Landscape Photography

Fujifilm Professional TX-2 – Seeing Panoramic

The Fujifilm Professional TX-2 (its sister Hasselblad XPan I/II or the older Fuji TX)  is one of those cameras which you lust after, and when you get it, open the packaging and have it in your hands at last, you marvel at the build quality, the heft and solidity, the beauty of the workmanship and the lens as you handle the jewel like thing and attach it to the body. You then oooh and aaaah as you lift it and put it to your eye and are blown away by the clear bright finder which is very wide and large indeed! You then want to go out and shoot with it so you insert the batteries and then the film – which is as easy to load as a point and shoot

An unexpected Yashica T4 and some unplanned snow

In the summer of 2022 I experienced some health issues that needed time and attention, so I applied for a treatment. There was a waiting period. So in the middle of November I finally arrived in a small spa town in Northern Germany where I was to stay until Christmas. I had time on my hands in between the treatments . My condition allowed for walks, in fact I was encouraged to go out. The weather, however, had decided not to cooperate with this medical advice. It displayed all the characteristics of the Northern German winter. It is possible to love the Northern German winter if you watch it unfold from, say, the Bahamas. Any view point closer than that is not advised. Grey, cold, rain and misery will last until they run out of steam and are then replaced by fresh grey, rain, cold and misery, just more of it this time.

5 Frames from Panta Rhei (Everything Flows) – Keith Beven

“We get into the same river and yet not into the same river, we are and we are not [the same].”

Heraclitus

I have a new book of images of water available. Following the success of The Still Dynamic last year (in the sense that it thankfully sold out rather quickly in its limited edition print), this new volume pictures from some of my favourite places in the UK and Switzerland including, of course, the Mallerstang Valley in Cumbria that I has photographed for 25 years now.  The images include some that are that old and taken on a Mamiya 6, but also more recent pictures taken on Fujifilm digital cameras.

Painting Landscapes with my Rolleiflex – by Christian Schroeder

Painting landscapes with a TLR camera from the 1950s has become the main activity in recent months.  No wonder, as it seems that I need a photographic project related to the landscape genre at least once a year. In 2020, I presented you a series of black-and-white images of agricultural sceneries. Then, in 2021, I came up with some long-time exposures of the same topic. And this time, it is my much appreciated Rolleiflex that let me discover the rural space again.

In this post, I’m going to talk about a variety of subject matters – how I got inspired by Dutch landscape painters from the 17th century, the joy of using my Rolleiflex and why I like expired films. Therefore, I came up with the title “painting landscapes”. So please lean back and expect a bunch of images to look at!

View of Spirit Lake 1997 Rolleiflex 2.8F camera

Analogue Panoramic Pictures with a Rolleiflex Camera – by Christopher Schwer

“As I traveled with my camera I came to realize that often one picture could not capture all of the emotion that had moved me to photograph. Many of the elements in the landscape that had created that emotion were outside the view of a single square picture. I needed a way to take it all in.

Constructing panoramic images from sequential frames allows the presentation of the landscape in a grand yet intimate style, without the jarring perspective usually associated with wide-angle imagery. In using a lens of normal focal length, a familiar context and perspective are created. Within that context, the language of light, surface, depth and texture can most effectively be expressed across a wide visual expanse.

What overwhelms me still is how small we are in relation to the landscape yet how much control we manage to exert over it. We create magnificent national parks to cherish the landscape yet we remove entire mountaintops, devastating the environment in search of energy, never realizing that we are part of the landscape and inseparable from it.”

Excerpt from a 2011 Artist’s Statement

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