35mm Artifacts – Landscape and a Universe of Plants

 

Of course even as I chased wildlife phantoms through the woods, I shot the environment around me. Enjoyed a better ratio of success with that, as well.

 

And who wouldn't?

By & large, landscape doesn't fly, leap or otherwise steal away right before your clumsy eyes, as does the average critter.

For instance, I captured this while relaxing flat on my back across deep forest loam, during the very best light near the end of a positively splendid autumn day.

If any bug bit me, I don't remember it.

 

Landscape waits patiently. It tends to stand still. Sometimes, preternaturally so.

 

Among the first if probably not the very first landscape image I ever shot is below. Not a 1^st class image per se, but true to the wilderness moment just the same.

I've always thought what this image really lacks is some kind of smallish,  dinosaur-like critter peeking out from the grass:

 

No disrespect to those who love them, but I pretty much stopped shooting sunrise/sunsets real early on. Mostly, I think those exist to be savored.

Not squandered through a lens and provided desperate triage later.

 

When it comes to visually rich landscape, size really does matter.

I was seriously embarrassed when the first prints of mine ever to hang on a gallery wall barely held up to 11x17.

That was positively puny, considering the intended content.

 

In theory, the image below needs to cover a good chunk of wall, maybe in some busy motel hallway.

But it never could:

 

Size was also the rub every time the devil came in on a landscape's details. If I wanted to do this sort of thing at a high level, then I couldn't stay small...

 

 

Increasingly, I felt caught between a photographic rock and a hard place, as regards Superior landscape.

 

Happily I kept finding diversions along the way, as I learned how to see the wild world through a proprietary lens.