Wednesday Landscapes, 23 May 2018

[Leslie Reid]

You are invited to upload one or more of your landscape photos and, if you’d like, to accompany your image with some commentary: challenges you faced in making the image? your intent for the image? settings? post-processing decisions? why you did what you did? the place and time? or an aspect you’d like feedback on? And please feel free to ask questions of others who have posted images or to join the discussion. If you don’t feel like using words, that’s OK too—unaccompanied images (or unaccompanied words, for that matter) are also very much welcomed. As for the technicalities, the usual forum guidelines apply: files < 1 MB; image size <1000 px maximum dimension.

I was away from the computer for much of last week, so I unfortunately didn’t have a chance to answer Michael’s question (asking what I meant when I said I considered my second image to be less abstract) until a couple of days ago. I loved the question—it made me think seriously about how I view abstraction in the context of a landscape image. What I finally settled on was that a landscape becomes abstract for me when the image doesn’t contain many clues about its context. At that point, I’m viewing the image primarily as a graphic design, rather than bringing to it the impressions I have of being in (or wanting to be in) places like the one pictured. I spent some time over the last couple of days going over my archive with that in mind, and started realizing how important it also is to keep some “landscapeness” in the image—if it goes too far toward the abstract, it loses the sense of landscape. On the other hand, it’s quite possible to create something with the sense of a landscape out of an image that originally has nothing to do with a landscape—I’m still pondering that one.

 

Anyway, the end result of the ponderings was my selection of this image for this week—it’s one of my most abstract landscapes that’s still mostly landscape. There’s also not a lot of post-processing here: I brightened the whites a bit, pulled down the shadows and highlights a bit less than that, and cloned out some footprints. The only unexpected thing I did was to go to the Lightroom split-tone panel and add yellow-orange to the shadows to pull them away from blue—that’s what makes the blue highlights stand out so much in contrast. When the whole scene was blue, the bright parts looked rather ordinary. The scene started off dark since I’d exposed on the highlights to keep them from blowing out, and it was early morning before the sun got over the bluff above the beach.

 

[michaellinder]

Flying to Seattle ( Sorry, Leslie, nothing really abstract about this one)

[Glenn McCreery]

Another approach for making seascapes look more abstract is to use long exposures. This photo was taken before sunrise at Molokai Lookout on Oahu, with exposure of 30s, at f:2.8, and ISO 800. The island of Molokai is seen in the distance. Although this photo is not intended to be very abstract, the more that I crop it, the more abstract it becomes.

 

Wynn Bullock, one of my favorite early photographers, made long exposure photographs of surf, kelp, and rocks, that made the surf look more like fog than surf.

Edited May 23, 2018 by Glenn McCreery

[Glenn McCreery]

Here is a more abstract crop (plus a few other adjustments). Edited May 23, 2018 by Glenn McCreery

[Greg M]

Here, I chose a landscape above the landscape..

 

[michaellinder]

I took a hint from Glenn, although I didn't use a different crop. I simply darkened the image; I'll leave it up to everyone else whether I succeeded in rendering it more abstract.

[mikehegarty01]

I took this sunset last year and never did anything with it till now.

[Bill Bowes]

Greg, is your middle name Weston ? Here another sunrise on the beach with good coffee. XC 16-50 on Fuji XE-1. Aloha, Bill[ATTACH=full]1247160[/ATTACH]

[photog1514]

Test shot with latest film camera acquisition...Canon F1 (new) and Canon nFD 15mm fisheye. Mainly checking for light leaks, etc...wasn't too concerned with composition. Not bad for an expired roll of ISO 200 Walmart film.

 

[Greg M]

Last two mornings...

 

 

[Tim_Lookingbill]

[photog1514]

Taken on a side trip to Kodachrome Basin after a day or two at Bryce Canyon. Funny how Mother Nature has a way of shaping things.

 

Edited May 28, 2018 by photog1514

[Greg M]

Impressive....LMAO....