Intimate Landscape
Photographing Landscape, more immensely
We often tend to think Landscape Photography as a genre covering mountains, land, waterways and all captured with 24-70mm focal length or lower focal lengths. While this is not wrong, this is not the only way to approach landscape photography.
Imagine a mountain captured by 14mm or 24mm Lens. It tries to capture the gigantic mountain or large endless land faithfully within our point of view. However, what it fails to capture are the details - beautiful curves of a mountain, patterns created by the water, rain or air over the millions of years of its existence. Often, a wide lens fails us to bring the proportionality of the mountain with its allies - lakes, land and sky.
This Panorama show cases the large vista of Pangong Lake. While grandeur of the lake is captured, what is missing are the details.
Intimate Landscape brings back what is lost in wide angle’s unprecise landscape.
Put it another way, Intimate Landscape Photography is
A way to showcase smaller details of a larger canvas.
When the landscape is photographed with Tele-lens, we start looking into the patterns of the rocks, harmony between the boulders and curves of mountain, relative magnitude of lakes and mountains.
A tele lens, by the way of design, isolates the scene and brings attention to the small part of the vista. While tele lens are used in wildlife or sports for the purpose of isolation, this can also be used to show case our take on Landscape, isolating the unwanted clutters and distractions.
Subject isolation has the capability to transform an ordinary scene to a thought-provoking abstract image. Intimate Photography is often connected with creating such abstract images.
Light and Shadow - Mountains of Ladakh, its high altitude and cloud movements often tricks us. We would be witnessing play of light and shadow in some part of the mountains, while the rest of the mountain may be either in shadows or flat light. Tele lens can isolate the light and shadow and create abstractions.
Gears
Intimate Landscape Photography can be created with Tele lens with focal length from 150mm and above. Depending upon the vastness of the Landscape, kind of composition determines the focal length. I have used focal lengths between 150mm to 500mm in my photographs.
Do you meant to say, Wide angle lens are not at all needed for Landscape Photography?
No. Definitely Not. The perspective offered by wide angle lens, tele lens, panorama images are all different. It is a personal choice of a photographer to go with kind of images he or she wants to create.
Here are few selected photographs of Intimate Landscape.
This photograph of Rain forests of Borneo taken from a watch tower at Danum Valley, my first Landscape photograph taken with 300mm Lens. However, the intimate landscape photography was not my intention while taking this picture. I had an urge to photograph the place with a tele lens. After a decade later, as I started to photograph the landscape using tele lens, i realized this Rain Forest photograph also falls in this genre.
Here is a closeup of Pangong Lake. A part of the Landscape, Yet, the relative enormity of lake, mountains and sky are captured.
Some more Photographs related to Light and Shadows, abstraction and fill the frame.
Fill the Frame - A closeup of Mountains and its ridges.
Intimate Landscape Photography is one of the ways to look the Landscape around you. For me, Intimate Landscapes takes a step closer to Himalayas. It’s a personal choice.
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