Dramatic Landscape Photographs Without HDR Software
Today when I think about Landscapes I usually this HDR and the Dynamic range of colors it produces. Old school photographers didn’t have this advantage. Especially when shooting using high contrast slide film. That film only offered 4 stops of light. They still produced amazing images. You don’t have to use HDR to create a fabulous landscape. You can use a silhouette and negative space to create impact and mystery in your photographs.
One of the nicest places of my living room shelf is reserved to the book “Brett Weston: Master Photographer”. I have always loved Brett Weston’s work and consider him as one of my all-time favourite photographers. His bold use of design in his photographs and his almost abstract approach of both the classical and the intimate landscape filled me with awe when I first saw one of his photographs many years ago. If I had to choose a couple of images which particularly represent the aspect of his work that strikes me the most, those would be “Garrapata beach” and “Mendenhall Glacier”. These two photographs, taken as wide landscapes with a large format camera and a standard lens, show scenes that defy depth, space and reality and very much become abstract representations of the land, where form predominates over the subject matter and where the visual design becomes the language through which a strong emotion is conveyed to the viewer.
