One of the ways we can ‘make the landscape our own’, is to edit the images with our own ‘aesthetic sensibilities’. I believe that each of us has our own sense of artistic-taste as to how pictures should be edited. We also have our own visual-taste as well.
For many, although these attributes exist, they are still relatively unknown to themselves. I think it has taken me a very long time to find out what my aesthetic style is, and it has only surfaced as I’ve worked over many years on my portfolios. And explored pushing the edit in terms of luminosity adjustments.
As part of my yearly programme, I have often run a digital-darkroom class - the focus being the edit. What others call ‘processing’, which in my view makes a very creative part of finding out about your own style and aesthetic sound as though it’s just something you throw at the software to pump something out that is a bit more polished. When in fact, editing is just as huge a part of the photographic life-cycle as fieldwork is. Get good at interpreting your images, you get good at being a better photographer.
The image above, is a massive departure from what I originally captured. The edit was not done to ‘save’ the image, but instead to bring out key elements of the scene and quieten others. Editing in my view is not only highly interpretive, it is a highly creative endeavour, and one that is a life-long, never ending effort to master.
Which seems to go against the grain of what I have experienced with most workshop participants whom have chosen to come on my editing class. Until my class, most have been rather careful with their edits, with only the most subtle of soft adjustments, often to make the image as a whole more punchy.
In my view, editing is where the score becomes the performance as Ansel Adams coined. Image capture is one thing, but how you bring out elements in the frame, while quietening other aspects of the scene is your passport to your own style, and what might set you apart from everyone else.
I think the other aspect of trying to make the landscape your own, is also to try to capture scenes that are rare. In the instance of my picture of the isle of Rum above, I have rarely seen temperature inversions of clouds painting along the horizon like this. Having been coming to Eigg for over 14 years now, I feel I am often looking for something more than what is usually on display here.
Indeed, I am in general often ‘looking for more than what is there’. To dig below the surface of the usual. I do not say this to imply that I succeed at it. Far from it, but I am just always hunting and seeking to find something in the landscape. I think you know what I mean.
If you’re able to achieve this, then I am sure it contributes to making your images more unique.
In a world where everyone is publishing beautiful pictures these days, we should all be looking for something that allows our images to be set apart from everyone else’s. I do not mean this in terms of being competitive. I do not think I am so. I am just keen to produce the best work I can, as I get great personal satisfaction from feeling I have found my own coal seam to mine.
Editing, and image interpretation will give you so much to learn about why your images work, and where areas of them do not, should also give you a passport to making your work more cohesive as in working towards portfolios or sets of images. But to make your portfolios stronger, and therefore your visual style stronger, you have to be more discerning about what you choose to publish.
One way of setting your images apart from the crowd is your editing aesthetic, but so too, is what you choose to publish, and if you can find unusual conditions where an image was made, this will only contribute to your own voice.