Photography News Issue 38

Photography News | Issue 38 | absolutephoto.com

Technique 16

required? And when does a shot stop being a location portrait, and start being a figure-in-the-landscape image? My figure-in-the-landscape shots typically have the subject occupying between 10% and 20% of the frame; however there are no concrete rules. The big difference between figure-in- the-landscape shots and regular location portraiture is that the landscape itself remains very much part of the subject; the landscape is an important element. When people start out shooting portraits, they usually opt for a mid- telephoto lens andworkwide open to allow the background to blur. This process of shooting a portrait is very straightforward and helps to isolate the subject from the background. You can shoot a portrait of this style and nature in your back garden, in the park, in the street... pretty much anywhere. With figure-in-the- landscape, I start by finding the landscape and I travel the world to do this. The pictures you see here (and many more in the book) were taken in the deserts in Fuerteventura, the high plains of Utah, the canyons of Arizona, rural land in the south of France, a swamp in Singapore, a beach in Somerset, a field in Gloucestershire and a woodland and caves in Spain. Once I have a location, I think about the colour and harmony of tone and style and shoot accordingly. Sometimes a red dress is perfect to pop out from a background, other times I want something simple and white or even no dress at all, as in the shot of Mischkah in the cave and Arielle on a rock. One factor associated with having the person small in the image is that the prints looks great when produced large: while a head-and-shoulders picture of someone sits comfortably in a desk frame or a small 25x20cm frame, a figure-in-the-landscape picture looks fabulous at 2x1.5m and can really lift the space it’s in. What about composition: do you place the subject according to traditional landscape or portrait styles, or a mix of the two? The placement of the figure in the frame is quite important as you want separation from what canbe abusy in-focus background. I have no rules to where I place my subject; the shot of Gabrielle taken in Singapore and the shot of Claire Rammelkamp taken in Gloucestershire

have both got the models’ heads exactly in the middle of the frame, yet they maintain strikingly different composition. Another difference that marks figure- in-the-landscape shots out is that, while location portraits tend to include clues to the environment, but have the person as the principal subject, figure-in-the-landscape shots tends to be a landscape photograph with a figure placed within it. Really, it’s a completely different approach. What’s more, unlike regular portraits, there’s very little space for emotional connection with a figure in the landscape shot as the distance between the photographer and subject is not conducive to intimacy. Considering all those things, what, for you, makes a really successful figure-in-the- landscape image? It has the wow factor, of course. But you don’t need to be, or know, the person in the image to appreciate the picture. That’s the key. Quite a few of my figure-in-the-landscape pictures are anonymous, like the photographs of the girls in the woods and caves in Spain, and the girl in the red dress sitting under the tree in rural France. It’s rare for me to shoot an anonymous portrait. In fact, shooting figure-in-the-landscape actually combines two of my greatest loves: the great outdoors and people. So thinking from a landscaper’s point of view, composing a photograph using traditional landscape techniques is a very different process to selecting an area of background to put out of focus. Some of the figure-in-the-landscape pictures take a considerable amount of effort both to scout and recce the location, the light and time of day required for the shot and to get to the location, but this effort is certainly rewarded well when a photograph comes together. Mentioning scouting, how do you go about picking locations? Will any great landscape work? And does the location need to be powerful on its own; more than simply a backdrop to the subject?

Oh, yes, the location really has to stand alone and generally, the photograph has to look great without the subject in it. A lot of the time, I find my locations using Google Earth. I homed in on North America earlier in the year just by looking at the whole of the USA to start with; you can see a dusty brown rock core which is Arizona, Utah and Nevada. When I zoomed in and moved around those three states, I could see dramatic locations, like the moonscape with the nude on the rock. In Google Earth that whole area looks vivid blue with yellow dusty blobs, but when you go in closer, you see the rich vibrant colours of the natural terrain, so I popped a pin in a map and moved on. The canyon that I shot was on private Navajo Nation land and I had to obtain a licence to be able to go and shoot there, it was off the map with no road and we needed 4x4 SUVs to get to the location. Sometimes it works out closer to home though; the sunset on the water picture is just a ten-minute drive from my house and it’s the Severn Estuary, so you don’t have to go far to take great pictures. That said, I often use shooting figure-in-the-landscape as an excuse to see the world! On the same subject, how important does your choice of focus and depth-of-field become in these shots? For example, is a large depth-of-field usually important to show off the location? And do you always need to focus on the subject, or can landscape elements be more important? I tend to shoot my figure-in-the-landscape work between f/4 and f/11 to get the best optical quality and to render the whole scene in focus. However, for the shot of the girl sitting on the ground in the woods in Spain, I shot that on the Fujifilm XF60mm lens wide open at f/4 to render the background out of focus. This 60mm lens generates a beautifully painterly bokeh, and you can see the out-of- focus background looks like an oil painting. When I’m working with flash I will often use neutral density filters to allowme to shoot with a shallow depth-of-field. A six-stop or ND64 filter will get me from f/16 to f/2, so it’s

Above Angel in the Landscape. “I lit Carla with a deep dish parabolic reflector on an ElinchromQuadra 400Ws battery powered flash unit. The flash was above and slightly to the left of the camera. It was on full power and this gave me the perfect balance.” Below “The dramatic wilderness areas near Lake Powell in Utah, USA, offers great opportunities for figure-in-the-landscape photography. It looks fantastic on Google Earth and was an easy spot to find on the ground. All I needed was the afternoon sunlight and a standard lens.”