellis_vener_photography]

<I>"I think strong photographs are the result of an intimate visual

dialogue beteen the artist and subject."</I><P>Nice language,

but what does it mean? Landscapes don't respond to my

attempts to start much less continue a dialog. They seem rather

impassive to attempts to communicate with them. All I end up

doing is having a dialog with myself, making choices of where I

want to point the camera, which lens, filter, film, framing, timing

(now or later, and if so, when?) and exposure to use in an

attempt to find a visual equivalent for my internal intellectual &

emotional machinations. <P>I "listen to the trees" as John

Sexton calls the process, but I don't engage in a dialog with

them. I don't think they care whether or not I pull out a camera or

not. <P>Photographs, paintings, sculptures, plays, poems,

architecture, drawings, music, trees, glaciers, mountains, solar

eclipses, prose,etc. -- good, bad, or indifferently executed --are

just metaphors for somehing else. It is when I am compelled to

start looking beyond the surface and start getting curious about

what else is going on, that's when, for me, photographs (et. al.),

whether someone else or I made the thing I'm responding to,

start getting interesting, which is i guess my criteria of good.

[matt_long]

Neal's reference to his New Zealand trip and the resultant

"boring" vistas strikes brings up an interesting point. When I visit

new territory, I have that childlike awe that comes about from

being in a new environment. Sometimes we have to get over

that initial "infatuation" and look beyond our feelings as we

assess the attritutes of the surrounding landscape. For me, LF

photography makes me study my environment as I try to

determine what it is that provokes those feelings of awe. I think

that most of us can trust our gut instincts. However, it's being

able to quantify and qualify those emotions that makes the

difference between a photograph that is personally fulfilling

versus one that is mediocre.

 

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Happy holidays to all and best wishes for a productive (and

fulfilling!) 2002!