From: Shannon Stoney (shannonstoney@earthlink.net)
Date: 12/17/02-10:56:31 AM Z
Maybe the confusion here arises from the fact that when most people think of
landscape, they think of sweeping panoramas out West. In my neighborhood,
though, there aren't many big views. There's one hill where you can see the
whole neighborhood from that hill, because it's been cleared for a pasture,
but a lot of the neighborhood is wooded, so you can't see for a long
distance. When I was walking around with my viewfinder, with the 4x5 hole
in it, if I held it say arm's length from my face, I found all sorts of
little scenes that I couldn't photograph because of my slightly wide angle
lens. The best one was a backlit clothesline with an old truck and some
other junk behind it. I really wanted that little slice of that backyard.
But when I got close enough to make the clothes line look right in the
ground glass, the truck didn't look the same any more. It looked sort of
too far away or something. So that made me think it might be interesting to
prowl my neighborhood with a telephoto lens. It would make it easier to spy
on the cows too.
Now that I know how to use the viewfinder right, though, I am finding all
sorts of other interesting views. I can get up close to something and
photograph it almost like a still life, yet still see a cow way in the
distance in one corner of the picture. This gives a sense of deep space and
intimate space at the same time (I hope).
One of my goals is to expand the notion of landscape to include tighter
spaces such as exist in the southeast, and probably on the east coast. I
think our view of landscape is too dominated by the Western way of
landscape, probably because the first really great landscape photographers
of the 19th century photographed out there, and because landscape painting
has usually leaned toward big views of wide and deep space. But the
landscape I actually live in is more like a path that opens onto little
scenes or still lifes.
--shannon
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : 01/31/03-09:31:25 AM Z CST