Epic vs Intimate Landscapes
Posted November 16th, 2007 in [hide]Something doesn’t have to be big to be compelling. A friend of mine who didn’t know much or anything about photography tried an old camera I used to have with a mega-zoom lens, and described the wide angle as a “grand view.” We’re taught to think in terms of sea to shining sea, of a big sky that stretches from one end of the horizon to the other, as far as the eye can see. This doesn’t always have to be the case.
Ansel Adams spent the first half of his career traveling with a donkey to carry his medium and large format camera gear and camping equipment. The latter part of his career, he drove a station wagon with a wooden platform attached to the roof to use a tripod from. Most people tend to prefer either his earlier or later work collectively; how difficult a place is to get to shouldn’t tell us how photogenic it is.
On that note, it’s not at all obvious the photo above is from Montana’s Glacier National Park, and yet it’s better as a photo than most I’ve shot locally. Unless you’ve climbed off the same trail in the same place, you aren’t likely to recognize this; it could just as well be upstate New York. These are the mountains the river pictured above is cutting a chasm into:
Another example of a grand scale, “larger than life” photo is this one, of Lake MacDonald:
To my eye, the best of the bunch is the smaller, more intimate scene in the woods, showing a boulder divide the roaring snowmelt. This isn’t to say smaller or even more or less accessible subjects are better, although peoples’ expectations have been raised for “epic” landscape photography. We’ve all heard the worn out cliches: stop and smell the roses, the journey is more important than the destination. If this long standing advice can be applied to photography, the lesson must be to keep your eyes open.
The photos above were all shot within Glacier National Park, in Montana, bordering on Waterton Lakes Nat’l Park in Alberta and British Columbia. The two are administered together as the world’s first “international peace park.”
gorgeous!!
thanks for the visit!
enjoy your weekend
i really like the 3rd photo, did you have to get wet to take that one?
Thanks, both of you…!
Ironically, for the third photo, I managed to stay dry. Basically jumped out from stone to stone. I almost fell and took my camera for a bath, but, somehow, luck saved me. The first shot, though, I had to roll my pants up as high as they would go and wade into the stream. Set my tripod up in the river, and kept expecting the current to carry my gear away.
i always wanted to go there, they say the rockies get better the farther north you go. i haven’t made it past wyoming yet.
Thanks for visiting my blog and thank you for bringing me here to your wonderful blog. You have great pictures. Congratulations.
there *is* something pretty spectacular in the minor details, isn’t there?
Somewhere in my Dad’s slides from ca. 1970 (maybe 1969) is a shot of McDonald Lake that’s almost the dead spit of yours. I don’t think he waded out into the water though!
It’s funny … someone I work with brought in a photo from Mowich Lake, a remote hike at the end of a (dirt?) road in Ranier … again almost identical. Great minds think alike?
Forrest - you have some thoughtful entries here in your blog: I’m a big fan of intimate landscapes too. So many people jump out of the car and go “Wow” at the vista, then get in again without taking time to really look around and see the details, or just march along fixed on the horizon when they should be looking at what’s closer too!
These are freakin incredible! The first 2 are so colorful they almost don’t look real. Like they have the tone of magic mushrooms, where everything is singing with life.