LFI

 

Last night on a whim I uploaded a few photos to LFI (Leica Fotographie International). Two of them (not the one above, which is from a recent Mojave Desert trip) were highlighted today: A different desert shot, from the same trip but further north in the Basin and Range Desert, which is today's cover shot in the Landscape category; and an art nude of Brooke Eva from June. While I think they're good photos, it's still always an honor when someone else, in this case someone who is paid to peer review images, agrees.

I periodically come back to the landscape theme, but this year is the first time in over 20 years that I've really put much sustained effort into it. Last time it was built around trips to classic landscape spots, Joshua Tree and Yosemite and was done in black & white on medium format (great fun hauling bulky cameras and tripods around rugged off trail terrain). Looking back, the images are technically exquisite and emotionally mediocre. Too rigid, too predictable. 

This time, I'm in a color mood and shooting with the M10. I brought two lenses, my standard 50 Summicron and a 28 Elmarit. I used the wide angle for three or four images, put it away, and went back to the 50. Right now I'm seeing in 50mm perspective and that's working just fine. Whoever made the rule about wide angles for landscapes was probably the same person who made all the other silly rules. More on that some other time.

I'm also not cropping out less natural features anymore. Last March on a work trip to the Sonoran desert I learned a lot about desert ecosystems and the various human degradations, so I'm seeing them now. And at some point I made a semi-conscious decision not to pretend it's all pristine, because it's not. So, when it works in the composition, like the dirt track in the image above, it stays. Yeah I could have shifted left and cropped it out, and it wouldn't have been as strong an image. In this case there's natural disturbance (Mono-Inyo Craters in the distance, which erupted in the past 1,000 years) and un-natural disturbance (the dirt track, and probably the creosote bush structure and some patches of invasives if one looks closely enough, and the bush in the foreground is at the edge of a trail).

Sometimes I actively sought out certain types of disturbance. The featured image on LFI includes burned creosote bush, and fire is more frequent now in the desert because invasive grasses carry fire. It's visually stark, and says a few things about humans and the land even if seeing and understanding it requires a basic grasp of ecology.

I'm not forcing the landscape images at this point. I'm putting myself out there and hopefully seeing, and then capturing what I see. Over time a coherent series will come together, I hope. Either way, the intent is to enjoy the journey.