I don’t do much of landscape photography for two reasons – first, after seeing large landscape prints made using 4×5 and larger large format slides I don’t think my current 12 mega pixel slr can do enough justice to landscape photography (considering the potential for making large prints). I bought a large format 4×5 camera too late – we don’t have reliable E-6 processing house any more here in my part of the world. Second reason being, landscape photography is very tough for me. Grand “beautiful” landscapes refuse to stay in my mind for long. Often grand scapes overpowers me and does not let me think in the field – I often get into faithful reproduction mode which results in copies of nature which does not stay in my mind for long. Long story short – it is tough for me.
Last week end I went out to make some images of Bharachukki water falls. Though the scene was nothing less than spectacular the small format just could not do any justice to what the nature has to offer. Only very large prints can do some justice but then 12megapixel digital SLR is just not enough to make a large prints (>20×30 in) having fine fine details. If I can’t make a sharp fine image can I make blurred ones ? Is it necessary to have everything from photographer’s foot to horizon being rendered tack sharp in landscape photography ? In above images I tried emphasizing a small portion of the frame and keeping everything else blurred. You may click on them to see it much larger. It looked very different and I kind of liked them. Probably this will let me do a large prints too since blur can be better handled in print than fine details !!
