When you are outdoors with your camera and looking for new subjects to photograph, try considering the intimate landscape. This is how some landscape photographers call landscape pictures where the horizon is not present. This is unfamiliar as a landscape photograph, because usually we include the horizon, be it the skyline of a mountain, a city or the sea. It does not have to be necessarily like that, however.
Actually, it is much easier to be impressed by a great classical panorama than it is by an intimate landscape. A classical panorama is easy to be described. It is where we zoom out as much as possible with our camera, so to fit in the frame a large amount of objects. Mountains reflecting in lakes, distant sand dunes, a bell-tower on a hill are all examples of classical landscape photography. It is easy to realize when we are in presence of a beautiful landscape like that. I think the main reason for this is probably due to our angle of sight. Our eyes have more or less a 180 degrees angle of sight. So, it is natural for us to look at a grand view, encompassing all we see around.
However, if you look more carefully, you will find that landscape photography and nature in particular have much more to offer. You should train yourself to limit your angle of view, restricting it at will. Imagine your eyes have the ability to zoom in as an ordinary camera can do. Limit your attention to details in landscape, let your brain crop the image that you see with your eyes. If you act like that, a completely new world will start opening up to you. The intimate landscape has no horizon. It conveys the attention to something unusual, or something too usual to be considered worth photographing. Fine details, enchanting textures, curious juxtapositions, trinkets offered by Mother Nature... They are everywhere, all around us. But it is hard to notice them, at first. You must practice. You must see something first, if you want to photograph it! Maybe, the best advice I can give you to start training yourself with is: look downward. Look near you and downward, don't be distracted by what is happening above. If you are a nature photographer, remember that Nature lies everywhere, up and down.
Intimate landscape differs from macro photography, too. Macro photography concentrates on just one detail, like one flower or an insect. Conversely, the intimate landscape is something between macro photography and grand panoramas.
If you start noticing intimate landscapes, you will get more opportunities than ever to take original and very personal pictures. Grand panoramas are few, while intimate landscapes are countless. They are limited only by your ability to see and discover them. I can give you some examples to start with: pebbles on the ground, fallen pinecones, a small pond, bushes, the bottom of a waterfall or a hill, tree trunks in a forest.
So now grab your camera and start shooting!
By Andrea Ghilardelli
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