+++ The Weekly Landscape Thread - #1, 2025 02.07

Busy nature

Quick grab shot from a hike last fall.
There is a lot happening in this capture...

This was in July of 2023. Our first stop on our drive out West was at a lodge on top of the Big Horn Mountains in Wyoming. We drove down to the little town of Shell the first afternoon after we got back from our morning of shooting. We passed Shell falls and pulled in. Fortunately the forest service has nice facilities there with platforms - otherwise no way to really photograph it. It on the West slope so it was and the Western sun was not producing very good lighting. The second day I randomly down to the falls again about mid morning and again too late. On our way out heading to our next destination - the Togwotee pass area for a couple days - and knowing when the sun rose, we headed out about 4 to 4:30 and hit the Falls in time for sunrise. When the sun peaked over the Eastern ridge - that was it.

Yes and yes. The spray picking out the vertical drop and the lighting on the top (which also brings out the tree and enough white foam on the lower water to give detail below.
Outstanding.

Impressionism and the theory behind it has always appealed to me. IMNHO the theory is equally valid for photographs. I don't see it as copying a painting style but rather as an acknowledgement of how the brain sees and processes images. ie., I don't think of ICM as creating brushstrokes.
But I certainly see the colours as JMW Turner.

Agreed. I don't use ICM to creat 'brushstrokes', but more as an interpretation of my 'mind's eye' and the way my brain/emotion responds to a scene.

Agree too "brushstrokes" was perhaps not the right word, there is however something painterly produced in the result of ICM.

A frosty study in Blue

this is a series of pictures I took on a particularly frosty day, walking along the train tracks and river running parallel.

That day there was a beautiful interplay of the harsh black lines and edges of the trees against the soft brushes of fog and the obscured mountains in the back.

Camera: Mobile Phone: Xiaomi Redmi 13 5G
ISO125, 6.19mm (eq. 58mm) 1/2500s f/1.65

A little bit later the fog started disappearing and the sun started bringing out the harsher edges of the mountain. Here the frosty trees against the dark background look soft.

Camera: Mobile Phone: Xiaomi Redmi 13 5G
ISO100, 6.19mm (eq. 42mm) 1/2500s f/1.65

But the frost also looked super pretty from up close. Makes even the shrubbery next to the train tracks into something special.

Camera: Mobile Phone: Xiaomi Redmi 13 5G
ISO160, 6.19mm (eq. 23mm) 1/1250s f/1.65

La Pland

These are beautiful. I'm immediately reminded of one of my very favorite paintings, Caspar Friedrich's Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, except that the Wanderer is taking the picture rather than posing for it. The visual effects are so similar - the vast wildness of the mountains below the viewpoint, the rocks, the snow, the carpet of fog that is draped over them. Awe inspiring and timeless like that 200 year old painting.

It is all three. I like the effect you created by shooting from behind the screen of young trees and grasses rather than fighting through for an opening, though that might have also produced a nice image. It is like looking through lacework, and it would not have worked so well in color.

This must be viewed full size to be properly appreciated! The powerful surge of the water, the way the light plays over the rocks then creates rays with the mist, the pine tree clinging to the precipice - all components of the drama. Nicely managed conversion that maps out the composition using lights and darks so our eyes move around the frame. I have always looked for these components when photographing powerful waterfalls, but seldom find all the pieces. I haven't been to this one but wish I had!

Oh my, what a gorgeous piece of photographic art! I love the work of Turner, especially his brilliant use of light. I'm in the midst of a re-read of Wilton's Turner and the Sublime, and have tried to incorporate some of those elements into the digital painting that I dabble in, but have never thought to try ICM as a means to achieve it. Of course I don't have any grand landscapes to try it on where I live, but I'm fascinated with that idea. What you've created does indeed remind me of his use of light in his landscapes.

Looks like you're new around here! Welcome to our village, hope you'll hang around. Those first two are lovely things. The blue tones are perfect for the wintry scene, emphasizing the cold and bringing out the sparkly nature of the ice.

The juxtaposition of warm and cold is very effective here. Love how the sun is cradled in the curve of the snow-laden branch.

Has anyone done studies on how the circumstances where we live influence how we respond to images? Where I live, today's temperature is closing in on 39C and tomorrow we are promised 42C.
Fireplace 33, I'll turn these into screensavers and just look at them for a couple of days and I'll feel better.

I'll bet you didn't take this one with your eyes closed.
Combining the gold and white pointy prows and the gold and white point peaks was inspired (pun alert.) Then there's the fine detail of the camera position. A step to the left or right and the points wouldn't have fitted between the peaks in the reflection. Throw in the arrowhead of the rockface/reflection on the left.
minniev, it's as perfect a landscape as I can imagine and a very high bar for the new landscape thread.

It isn't a dramatic, eyecatching image but as a landscape, it does something especially well. Bryan has caught an Australian landscape. Couldn't be anywhere else. The blue,green, grey of the foliage, the shape of the tree trunks, the colour of the dirt road and to top it off, I think the pup is an Australian Blueheeler.
I've driven multi 1000s of km along roads like this and it resonates with me. It vibrates with me too.