Landscapes and People

I have always had great interest in Landscape photography, admiring the likes of Ansel Adams, Charlie Waite and Rodney Lough Jr. and I aspire to see the world in the way they do/did. “The world is a remarkable place full of beauty and splendor,” I remember Rodney Lough Jr. saying early in my photography life and that quote sticks with me every time I am hiking in a national park, or watching the sun set from a traffic jam in my car. When I am in a place that is so incredible, unique, beautiful and colorful, I feel a sense of peace. And ultimately, that meant me reaching for my camera and attempt to record what I see.

Over time I began to understand that, in these situations, it is a time not just to photograph a memory, but to capture your unique take on nature at that one moment, attempting to create an image that reflects that exact feeling you felt so that others can hopefully feel the same way. To me, Landscape photography is incredibly wonderful to view because, while the subject (ie, the Grand Canyon) may be the same, seeing the photographers vision, magic, and how they captured their impression of the scene is very fascinating.

Recently, I have been reading some magazines and viewing certain photos on Flickr and I have taken an interest in viewing landscape photography with people in it. Initially I was a little unsure how I felt about my own landscape photography having a person in the scene, but I began to realize the touch of humanity a person can add to a landscape. I am attracted to photographs with animals, tribes and people in their environment, and I am now enjoying experimenting adding a life-form against the scene I see. I was inspired by an article about Jean Marc Caracci, an urban photographer who has a great knack for capturing people in their natural environment (see Homo Urbanus Europeanus). People can add a lot of interest and charm to an image and as a human can draw the eye and create a familiar object in an unfamiliar place. I also remember reading a while back in “Outdoor Photographer” where Nevada Wier states that a human in a scene creates “personal cues inside ourselves” and while the figure may not be the point of immediate interest (depending on the scene and image of course), “the eye eventually recognizes the figure and the mind registers kinship and empathy.” That sentence has pretty much stuck with me since reading it and has changed the way I compose a landscape photo that includes the presence of a human.

I also find that adding a person to a landscape can add just that little bit of something to the composition. While the above photo isn’t perfectly a perfectly balance composition, I have tried to make use of positive and negative space – the canyons and the rugged landscape being the positive space, and the blues, sunrise and the brights becoming the negative space. Including a person in this image, a different positive element is added to the scene and ultimately alters the negative space and now, just as Nevada Wier states, the “symbolic and emotional meaning” of the photograph is changed.

I love shooting landscapes and how I feel when I am out in these amazing places on earth. I don’t always pick up my camera right away, I tend to take in the scene first thinking about what I see and how it makes me feel. I think it’s because of this I am starting to think more about adding people to some of the landscapes I shoot as I love to see people’s emotions, reactions, calmness, just like the shot above, when they are also in that moment.