Composing myself in May
For our latest assignment Cee has asked us to show landscapes. This is probably my favourite type of photograph. I really took to photography because I wanted to capture the things I saw that I found beautiful or interesting or that I was afraid I would not see again.
I have chosen some older pictures today as I’ve not been out and about with the camera much lately.
First of all here is a recent one that I took of the City to Sea Bridge in Wellington, New Zealand. I really liked this bridge and I thing that what attracted me to it was the shapes. There is a lot of geometry going on here as the artist has used a lot of shapes in his sculpture. I also like the texture of the timbers and the vertical poles just make the picture a bit more interesting. I think that rule of thirds also applies here as the scene divides into foreground, buildings and sky. I didn’t love the orange cones where some work was taking place but sadly I didn’t have the option to come back another day.

Here is another cityscape. This one was taken high above the city in an observation wheel. Again there are a lot of interesting shapes and vertical lines in the high rise buildings while the older smaller buildings below give some perspective I think. I quite like the harmonious colours in this picture as well greys, blues and white with a little bit of reddish-brown as a contrast.

This is Darling Harbour in Sydney taken in March. It was getting towards sunset and the buildings took on a kind of golden glow which I liked. I think that I must have been using the geometry rules unconsciously in my cityscapes because I had not given them any thought in any of these pictures but city buildings do lend themselves to that type of picture with high-rise buildings reaching for the sky. There are strong horizontal lines in this picture too through the middle of the picture which divides it nicely into three sections, the boats, the buildings on the esplanade and the high-rise buildings in the top third.

The following three photos were taken closer to home. The first is the Huon River at Franklin. I don’t think this would have been a very interesting picture without the rowing boats to give some sense of the width of the river. I like the reflections of the boat and people in the one in the foreground as well.

Still on the Huon but this time at Huonville. The river leads your eye on to the horizon and the reflections of the clouds make the picture more interesting I think. This picture is all cool colours so quite restful to look at.

The last one is Hospital Bay at Port Huon and was taken from a hill above the township. David actually found this spot and brought me up there to photograph it. The photo definitely falls into the Rule of Thirds category and has horizontal lines in the fence line and trees and the opposite side of the bay. From the hillside you can see the Port Huon jetty and a fish feeding boat which give perspective to the scene as do the cluster of homes on the left.

Conclusion
If you want to take interesting landscapes using at least some of the rules we’ve looked at certainly helps. I think the trickiest thing with them at least for me is trying to capture the picture that expresses how I felt about what I saw. Sometimes you just can’t do it because the scale is too great to comprehend in a picture. I’ve tried to take pictures in some places where I’ve seen for example, a forest from the road or from above. I can take the picture but when I look at it I just see a mass of trees and it doesn’t mean anything. Below are two photos I took while travelling on the West Coast Wilderness Railway between Strahan and Queenstown. In the first one you see the trees and the timber pole but it doesn’t really give a good sense of what the picture is about. The following one does it better I think.
You have some great photos for this challenge. I agree too often a landscape just looks blah and nothing about the feeling or awe I saw in real life. Maybe that is why I take more close ups than anything. 😀
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Congratulations! I have granted this post to a Gold Star Winner for Cee’s Compose Yourself Challenge with the topic of Landscape.
https://ceenphotography.com/2016/05/25/ccy-gold-star-award-winners-21-landscapes/
Your entry was excellent. I hope you have a great week.
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Thanks Cee. that’s an ambition achieved :-). Nice to come back to find that out after an enforced week offline due to an internet issue here in Australia.
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That must’ve been a long week for you. Well deserved award this week. 😀
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Congratulations on your Gold Star Winner status! Very impressive. I love the landscapes. Each is noteworthy, if I had to pick a favorite it would be the one with the city above the boats…you’re right, it does look like two separate photos. As for the orange cones…what highway or bridge construction site is ever free from the orange cones? 🙂
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Thank you and how true. Two places I really wanted to photograph overseas, York Minster in England and St Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow were both ruined by scaffolding when I was there. Not ones you can easily go back to so a few cones is not so bad.
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The same thing happened to me, twice! A cathedral in Mexico that I especially wanted to shoot…and the last time we were in Quebec and the Chateau Frontenac was covered with scaffolding!
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Very frustrating isn’t it?
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Yes. I sometimes incorporate the construction into the photo, or the story with it, but then it changes the nature into a photo about the work more than of the subject itself.
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Very lovely captures these are!
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Thank you very much.
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