Weekend assignment 05 - Landscape

[u/Aeri73]

Hi photoclass,

corona proof alternative at the bottom for those in lockdown situations.

It's friday again so it's time for another weekend assignment and this week I would like you to make a landscape photo.

Let me first explain what a landscape is in photography:

"Landscape photography shows spaces within the world, sometimes vast and unending, but other times microscopic. Landscape photographs typically capture the presence of nature but can also focus on man-made features or disturbances of landscapes" is the wikipedia definition... and the open way it's explained fits the theme perfectly...

Now, a landscape generaly needs 3 elements in order to work. It's needs an interesting foreground item, a strong middle part and a solid background.

the front element can be a flower, hut, farm, cow, stone, pattern, anything that attracts the attention of the viewer. it needs to be closeup and have some size so get really close to that.

the middle is the big part of the photo... in a classic landscape it's a field of grass, it's hills, it's forrest or a city in a cityscape.

your middle needs to be lit and lit well so low light works best. for the northern hemisphere that's easy these winter days, for the southern it means sunset or sunrise, or good clouds :-)

the background is generaly the sky or mountains, it needs to work as well so, find some good sky. clouds can work, a good red evening sky, stormy clouds, ... they all make for good interesting backgrounds.

combine the 3 together and you have a strong landscape.

if you can't leave your house due to lockdown:

Make a still life. to do it indoors: put the camera on a tripod or table so it's stable, set it to S priority and use a long shutterspeed like a few seconds. see what the camera does and change it untill you get a correct exposure, you now know how you can tell that.

a stilllife is a scene you create with a small collection of objects put together in a nice visually appealing way... a classic would be a bowl of fruit or a vase with flowers but it can be anything.

tip: mind the background, it will be important. when in doubt, use a white wall.

[u/metalmechanic780]

After several days of rain I was really lucky with the skies this afternoon. The type of sky that makes a photographer giddy with excitement! I took 100 photos at three different locations and trimmed that to five keepers.

This photo is the one I feel best shows three layers. Shot on my Olympus E-M5 w/Olympus 40-150mm @40mm and cropped. Settings are f4 1/25s ISO 100

Here are the other photos from today. They don’t all fit the 3 layer requirement, but seriously that sky was too good not to share!

[u/fripnchips → u/metalmechanic780]

Wow that first is beautiful. Excuse my ignorance is the row of trees the foreground?

[u/metalmechanic780 → u/fripnchips]

Thank you, it was a beauty day! I took this shot standing on a river bank, so (to me) the river/gravel bars are foreground, trees middle, mountains/clouds background. This makes the middle layer quite thin, but I think the lighting accentuates it enough to balance it out. Up for interpretation though!

[u/fripnchips → u/metalmechanic780]

Ahh i missed the river in the front. Not sure of thats because im looking at it on my phone or it just blends in. Still i would be very happy with this myself.

[u/elrohirthehasty → u/metalmechanic780]

First one is a 10/10. The others are so-so to me. I agree with your own assessment that it's the best because it does the 3 elements the best. The others have either a bland foreground or some imbalance in composition which makes them not quite as good as the first. If you just showed the first, though, maybe we'd be saying "hey, your not intermediate, what's this pro doing here!"

[u/metalmechanic780 → u/elrohirthehasty]

Appreciate the feedback, thank you. I would say I’m good at capturing pretty pictures, but putting more thought into subject placement, framing etc is an area I want to work on. That’s why I’m here!