My day in Yellowstone last month was a long and varied one (see previous posts one, two, three). As I was leaving the park along the Madison river (almost the longest in the U.S.), I stopped occasionally to photograph the line of mountains on the opposite side of the valley.

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As I was doing this, I had in mind the images from the month before of the landscape by Tepee Creek (post here). I was hoping to catch some of the rhythm, perhaps even musicality, that I found in both places. I’ve nurtured such a poetic and mostly unrealized hope since I read about photographer Michael Smith’s epiphany with sonograms, like the one below of a hermit thrush. Smith was inspired by the beauty of such sonograms in creating some of his wide landscapes. (Though it’s worth pointing out that Smith’s wife, Paula Chamlee, in her own way, succeeded as well or better.)

That wide panoramic format is not only reminiscent of a musical score or narrative progression, but also fit well with the actual manner in which the line of mountains scrolled past me as I travelled. So I tried cropping a few of my images to half their original height, which makes them three times wider than they are tall. It was fun trying to decide what slice to take; sometimes more than one seemed to work.

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For comparison, below are the non-panoramic versions. I’m not sure I like these less, but there is a different feeling with them. The viewer wanders around more in the landscape, rather than taking a journey along a designated path.

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The same approach seems to work as well for a vertical orientation.

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As usual, I like to see how other artists have dealt with similar issues or used similar approaches. Lately, l’ve been looking at Bruce Marsh‘s landscape paintings, which are frequently in a panoramic format. Here are just a few from his Recent and Utah galleries (click to see larger versions):

Calf Creek II

Waterpocket Fold I

Mira Bay Hill

The experience of viewing a panoramic depends on size and viewing distance. If it’s large enough that you need to physically walk along it, that tends to enforce a linear trajectory, like reading a Chinese scroll. On the other hand, at that size there is also plenty to see via local roving about of the eye. Wandering with a drift.

One thing I noticed is that my panoramics here seem to be more about repeated patterns and major division lines, like the skyline. Especially images 2-4. Bruce’s paintings have more of a shape, a development or story to them, which I find very satisfying. Waterpocket Fold I and Mira Bay Hill even have evident chapters. My vertical does have more of a storyline, though I can’t decide whether it runs up or down.

Which direction seems more natural to you? In the case of the horizontal panoramics, do you read left-to-right, right-to-left, or start at some eye-catching point in the middle and work both ways? How about the vertical?

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I’ve said before that I’ve never hit a comfortable stride in photographing the larger landscape. Most of my work has been on a smaller scale, such as my last-posted winter stream study. I’ve certainly been trying, but it has seldom felt right, the results veering from a postcard look—pretty but unoriginal—to boring.

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Now I’m not claiming that the hot-off-the-memory-card images shown here are especially great, or exceptionally expressive, or reliable predictors of what future work will look like. But they did feel good in a way that generally eludes me. They do capture for me, albeit imperfectly, some aspects of landscape that I haven’t managed well in previous work. One of these is a kind of musicality, by which I mean rhythmic and flowing structure. Another is the pure pleasure of shapes, especially the interplay of positive and negative definitions of them.

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If interested, you can find a few additional images in this Tepee Creek series on my web site.

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I was particularly struck by June’s examples of other artists. I’m sure I’d seen Grant Wood’s landscapes before, but had forgotten them. A number seem to suggest a fascination like my own with trees as punctuation on the rising and falling land. See, for example, these Wood landscapes from the site June linked to:

June’s other model, David Hockney, is one I’ve been reading about lately in the Weschler book, True to Life, which includes discussion of the recent East Yorkshire landscapes, like the two shown below. Though not stylized like Wood’s paintings, the subjects certainly have much in common. (To view more of these Hockney’s at Annely Juda Fine Art, select “previous exhibitions” and scroll down until you see Hockney listed. Hockney has also been working on larger multi-canvas paintings in Yorkshire; see e.g. the video at La Louver.)

Both Wood and Hockney are more concerned with the domesticated environment than the relatively (but only relatively) wild one. I share their interest, and have also photographed in cropland areas, though I think I’ve done only a single A&P post on them. Naturally, these tend to provide more structured or rhythmic compositions than mountainscapes. In that sense, my lucky catch owes much to the genius of the place I was in.

My personal view of the landscape, to the extent it comes through, is conveyed most importantly by my selection of what’s in the frame. I think it’s not too strong to say that the structures delineated by the trees and other elements are created by the framing as much as by the varying patterns on the land. So what you see reflects my predilections as well as the facts of the place.

Is there a question in this? I’m not sure there is. Or maybe there are too many. At any rate, it’s one more installment in a neverending tale.

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A week ago, late Sunday afternoon, I finally made it out to the semi-wilds, a place I’d never been, though not far from known territory. I was hoping to get to something interesting by snowshoe, which can actually be an easier way of traveling than by foot in summer. You don’t have to step or climb over all the obstacles, just walk above them on the nice, white carpet. The photograph above shows the main stream, Hyalite Creek, near where I started off. Admittedly, the water’s not entirely black, thanks to the foam and spray from turbulent spots. But where it runs smooth, it’s dark, dark, dark.

