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I recently co-lead a Photo Safari where we were primarily photographing landscapes. Shortly into our tour I realized that most of the participants did not fully know how to use what I call "Basic View Camera Composition #1." This technique is probably the most-used by view camera photographers of all possible compositions. It emphasizes the near/far relationship between foreground and background and thus creates a three-dimensional feeling of depth in the two-dimensional image on film. Once you learn this technique, go back and carefully look at all the pictures in the coffee table books you own done by the big-name landscape photographers. You'll soon learn that, indeed, more images are taken in this manner by view camera photographers than in any other fashion.
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Photographed with a 24mm lens positioned about 12 inches from the closest point of the image.
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Part of the reason photographers use this composition so often, is because of the lenses they have available. The broadest choice in focal lengths for a 4x5 shooter lies in the wide-angle lenses, not the telephotos. We 35mm shooters have gotten spoiled carrying lenses covering just about every possible focal length. I almost always have available in my pack lenses from 17mm to 400mm, and even longer if I plan on working birds or mammals. Not so for the view camera photographer, whose longest lens is often the equivalent of about a 135mm on a Nikon or Canon.
Now I don't want to give up my Nikons when I shoot landscapes. I just want to take the best possible photograph, both technically and aesthetically. This brings me to that "Basic View Camera Composition #1."
Here's what to do:
- Select a wide-angle lens in the 20-28mm range. At times you can get away with using a 35mm, but don't go any longer than that. The most commonly used wide-angle lens for a 4x5 is a 90mm, which equates with roughly a 28mm for us. Since the 35mm frame is far more rectangular than the squarish 4x5 format, a slightly wider 24mm will work even better.
- Once you've found your landscape, search for a strong foreground object. Spend extra time doing this and your picture will be that much better.
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Notice where I positioned my lens: low and tight. True, it was difficult to contort my body so I could see through the viewfinder, but the results were worth the effort.
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- Hand-hold your camera and move in close to that foreground object. Now move in even closer, so that the foreground tightly fills the bottom part of your frame. Place the horizon line very high in the frame. If the sky appears in your image, include just a sliver of it at the very top. After all, if the sky is spectacular you should be photographing the sky itself, not the foreground scene.
- Once you've found the perfect camera location, set up your tripod and mount your camera making sure it's level left-to-right. Tilting horizons are a bane of landscape photography. Your lens should be aimed slightly downwards, and positioned quite close to your subject. Most likely you will NOT be shooting from your eye level but from a much lower position. Don't be afraid to get your knees dirty.
- Stop down to a small aperture like f/16 or f/22 to get the extreme depth of field you need. You may have read that you should not use the smallest aperture on your lens due to diffraction problems. I would ignore this totally when working landscapes. Modern lenses, used at normal focusing distances, are great. And since most wide-angle zooms lack hyperfocal scales, I've heard it suggested you should focus one-third of the way into the picture. Frankly I've never been able to figure out where this is. Instead I use my depth of field preview to see what the photo will look like at shooting aperture. If you are using the smallest aperture on your lens and want to maximize the depth of field available here's a trick. Look at your scene and pick the area closest to you that you want to appear sharp in your photograph. Now focus your lens on this area, read off the distance on the lens's focusing scale, and then set your lens to twice this distance. If the closest part of your composition that you want sharp is three feet away, set the lens to focus at six feet. Don't refocus. The hyperfocal point is always twice the minimal depth of field distance.
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These huge concretions, eroded out of the sand headlands, appear out of the ocean at low tide. A 20mm focal length lens used close-in gave me the foreground/background disparity I wanted.
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What you're doing when you use "Basic View Camera Composition #1" is quite simple: you're filling the frame with a close-in object while letting the background recede. The foreground object appears to be quite large while any background subjects seem far smaller. You're exaggerating this size differential - the fact that nearby objects always appear larger and more in focus than distant ones - with your wide-angle lens which by itself decompresses the landscape. Consequently the viewer feels as if he could reach out and touch the foreground, while he knows that the small objects in the background of the image must indeed be far away. Ah, this is a quick and simple way to emphasize depth and three dimensionality.
