Straight Landscape Photography and Landscape Art


Traditional Photography offered us a means of faithfully representing a scene in terms of light, colour, tone, line and shape but modern digital post processing tools like Gimp and Photoshop give us the means to turn our Photography into real Art. Digital tools and techniques have raised the bar enormously and offer unlimited potential for creative expression where straight photographs taken with a camera can eventually end up looking like Art rather than Photography

Gimp Artistic Filter Effects

For the creative landscape photographer this opens up a whole new creative world where your vision is not limited by the fact that your camera is a simple optical recording device. For example it can't record what you see in your mind and feel in your heArt but it can give you the means to record something that can be used as a foundation for future creative experimentation where you have the digital freedom to create what is in your mind's vision


Visualisation is a key concept in Photography and the most well known proponent of this was the great American Landscape Photographer Ansel Adams. Ansel explained how he thought of the photographic process in terms of the workflow involved in transforming the image in his mind's eye into a printed photograph. He well knew the limitations of his equipment and knew exactly what had to be done to get the results he was looking for in the final print. Fortunately we are not so limited these days and all we really need to do is open up our minds eye to all the possibilities at our fingertips


Todays Photographers can easily create digital paintings from their photographs which can look more aesthetic than traditional paintings when printed on the right paper using the right inks. What is the right paper and the right inks people might as ask. Well the answer of course is that it all depends and that the best way to find out is to suck it an see. Experimentation is king


For example using tools like Gimp, Photoshop, Artrage and Painter we can produce fantastic landscape Art that looks superb as an A3 print. Photography is merging with the digital equivalents of more traditional Art forms like oil, pastel and watercolour. Traditional Artists are now using the same post processing tools as Photographers. Inkjet Art is now popular and is accepted for viewing and sale in serious Art galleries. If you are a Photographer who has always been interested in Art then you can have twice the fun if you study Art as well as Photography


A good image begins in the mind because there is something inside that makes us want to create. Sometimes you look at a place and right away you can see what your finished image might look like but most of the time life is not that simple. This is where you need to consider the unlimited ways in which a scene can be interpreted and later manipulated in an imaging editor


In one respect having all this choice can seem intimidating so for the rest of the article I will offer ideas which might simplify the thought process


Becoming aware of the quality of light as it changes thoughout the seasons increases the creative potential of any Artist. Knowing that the sun sets on a very different part of the horizon during the summer solstice than it does at the winter solstice means we know at what times of the year our favourite locations are in their prime


Landscape Photography demands the patience. When the light is far from perfect it is all too easy to become disheartened and stop looking at the light. Any light has potential and even if the weather is overcast and gray it is still possible to produce something interesting. For example there are millions of shades of gray in nature - warm grays, cool grays, blue-grays, brown-grays and so on.


Mini projects such as photographing a garden tree for each month of the year can help bring discipline and order to your creativity. Observing how light affects the atmosphere and creates moods at various times of the day throughout the seasons is a discipline practised by wildlife, landscape and nature Photographers


By collating the photographs of the garden tree into an album we start a process that brings discipline and clarity to our work. Grouping related images together into a portfolio makes it simpler for ourselves and our audience to see coherence in our work and discover trends that are emerging in our style. We begin to notice patterns and what types of scenes we are attracted to. This is important because it is those trends that will influence the type of images we will be making in the future


If like me you were fascinated by light as a child then you already have a creative vision but maybe just stopped using it. You can do that by looking at the world through fresh eyes and applying a bit of discipline in how you approach your Photography


Looking at Art books and studying paintings can teach Photographers a lot about abstract colour, form and composition. Pictures that stand out usually strike you through the use of balanced composition enhanced with interesting contrasts created using light and colour


The Artist has usually made effective use of contrast and tone and the image can be broken visually into blocks that are inter-related, with each block complimenting the others. There is no reason at all why these same techniques cannot be practised by creative Photographers


With straight Photography we don't have the Artistic licence to move our subjects around on our canvas changing the composition as we please but we can do all kinds of things using digital post processing tools. So what can we do about it?


If you have ever had the feeling that you see things in a different way to everyone else then you have a head start already and you can develop what you see into Photography and digital Art that will please many people


We all have magical powers of observation and can use them if we want to. It all depends on how much we want to personally express ourselves. If we have the courage to learn with an open mind and sometimes break with convention then there are no limits. Opening the mind is the hardest part


Good Luck