landscape photography

Our photography holidays in Spain and Morocco cover landscape photography in some detail, particularly in the Jalon Valley in Spain and in the region of Tafraoute, Morocco. Landscape photography when well executed is often the most personally satisfying for me.  In the UK with my own ‘wet process‘ photography I attempted to eschew the epic landscape as this in my opinion requires a large format camera to reveal rich detail. Even with the medium format camera I was using, the revelation of detail is insufficient for vast vistas of trees and grass. So it’s better to keep subjects closer to  the camera.  With this image (taken near Tafraoute, Morocco)  there is some detail in the blossom that the DLSR (Canon 40D) does reasonably well with.  A little sharpening in  post can also help. However it’s more about the light and shapes within the frame that stand out.  Choosing a late afternoon time-slot all assists with this, allowing the camera’s pixels to achieve more with having less subject contrast to deal with.

Sometimes it’s just about getting lucky, but one has to be alert to such opportunities.  The Jalon Valley inland from Costa Blanca’s coastline offers spectacular views and the early evening rainbow as seen here was a real find. The temptation here is to go ‘tight’ with the zoom and isolate the area around the rainbow, but I was more interested in the patch of light in the foreground as well as the undulating hills. By going for a more epic presentation the photo is reminiscent of painting from the Romantic era.  It’s not cutting edge photography and doesn’t necessarily sit within an oeuvre but as a one-off with good technique and some more sharpening work in post production, it’s one for popping on a wall at home.

This donkey shot was taken by Peter Volkensfeld in Morocco. It’s a pleasing composition that utilises camera positioning to highlight all the essential elements of the location.  Both the position of the tree and the bow of the branch provide the compositional structure, then it’s a matter of waiting for both donkeys to be in the right positions and to control the framing.  Making sure the second donkey is not cropped is advantageous. The inclusion of space in the left bottom of the frame also allows draws our attention to the unusual terrain in this location.  A photography holiday in Essaouira is an opportunity to photograph many donkeys! 

Sharon Winfield’s portrait landscape on the right shows a clever use of framing to integrate the different geological properties of the location. Using a wide angle zoom lens at the widest setting(Sigma 10-20) she is able to include both the foreground rock and the distant valley. Linking the two via the line of green vegetation means our eye is naturally drawn into the centre of the photograph.  A good Depth Of Field(DOF) is achieved through the combination of using a wide angle lens and a small aperture made more achievable through bright sunny conditions.  Sharon has also employed compositionally, the ‘rule of thirds’, in this case vertically dividing the frame up into three areas.

The final image was taken in Spain near the Jalon Valley and uses careful framing at the edges of the composition to keep the viewers’ attention on the water.  ’Boxing in’ the water – the photos main feature – is something that students can quickly on the photography courses.  In this case the image was also slightly underexposed (at the time of exposure, which saves time by avoiding computer work afterwards). Under exposing saturates the colours and stops the bright areas in the photo from looking bleached out.

Landscape photography is covered both in Spain and Morocco as part of a photography holiday with Images in the Sun.