This is Sunland, a small community along the Columbia River in Eastern Washington. I've been going here since I was a baby, so until I got my hands on a camera I was always the one in the pictures with my mom behind the camera. These images were taken on top of the big windy hill that leads down to Sunland (in the first picture, you can see some houses on an island towards the right). Trying to capture the setting sun along with the water and mountains, I had my brother Adam stand on top of the rail to get a different view. Tom Ang adds that mountains have very many viewpoints, and that often the first picture taken will be the most obvious. Looking at my first image, this is true. It was a straight on shot with not much composition. Incorporating a small workout within my picture taking, i crouched down while holding the camera very still, and was able to capture a whole new image. You can no longer see what Adam is looking at, which gives the picture a more mysterious tone. The sky is not as bright and has much more depth than before along with revealing the different hills within the mountains. Just these few pieces of composition make the picture completely different, and it was all due to a simple bend of the legs!
All in all, sceneries are thought to be the easiest subjects to take pictures of, when really they are the most difficult. Anybody can click a button and see a mountain, but it takes more to tell a story.
From what other angles do you think this picture would be more dramatic?
I liked how in your pictures you were very vivid with giving useful examples to what Tom Ang was talking about when saying "In such circumstances, the trick is to put your camera away, walk around, and just absorb the place for awhile" (Ang,23). Have you tried having the camera be a profile of Adams' face, which would capture what is beside adam and possibly even more hills?
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the pictures. Very transcendent. Each angle and positioning of the photo truly had an impact on the representation as well as the true meaning of what is being conveyed in each picture.
ReplyDeleteI like to do photography as well so it has been nice to read your blog posts on it as you get better at it. Landscapes are tricky because inherently, unless you take the picture in a truly amazing place, landscapes are boring. At least, that is my opinion. It is then the job of the photographer to make it interesting. And you did that! It is an interesting angle and something to look at that isn't just a landscape. To make the picture even more dynamic, you probably just had to use the rule of thirds on your subject. The bottom picture of the two is "rule of thirds-ish" but if you just positioned the subject slightly more to the right, I think it would be a really great shot. But that's just my opinion. All in all, I have enjoyed your blogs and you have done some great photo work.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite of your two pictures is definitely the first one, because the land fills more of the picture, so there's less empty space. Since there's a little more to look at, though not too much, it makes the picture more interesting. Plus, as you said in your post, it does a better job of capturing "everything the scenery displays."
ReplyDeleteTo answer you question, I think the picture would be more dramatic if you took it from the same angle, but focused on the sunset instead of on Adam, making him into just a silhouette. As a silhouette, it would be even more mysterious because you would hardly be able to see the person in the photo, yet it would also be beautiful, because focusing on the sunset would make the colors in the sunset more drastic and different.