Changing it up

A Norfolk Summer (Canon 5D mkIV, Canon 70-200mm @ 100mm, f/4.0, ISO 100, 1/2500)

As a landscape photographer the camera settings I use can be fairly repetitive - low ISO for optimum image quality, small aperture for front to back sharpness and adjust the shutter speed to suit, click and repeat. I often make things a little more exciting by using an ND filter to slow down the shutter speed but even then it follows the same principal. There are of course times when I’ll vary the settings, I rarely use small apertures in woodlands for example where a shallower depth of field can help separate foreground and background trees. But there is a danger of complacency when something becomes repetitive. Switching to autopilot and doing the same thing as a matter of course rather than because it is necessarily the best option.

There does seem to be an obsession amongst landscape photographers with technical perfection, front to back sharpness, bracketing exposures so that no pixel is wasted, using focus stacking to ensure that every single leaf, blade of grass or grain of sand is perfectly sharp. And what is wrong with that? Well nothing per se, technical perfection is hardly a bad thing but is it the most important thing?

Shouldn’t a photograph portray something more than just a perfect representation of what was there? A mood, an emotion, a moment captured? You could argue that these things are more important than perfection. As Ansel Adams, who can always be relied upon for a pertinent quote, put it; “There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.”

I have found myself in a bit of a rut myself recently, often finding myself going through the motions and becoming conscious that my recent work was lacking something as a result. Which is why, after having worked on some of the more classic landscape techniques, several of the group on a recent workshop found themselves crawling around on a Norfolk salt marsh having a lot of fun getting creative, shooting hand held with longer focal lengths, wide open apertures and creating shallow depth of field landscapes.

A change is as good as a rest as they say.

Saltmarsh & sea lavender (Canon 5D mkIV, Canon 24-70mm @ 60mm, f/5.6, ISO 100, 1/800)