If you don’t already know about NI photographer Alistair Hamill, then you should probably check out his website. Producing amazing landscape photography of some of Northern Ireland’s most breathtaking spots, his photos capture our wee land perfectly. He has recently teamed up with OutdoorNI.com to create A Beginner’s Guide to Landscape Photography, a regular blog on how to take great landscape shots without all of the technical jargon that usually accompanies this sort of thing.
Here’s the intro to the first post, entitled Part 1: Think compositionally about the landscape.
Picture the scene. You’ve come home after work. The kids greet you with howls of “What’s for dinner – I’m starvin’!!” You amble over to the fridge to see what you can rustle up to quieten their relentless cries, only to discover that when you get there, the cupboard is (almost) bare! On occasions like this, I’m very likely to reach for the phone and put in an order for the chippy. But my wife is made of more resilient stuff. And she happens to be a fabulous cook who has this amazing ability to rustle up delightful meals, without the need for any recipe. To my amazement and before my very eyes, she pulls out the very same meagre ingredients I was just surveying and, fifteen minutes later, we’re all sitting down to an wonderful dinner. It’s incredible how two people can look at the same thing – and yet see it entirely differently! One person sees the food and knows there must be a meal in there somewhere – the other has the vision to see potential and has the ability to create something from this potential.
At its heart, this is similar to the essence of landscape photography. To be able to view the landscape in such a way as you begin to see what is hidden there in plain sight. It’s about selecting what elements will work together. And it’s the capacity to arrange and frame those elements pleasingly. But how do you begin to see a landscape bristling with potential like this? The good news is that there are ‘rules’ or – perhaps better – guidelines that can help train your eye to see the landscape, rather than just look at it. And I’m going to share some of these with you below!
The first instalment is up now and you can read it in full here.
