challenge: landscape

To deviate from my string of portrait photography challenges, I wanted to focus on the world around me. Literally. Landscape photography is meant to show an audience what the world is through the eyes of the photographer.

What makes a photograph a landscape is the use of a small aperture. The values of aperture can be confusing to those who don’t entirely understand the photography process. In one of my previous challenges, I mentioned using a wide aperture.This photograph was used in last week’s challenge. Notice how everything is slightly out of focus except the subject’s face. That effect, as well as the effect known as bokeh, can only be achieved through a wide aperture. In this photograph, I used a 50mm lens with a max aperture of f/1.8, which simply means that I was kinda close to the subject with a super big opening in the lens. The bigger the whole/opening, the smaller the number is (f-stop, which is commonly written as f/##). The wide apertures also allow so much more light to enter the camera, which is really convenient whenever I’m photographing in low light conditions. Essentially, wide apertures are awesome for portraits, but they suck for landscapes.

Here’s an example from a San Francisco, California trip I took in early 2017. If you can look beyond the horrible quality (namely the smudges in the sky as well as my lack of knowledge), you can see that more of the scene is in focus. The boat, the island in the background, and the water in the foreground are all have about the same focus. This photograph was captured using an aperture of f/13. This caused less light to come into the camera, but it made everything in focus. I recall having to let my camera sit still for close to half a second in order to get enough light through the camera. If you notice the trail the boat is making, you can see some motion blur, which is commonly found in slow shutter speeds.

And that’s why landscape can be challenging. A photographer has to find a scene that speaks to them, have their cameras sit long and still enough to capture the entire area, and make sure it’s all in decent focus. It requires a bit of patience, which many people seem to lack these days.

So, this challenge is going to be an actual challenge for me. Note how I had to go all the way back to 2017 for a landscape photo. That’s because 1: that was the last time I did a true landscape and 2: that was the last time I used the automatic setting on a camera. I took the entire summer that year to learn how to use my “borrowed” camera (read: stole from my mother) and I’ve stayed far from landscapes since. Another thing to note is that I was born and raised in State College, so the scenery isn’t super special to me as it would be to my peers from other areas of the globe. Either I have to find some interesting scenery, or I have to travel outside State College until I do find something interesting to me.

As shown above, I took a photograph of a barn out in the middle of nowhere, PA (it’s near Pine Grove Mills, PA). The process is outlined above. Though, as a stylistic choice, I decided to turn the final photo sepia (THIS is a monochrome photograph). Notice the brownish hues to both the shadows and the highlights. To me, it puts emphasis on the details of the barn, like the aging planks of wood. Also I wanted to try it anyways.

Anyways, what makes this a landscape is not only the scene, but the smaller aperture (in this photo, it’s f/8). This makes more things in focus, but at the cost of the image’s brightness. The fog also frames the whole image, bringing attention to the barn.

I didn’t do half bad on the landscape challenge, if I do say so myself. Definitely way better than my 2017 attempt.