[Cowperson]

Originally posted by Phanuthier+Jun 29 2005, 02:09 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Phanuthier @ Jun 29 2005, 02:09 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>

Hmmmm . . . . . ask yourself this: "Two, three or 10 years from now, would you go back and look at those pictures of rocks and streams with any kind of interest?"

If yes, why?

If no, why not?

And . . . . if 'no", then what element could you add to pictures of rocks and streams that would timestamp it and make it something of timeless interest to you, a long term memory that will bring you back time and time again to that particular spot and that particular day?

Cowperson

What would you suggest for the "no" ?

(Relate to personal story or made up one if you wish, I wouldn't know the difference.) [/b][/quote]
A long-winded response . . . . . and Neeper and others WILL have different perspectives on this which would be interesting to read. Take my thoughts for what they're worth to you.

If you're younger, three, five and ten years from now, you probably think you'll remember with fondness the day you shot the rocks and the streams.

If you're older, with desk drawers full of rock and stream photo's you rarely look at, you'll probably know better via the gift of hindsight and experience.

I'm assuming Calf was out hiking, probably with a buddy or a wife/girlfriend or his dog.

Thirty years from now, that mountain and that stream will be convincingly . . . . the same. Not much will have changed.

Thirty years from now the dog will be dead, the girlfriend/wife will have been long gone or changed dramatically and his buddy will have a pot belly so big he couldn't make it that high in the mountains anymore.

If it were me, and everyone has different tastes, I'd put people or some other living thing in the landscape, some connection to the time period.

Make the photo meaningful to you in a way that timestamps it and draws you back in a future year because there is something in it, some memory that you care about. A girlfriend/wife/friend walking along the the meadow on the right of the first picture. The person sitting on the rocks along the creek, gazing into the distance. Etc, etc . . .

Its still a shot of the landscape, but with a difference.

The "hook" in the photo can be intrusive, dominating the shot, or less intrusive as in these varied examples.

http://www.goldentales.ca/P1070067_edited-1.jpg

http://www.goldentales.ca/P1060751_edited-2.jpg

http://www.goldentales.ca/P1070639_edited-1.jpg

Further, since you asked for stories, a couple of examples of how/why pictures stand the test of time, or can fade from memory . . . .

My wife's nephew went to Costa Rica surfing for a month and came back with six rolls of film . . . and not a single picture of himself in Costa Rica. All shots of the beautiful landscape/sea and very beautiful it was I'm sure . . . . . all the photo's no doubt filed in a drawer somewhere and forgotten. Ten years later would those landscapes have more of an impact if he had at least ONE of himself holding his board or coming in on a wave? He has NO memory showing HIM as a younger man on a grand adventure. I remember flipping through them at the time and thinking "Where the hell is this guy? Was he even there?" There's just something wrong with that.

As a 20 year-old, I rode my bicycle down through BC, Idaho and Montana and had lots of landscape shots too and while some remain interesting to me its really the photo's that include the people I met . . . . and those of myself as a scrawny kid with one of the few times I'd ever have a washboard stomach!! - that draw me in and put me back into the scene as I once lived it. I look at pictures like that and I remember the details of a particular day so long ago, hollowed, tired eyes reminding me of a hot, hot day cycling around Lake Cour d'Alene and the air thick with white, choking on volcano dust from Mount St. Helens.

My father took wonderful landscape shots of the mountains. . . . a bazillion of them as a matter of fact. Beautiful scenery . . . . but, one mountain looks the same as another after a couple hundred and even he didn't go back and look at them after a while. In clearing up his estate, I threw most of them away and kept the landscape shots with people in them, the one's with meaning to both himself and those he left behind. One particular shot of himself as a figure overlooking Sentinel Pass is on his tombstone.

I won't discourage straight landscape shots though. . . . . if I take a straight landscape shot I try to make it funky and visually different so that I'll want to come back and see it again.

Your equipment creates a mirage:

http://www.goldentales.ca/P1070170_edited-1.jpg

Early morning and early evening are grand times for strange colours.

http://www.goldentales.ca/P1010857_edited-3.jpg

And strange angles can create interest (this is a scanned image, not digital)

http://www.goldentales.ca/new2.jpg

Cowperson