I soon left the stream at the first minor tributary, and ended up spending all my time along it, taking the series of photographs from which selections are presented below:

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The usual issue for me with such images is how far to abstract from the gray world—there’s very little color here, even before processing—toward a binary opposition, not unlike Jay’s white stake in a black heart. Because I liked the turbulent streamflow, I wanted to emphasize it more than in a “naturalistic” rendition, like the version below of #7 in the series:

On the other hand, I didn’t want to take the contrast all the way up to the fantastic or surreal, as in the version here:

I do admit to liking, in the last one, the way the water is converted into astronomical imagery, not unlike the special case of the spray in Stardrops. But somehow, at the point where I am in this work (and all of it is still unsettled), it just feels overdone. I’ll go a certain distance from reality in my tendency toward abstraction, but I’m not ready to let it out of my sight.

How about you? How far do you go?

Update: I’ve renamed this series Dark Water and put it on my web site with a brief statement.

While reworking and sequencing my Winter Water project, I realized that, for a photographer as well as a physicist, snow, ice, and liquid are very distinct states of water, with distinct texture, tone, and shape. Perhaps because those photographs had no sky, I managed to completely forget about the vaporous state. Last Monday, however, I was vividly reminded of that glorious phase while biking through Yellowstone. Roads were clear but cars not yet allowed, so I had it almost to myself: only a half dozen other bikers all day, and a few service vehicles per hour. Fortunately I had a late start, so by the time I reached the Lower Falls it was well on in the afternoon. The westerly light left the falling water in shade while illuminating the mist.

The constantly changing shapes were mesmerizing and kept me occupied as long as I dared stay. There’s clearly a reason for the overused description wraithlike. It was unusually dynamic because it was very windy; in fact, I finally lost my hat (a baseball-style cap like June’s) down the canyon, and was in no way tempted to go after it.

Besides the mist, there were some intriguing crevasses that had opened up in the snow pack. The sharp tears in the smooth surface made a nice contrast with the hovering mist.

On the way back I stopped for a more peaceful image at a thawing lake. There seemed to be something a mystical about the neatly sliced mound of snow. I suspect I could be happy photographing nothing but the infinite forms of water.

Which leads me to think about the benefits of narrowing one’s focus, one’s effort. The nature of a project is such a focusing, but I frequently wonder if I don’t have too many projects in hand. They often conflict; I can’t do more than one thing at a time, and the time is so limited. Do you also feel pulled in too many directions artistically? Or, on the contrary, do you want to broaden your scope?

Natural black and white minimalism as well. To a certain extent, photographers choose (or are chosen by) their style when they choose their subject. Of course, the way of framing the subject plays an essential role. But in landscape photographs larger than minute details, it’s hard to find an uncluttered field of view. Winter simplifies.

Since I seem to have a natural inclination toward abstraction, you can well imagine I was delighted to find these snow forms in the wandering branches where the young Gallatin River is still figuring out where it belongs. I was also delighted to be on a pair of broad back country skis, a rental substitute for my 15-year old kit that had finally broken multiple places in every component, to the point it really was not usable even by an anti-gear guy like myself. The new skis allowed me to move easily along and among these streams, despite the deep, soft snow. I would gladly have spent all day there, had I been free.

These images are very new, and I haven’t yet worked out quite how I will handle them. I actually made precursors to these a year or two ago, but somehow couldn’t figure out what I wanted from them. I’m still exploring that, but this time I have the feeling that I will be able to make a set that I’ll find worth printing. In most the snow dominates, though in some the dark, dark water is a large fraction of the picture area. I want to show enough detail in both (for intrinsic and pictorial interest, and also to keep a sense of reality), but still maintain the tonal separation that emphasizes the abstract shapes.

One thing I’m debating is how to handle the twigs of bushes sticking up through the snow. I made a few photographs where these play a major compositional role (sorry, not processed yet…), but in ones like that above, I could either crop out or clone out the stray bits. What do you think? Though far from the center of attention, I wonder if they add a useful counterweight, and also a reminder that this is indeed a reasonably faithful record of a real scene (if that matters — does it?).

Another undecided is the observable darkening toward the sides, due to the physical fall-off of optical intensity away from the axis of the lens. It’s normally not seen, but increasing the contrast in the lighter tones to bring out the snow shapes, together with the relatively featureless surface, makes it noticeable. Would it be best to remove it, in your opinion?

Update: Here are three more I had a chance to process provisionally. The last has a slight tint.

A book is necessarily presented as a linear sequence of pages, though a reader (is it still a reader if there are only photographs?) may not follow that order. Nevertheless, assuming one image per page for maximum resolution, it’s an interesting question to consider what sequence might work best. It’s akin to hanging pictures in an exhibit. As I am neither illustrating a narrative nor providing a guide to Pine Creek Falls in Paradise Valley in late November, I am not bound by the order in which the photographs were made or the physical layout of the falls. Considerations include interesting pictorial relationships, pacing, and the overall impression desired. None of these is at all well-defined, and I come up with a different order every time I sit down to it. I make no claims for the latest version shown below; in fact, I’m asking for your help.

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