Foreground
Last blog we primarily discussed how a wide angle lens can be used to accentuate foreground geometry and texture while stretching the general spatial sense from the foreground extending deep into the background. I noted towards the end of the blog, that the other way I commonly use wide angle lenses is to accentuate foreground texture in a disconnected fashion, where the relationship to the other planes of the image lack the traditional sense of perspective commonly associated with landscape imagery. The goal in such situations is to create a globally sharp image where each plane of the photo is independent from each other, where composition can either follow the classical rule of thirds or follow a more modernist symmetric positioning. Commonly, though not always, this may also include a substantial crop into the foreground subject. I referred to this as being similar to the way scenery is wheeled in and out of a stage set during a theatrical performance. I suspect it also may be more akin to how we actually scan our surroundings as we walk through them as civilians, and not artists.
This approach to the various planes in an image goes back almost thirty plus years, when I began to wonder how to formally integrate the highly detailed macro approach of Edward Weston in his conceptual still lifes, with the highly detailed landscapes normally associated with the American West. The initial work was done casually, and on a whim, while doing a winter hiking trip in Saguaro National Park with a friend. When I got the initial film back, the work struck me as "interesting but..." and I put it in my Failures With Intent loose leaf binder. A few years later, a designer who I was working with on a calendar asked me if I had any desert work with either a non classical approach to composition, or human elements in landscape. When I sheepishly showed her these photos, her reaction really took me by surprise. She immediately selected the FAT CACTUS for the calendar, and told me to "never classically compose another landscape". Needless to say, designers and art directors commonly see things in our work we are blind to.
Since that time, whenever I find a highly textured or patterned subject in a unique environment, this has become my primary approach for resolving the tension between primary subject detail, and placing the subject in its surroundings. This earlier work generally had the primary subject in the picture plane, with the middle ground and background clearly in focus like the Fat Cactus above.
Over the last decade or so, I also commonly work with just the picture plane detail and a background, foregoing any middle ground whatsoever. This kind of approach sets up a dialogue between the elements that comprise an environment, and the actual environment itself.
Probably my favorite example of this two planar approach is the Whiteout image at the opening of this blog post. What really sets this photo apart from others that make use of this graphic system, is the weather and its influence on tonality and detail. While I was close enough to the lichen growing on the foreground tree to get excellent detail and saturation, the background lacks any real color or smaller detail in the actual trees, even though this same lichen is growing on them. Though the distance between the foreground and background is maybe fifty or sixty feet, it is visually difficult to actually imagine the two planes are in such close proximity. Between the saturated foreground and the white/gray background a tonal duality is simultaneously overlaid on top of the reduction in overall visibility.
You can only get these kind of results by venturing out into conditions most other photographers would avoid like the plague. At some point you begin to create your own luck. This photo was never meant to identify the place where it was taken, it was meant to describe the snowstorm and how it distorts our sense of place.
