The Intimate Landscape - Tony Worobiec
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Tony was someone that was recommended by several people as someone that we should invite to come and speak to the community. I am so pleased to welcome Tony to Camversation for the second time to share his intimate landscape talk!
About the Talk:
When shooting landscape, the temptation is always to point the camera towards the horizon, but there is also merit in taking photographs which completely exclude the sky. If we develop this idea just a little further, we should be able to find worthwhile images down at our feet, or possibly in small nooks and crannies that are not normally considered rich pickings for photography.
Look carefully at seemingly inconsequential elements such as small clusters of flowers, formations of rocks, or marks in the sand and you will discover detail that can serve as a microcosm for the whole. Look for exciting colour combinations, rich textures or patterns, as these can provide the basis for the photograph. This can prove to be a deeply satisfying, almost contemplative approach to photography, as it requires that you work slowly. Once you find an area of interest, move cautiously, almost metre by metre, checking out potentially worthy bits of detail. Soon you will be enthralled in a world of the miniature.
The value of this kind of work is that it helps to define you as a photographer.
With conventional landscape photography, it is very easy to follow others who have photographed the same area in the past. While one never intentionally aims to plagiarize, it is hard to ignore a particular vantage point if you know somebody else has enjoyed success from the same location. The great thing about the intimate landscape is that it is personal, as only you will have noticed it, but in order to be successful much will depend on your powers of observation, your understanding of the visual elements and your imagination.
Photographing the intimate landscape encourages individuality. Often the images you produce lack scale, but that merely adds to their interest. They will sometimes appear to lack depth, so having an appreciation of the graphic arts will help you spot potential subject matter. The essential thing is to be guided by your own judgment and aim to reduce the composition down to the simplest visual elements.
Our eyes are incredibly discriminating, and we are constantly seeing elements within the landscape we find visually exciting, but because they don't conform to the usual norms of landscape photography, it is easy to convince ourselves that they are not worth pursuing.
Self-doubt really is the enemy. The aim of this presentation is to guide you through numerous photographic situations which you might otherwise ignore, and to show you that these locations are worth developing. The advantages of working this way are numerous; first, your chances for taking interesting landscapes are greatly increased. Once you appreciate that there are exciting opportunities virtually on your doorstep, then you cease dreaming about those places which might be many miles, or even continents away. Second, achieving a photographic style is the goal of many serious landscape workers, but this can only be achieved by "ploughing your own furrow". But the main advantage for developing a personal vision is that it greatly improves your sense of self-worth as a photographer. By embracing new ways of looking at the landscape, such as abstract photography, minimalism, or by assessing the potential of a given location on the merits of the constituent visual elements, your confidence in your own abilities is greatly increased. Once you start to trust your own capacity to identify and develop a particular setting, you can then begin to consider yourself a true "fine-art" landscape photographer.
The aim of any serious landscape photographer should be to capture images that are unique to them; "The Intimate Landscape " is a guide to achieving this.
About Tony
Author of 17 books, Tony Worobiec studied fine art at The University of Newcastle upon Tyne and spent 18 years as head of a large design faculty in Dorset. He has won awards for photography in the UK and internationally, and has had work exhibited in London’s Barbican Gallery, Bradford’s National Museum of Photography, The Menier Gallery London and The Fox Talbot Museum Lacock. Dozens of his photographs have been used for book or album covers.
His work has appeared in more than a 100 photographic magazines both here in the UK and in America. He has been invited to write extended articles for well respected photographic magazines such as Black & White Photography, Practical Photography, Total Digital Photography, Digital Photo, Digital Camera, Photo Plus and Photo Techniques USA. Several of his articles have also been published in the German magazine, Canon Foto
A Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, Tony is a fine art photographer with work in the permanent collection of The RPS, The Fox Talbot Museum and in numerous corporate and private collections here in the UK, in Europe, Japan and in The States.
Please do check out Tony's website: https://www.tonyworobiec.com/