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- Name
- Andy
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I love landscape photography. A lot of it is to do with simply being outdoors and exploring new places. There's something really special about being out before dawn and seeing the sun come up. I've always been a bit of a sucker for the "big scenes" such as up in the north west of Scotland, or Iceland, the Faroe Islands etc. but it's simply not practical to do frequent trips to any of these "landscape luxury" locations - if I'm lucky I'll get one a year, if that. The cost, time and travel commitment is just too much.
So, how to scratch the itch? Surrey where I live is devoid of mountains, dramatic coastlines, glaciers and basalt pillars. It's pretty dull from a traditional landscape photography perspective once you've done the expansive view of rolling countryside from the top of Newlands Corner or similar. To be honest I was pretty bored with it and had largely written off finding anything new to photograph in a 10 mile radius. Recently though, I've had a change of heart. Spurred on and inspired by some of the inspiring content to be found at On Landscape and some great photographer friends, I decided to think about things differently and look more closely at somewhere just a couple of miles from home, that I could get to easily and quickly. I decided to focus on a small area of heathland called Whitmoor Common, and try to see it afresh.
I've photographed there before and to be honest it's not very inspiring at first sight. About 1 square mile of boggy, grassy, heathery, flat, lightly wooded Surrey heathland which is pretty dull in the traditional sense of landscape photography. A bit of a challenge then, so I decided to have a go at it. Just for fun, I elected to use very non-standard landscape kit - a Sony A7R with a manual focus Canon FD 85mm f/1.2 lens. Rather longer than the more common wide angle that I'd normally employ. So immediately I was looking for different types of pictures, and trying different techniques. Also, I decided to shoot everything at f/1.2. Why buy an f/1.2 lens and shoot it at f.8? And I'd never need a tripod so that's something else I don't have to carry. The choice of kit was also intended to force myself to pay more attention to composition and shape, and the 3-dimensionality of the imagery. Lastly to get consistency of the final product and make my Flickr stream look pretty, I'm shooting it all in 5x4 portrait orientation and black and white. Whether anyone else likes this odd combination is neither here nor there for me, I like it and I'm having a super time with it.
So, I've now got a nice little project on the go which ticks a lot of boxes. It's nearby, easy to get to in 10 minutes, is challenging to see in a new way, forces me to work at composition and shape, and lets me use cool camera gear. What more could you want? And it's really given me a new focus and enthusiasm which I am hugely enjoying. It's so different from the sports photography that I usually do and it's really helping me to be better at "seeing" pictures.
I'm going to keep at this for a year or so (2 months in so far), popping over there as & when I can, and taking advantage of interesting weather conditions, and see how I get on. If you're a bit stuck in a rut I encourage you to try something similar. Here are some pictures. I'll add more as I go.
X by Tobers, on Flickr
Lone Tree by Tobers, on Flickr
Twisted by Tobers, on Flickr
Dangler by Tobers, on Flickr
Bark by Tobers, on Flickr
Searchlight by Tobers, on Flickr
Vague by Tobers, on Flickr
Misty by Tobers, on Flickr
Thanks for your attention
So, how to scratch the itch? Surrey where I live is devoid of mountains, dramatic coastlines, glaciers and basalt pillars. It's pretty dull from a traditional landscape photography perspective once you've done the expansive view of rolling countryside from the top of Newlands Corner or similar. To be honest I was pretty bored with it and had largely written off finding anything new to photograph in a 10 mile radius. Recently though, I've had a change of heart. Spurred on and inspired by some of the inspiring content to be found at On Landscape and some great photographer friends, I decided to think about things differently and look more closely at somewhere just a couple of miles from home, that I could get to easily and quickly. I decided to focus on a small area of heathland called Whitmoor Common, and try to see it afresh.
I've photographed there before and to be honest it's not very inspiring at first sight. About 1 square mile of boggy, grassy, heathery, flat, lightly wooded Surrey heathland which is pretty dull in the traditional sense of landscape photography. A bit of a challenge then, so I decided to have a go at it. Just for fun, I elected to use very non-standard landscape kit - a Sony A7R with a manual focus Canon FD 85mm f/1.2 lens. Rather longer than the more common wide angle that I'd normally employ. So immediately I was looking for different types of pictures, and trying different techniques. Also, I decided to shoot everything at f/1.2. Why buy an f/1.2 lens and shoot it at f.8? And I'd never need a tripod so that's something else I don't have to carry. The choice of kit was also intended to force myself to pay more attention to composition and shape, and the 3-dimensionality of the imagery. Lastly to get consistency of the final product and make my Flickr stream look pretty, I'm shooting it all in 5x4 portrait orientation and black and white. Whether anyone else likes this odd combination is neither here nor there for me, I like it and I'm having a super time with it.
So, I've now got a nice little project on the go which ticks a lot of boxes. It's nearby, easy to get to in 10 minutes, is challenging to see in a new way, forces me to work at composition and shape, and lets me use cool camera gear. What more could you want? And it's really given me a new focus and enthusiasm which I am hugely enjoying. It's so different from the sports photography that I usually do and it's really helping me to be better at "seeing" pictures.
I'm going to keep at this for a year or so (2 months in so far), popping over there as & when I can, and taking advantage of interesting weather conditions, and see how I get on. If you're a bit stuck in a rut I encourage you to try something similar. Here are some pictures. I'll add more as I go.
X by Tobers, on Flickr
Lone Tree by Tobers, on Flickr
Twisted by Tobers, on Flickr
Dangler by Tobers, on Flickr
Bark by Tobers, on Flickr
Searchlight by Tobers, on Flickr
Vague by Tobers, on Flickr
Misty by Tobers, on Flickr
Thanks for your attention