Cee’s Compose Yourself Challenge – Week 21, Landscapes

Has it really been 21 weeks?  Wow time does fly and I know we are only posting twice a month so I guess it has actually been longer. This week Cee asks us to concentrate on Landscapes and compositional rules.

Essay

Keep your horizon level.  We talked about this during our composition classes, but unless you want to give someone a headache or a queasy stomach, always level out your horizon.  There are a lot of free applications out there that will help you with that.

Show perspective.  Chris and I went to the Grand Canyon once and were really disappointed. It was a drizzly kind of a day, which flattened out everything we were looking at.  There wasn’t anything in our line of sight to give us perspective, or depth to what we were seeing.  It didn’t look like anything interesting.  I know that sounds plain crazy, but when what you are looking at is so immense, if you don’t have a frame of reference, your brain just yawns and looks for something else to entertain it.

I have just spent an amazing few days up in the Victorian Alpine Region, so I have plenty of photos I can use.

This first one is a 7 shot stitched panorama, but I love the whole vista spread out before you, the bushes the the left and in the foreground gives some depth, as does the mountain range in the background and the little hut gives a sense of scale.

This next image  I straightened the horizon line as much as possible, however with such mountainous terrain it is quite difficult to get it 100% straight.

The next two images are using rule of thirds as well as bottom 1/3. The horizon is difficult to get straight, due to the lay of the land, the fence and paths……..it’s all an optical illusion. In the end as long as the roof line looks mostly straight and the vertical post of the fence were straight, it’s about as good as it will get.

This next one was also a little difficult to get a straight horizon line………….I still feel a little like I’m sliding off the screen? I also left the car in for a sense of scale. Unfortunately you cannot see the angle of the incline in this image; picture it in Winter – it’s a major ski run!

The next two images definitely needed to be straightened, the bridge making it much easier to get a straight line, also used rule of thirds and left in some cars for scale, as well as the empty foreground in the bottom image to give a sense of scale to the draught affected lake.

Til next time, safe travels and happy snapping…

-Julz

 

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