Of course, all by itself this composition is no guarantee of a quality image. You must still use your finest photographic technique to compliment the aesthetic photo. Good composition by itself is not enough, nor is good technique alone useful. The two must go hand-in-hand if you want your photos to truly succeed.
Here are some suggestions:
- Use the best lenses you own. That 28-600mm zoom lens may be convenient, but it's not the best optically and probably does not focus close enough for this landscape technique. As a rule of thumb, the longer the zoom range, the lower the quality.
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I had to kneel in the stream to position my tripod and 17-35mm lens (this image was shot at 17mm).
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- Use a tripod. Duh, how many times have you read that? But lately I've heard several people say that the new anti-vibration technologies from both Canon and Nikon (Canon IS and Nikon VR) make tripods unnecessary. This is simply not true at all. You might get away with being able to hand hold a shot at a slower shutter speed than before, but for the best quality you should always mount your camera on a tripod. Use a good tripod, one that doesn't blow in the wind. 35mm shooters actually need a sturdier tripod than do 4x5 view camera photographers for two main reasons. First of all, the 35mm image is a lot smaller and must be enlarged a far greater amount to reach the same final picture size. This means you have to be a lot more concerned with any possible source of image degradation including camera movement. Secondly, many of the lenses we 35mm photographers use are longer in effective focal length than those used by view camera photographers. Most of us own something like an 80-200mm zoom; use this at the long lens and you're shooting with a longer equivalent focal length than most all 4x5 photographers have available. Once again, you're magnifying the image so you need a sturdier tripod. Remember what I said earlier, that the typical long lens for a 4x5 user is equivalent to roughly a 135mm lens on a Nikon or Canon. Not such a long focal length, is it?
- Use a tripod. Am I repeating myself here? Yes, but this time I'll suggest another reason to use a tripod and that is a compositional concern. When you hand hold a camera you're always moving slightly, consequently the edges of the frame are also in motion. How do you carefully compose to the edges? Use a tripod. It slows you down while letting you view the exact image you want to record.
- Use a remote release (what we old timers still call a "cable release"). I plead guilty to occasionally reverting to a bad habit: I mount my camera on the tripod but trip the shutter with my hand. Don't do this. Keep your hands off both the camera and tripod.
- Use the best film you can. Pick the slowest, least grainy film you can possibly use considering the lighting conditions at the time. For me this is easy as I'm a tried and true Velvia user in almost all scenic situations.
- Slow down. View camera users have one sheet of film - one frame, that is - and have to make the best of it. That one shot costs in the neighborhood of $4-5 for the film and processing, so consequently the 4x5 shooter is very careful. You can use the same approach. Far too often 35mm photographers have the "spray and pray" style of photography, blazing away with motor drives set on continuous high-speed advance. Stop! Turn that off, set the drive to single frame advance, and pre-edit your work. Don't fire away, thinking you will pick out the good shot later on the light table. Instead take your time to find the exact camera position, the exact focal length, and the exact composition before you ever press the shutter.
- Determine your exposure precisely. Learn to use your built-in spot meter and to place tonalities exactly where you want them to fall. Don't automatically rely on autoexposure unless you want all your pictures to be rendered as medium-toned.
- Watch out for hotspots on the edge of the frame, and for apparitions and merges. Apparitions are those strange things that stick into the frame, seemingly appearing from nowhere, such as the end of a tree limb. Where did it come from? Merges, a blending of tones or shapes, can be visually devastating. The classic merge is the telephone pole growing out of Aunt Mary's head (she's had it surgically removed and is feeling much better now).
By careful attention to your photo technique - what we're always doing anyway, right? - and precise application of landscape composition, I trust you'll be even more pleased with your images. I know that the participants on my recent Photo Safari immediately started using "Basic View Camera Composition #1" and came away with great results.
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