Endless Instant

Notes

Hello world!

The first post to my shiny new photoblog celebrates two milestones: one, setting up and posting to a new photoblog and, two, getting around to exploring the work of Elger Esser.

I used to have a photoblog some time ago but, for various reasons, retired it. I have decided, for various reasons, that it needs to be bought out of retirement. I may, one day, try and migrate the posts from my old photoblog to this one but don't hold your breath!

As for Elger Esser, he's a fine art photographer whose work I discovered recently and greatly admire. I first saw some of his images in a beautiful book called Vanishing Landscapes. It contains the work of a number of photographers, few of whom shoot what I'd consider to be traditional landscape photo's. Get it and you'll see what I mean.

I can't recall any other examples but I have seen a number of landscape shots over the past year or so which are stylistically similar to Esser's. I've found myself drawn to landscapes in this style and, since it is very unlike my own, I wanted to try and emulate it (I'll leave the discussion for whether emulating others' work is a good or bad thing for another time!).

I shot this image back in December 2008 as an attempt at this sparse approach to landscapes. Today I finally got around to playing with a bit of post production on it. The light in Esser's images is soft and muted and there usually appears to be a veneer of yellow or green over the scene. I began by emulating this and was quite pleased with the results but actually preferred the results after some of my first curve applications. So, what you see is not much more than some contrast adjustment and a little colour tweaking.

Whilst working with this image I began to wonder what it was I liked about these sparse scenes. I struggled to verbalize it myself but a little more research threw up this description which pretty much sums it up for me:

There is a sense of placelessness to these landscapes, despite Esser's lending of location details to the titles. Whether they portray the Seine in Paris, a beach at Beaduc, France, or a narrow strip of the Dutch shore, his photographs pay tribute to the universal lure of a seemingly infinite horizon and ultimate calm in the foreground. (From guggenheimcollection.org)

Here's to infinite horizons!

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Camera & Exposure Information

Canon EOS 350D DIGITAL
Focal Length:	50 mm
Aperture:	f/5.6
Exposure:	1/320 sec
ISO Speed:	100

Category: [Landscape]

Notes

Camera & Exposure Information

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