The Weekly Landscape Thread

This weekly thread, starting on a Friday, allows us to showcase our Landscape photos and get some feedback.
Opening up discussions, not only on content, style, composition & techniques, but also on the emotion in the image, and of course about the place itself.

It’s easy to participate

Post an image or short essay with a title and description. To make it easier to view in the forum, all comments should include the original title and at least one of the original images as a quote.

Thread Guidelines:

1. This thread is for sharing and developing our Landscape photography skills.
2. Entries can be a single image or a short photo essay (2 to 10 connected images that tell a story).
3. Give your entry a clear title and perhaps also explain why you took it, or the story it tells.
4. Provide constructive feedback on others’ images/essays.
   Try to go beyond simple praise or dismissal and explain why you like it, or what caught your eye.
   ”Likes” are encouraged too.
5. Negative feedback and suggestions are also OK (be polite, honest, and constructive).

Giving feedback is just as important as receiving feedback, both help to improve our artistic and technical skills.

What is a Landscape photo?

This means different things for different people. For me, it includes a wide range of photos taken outside,… from wide sweeping vistas to smaller details found along the route. Seascapes, landscapes, cityscapes, woodland shots, landscapes at night with some stars, and lots more are all OK. They could also include man-made objects and people or animals outside, but they are not usually the main subject. Show us, with your photos, what Landscape photography means to you.

Motivation

I love to go hiking in the natural world and capture photos along the way. It keeps me fit (physically and mentally) and provides some beautiful memories. Processing those images when I return is fun too, it often helps to enhance what I saw.

Downloading and reposting

It’s often challenging to verbalise comments about images. Instead, it’s sometimes easier to “show.” Unless the original poster specifically states otherwise (in each original post), participants are free to download, alter, and repost images in replies to express their analysis and critique. The reposted image may remain permanently or be removed after a short period. Downloaded and altered images shall not be used for any other purposes or uploaded elsewhere.

Enough said,… Go out, enjoy the open air, take some photos. Bring back the memories and post them here in the Weekly Landscape Thread 😊
...looking forward to seeing your images

A local landscape

In the spring of 2015, our local village was looking good with the trees all in full bloom. This photo, along with a few others I took around the area, has been featured on the front page of our community council website for several years now😊. With spring just around the corner, it's the perfect time for another local photo walk.

Cork Trees. Portugal.
The trees are numbered to record the bark peeling dates.
Red is a peeled area.

It's good to have a combination of red and green in a photo ;-)
Looks like the peeled area has been painted?
... a bit like like a raw wound.
I don't remember seeing such a bright red colour in the cork oak trees I saw in Spain.
The pano format works well here. It concentrates on both the transition of the peeled/remaining bark (in the main foreground tree), and also shows that this main tree is not the only "victim"; all the surrounding trees have had the same treatment.
I always thought it amazing that these trees can survive with the bark cut off all the way around the trunk.

Death Valley NP

The dunes at Stovepipe Wells are amazing, especially in early morning light, but walking them will wear you out. I was there during a sandstorm, lucky to be in the lodge instead of camping in the adjacent campground. The campers had their nylon tents absolutely shredded by sand. The lodge took all the tentless folk in and let them sleep on the floor of the lobby and halls and even storage rooms. But the wind scoured the dunes of all footprints and created wonderful forms and striations, fun for the photographers among us.

Amazing how those beautiful, peaceful looking, curves were created by such a destructive force!
You could imagine instead, that they were raked in a meditative act by a Japanese Zen gardener.

The photo works for me very well for several reasons. The repeating patterns of those gentle curves is the first thing that strikes me. Then we have 5 of those little dunes, all in a diagonal line. The light that catches the closest of those sand dunes adds a focal point in a well placed position in the image. Lots of depth as you look back over the sand and then even further away to the impressive mountain range.
And the colours are warm and pleasing too 😊

The Pigeon Tower

I took a walk up Rivington on Wednesday night, hoping to catch the sunset up there for a change and was not disappointed.

At the very top of the hill, overlooking the ornamental gardens, stands The Pigeon Tower, constructed during the first decade of the 20th century and commissioned by Lord Leverhulme as a birthday present for his wife Elizabeth.

I quickly took a number of shots from different perspectives around the tower as the sun was beginning its gentle descent into the Irish Sea Permafog™ that quickly snuffed out the sunset before it began. This shot, taken square on from an elevated spot some way back from the tower was my favourite of the bunch and appears to have revealed an anthropomorphic face in the details of the building that I didn't notice at the time of taking.

This was processed in Capture One Pro 23 from a single raw file taken handheld on the Z8 with the Nikon 24-70 f/2.8S. Note it's best viewed large, the thumbnail looks rather dark when viewed against the full intensity, bright white background of this website, but there's actually plenty of detail in the darker areas.

It's a fascinating area. The first shows the whole area well. The second detailed view of the hollowed out formation looks like a fairytale house. I guess a tourist shop now ?

Very nice.
I saw the face immediately, even before reading your text. Are those "eyes" lights inside the tower, or is it somehow light shining through from the sunset ?
The rich colours from that sunset are superb, with the purple glow on the land giving it a royal touch ;-)
As you mentioned it's definitely viewed best in high res with the black background. I'll be posting something about that tomorrow.
Oh and congrats on your new "Permafog™ " trademark ;-)

Impressions of Galloway

I like to capture the essence of places, not necessarily with 'realistic' images, but sometimes with what I see in my mind's eye when I think of a place. This often involves using multiple exposure and/or Intentional Camera Movement. Much of upland Galloway is covered in bogs and moorland, which many people see as monotonous, but for me, the textures and subtle colours of the vegetation make the place, especially towards the end of winter.

A lovely spring scene. Anything with orchard trees is good in my book! The central tree looks like a pear - my absolute favourite. If I had any suggestion to make it might be to crop the right hand side to lose some of the modern buildings.

The trunks start off rich red when newly stripped, gradually fading over months/years to black and eventually a new layer of bark grows. When I first saw these in Spain I couldn't believe the colours, but it's entirely natural - or as natural as stripped bark can be.

I'm not convinced that the pano format works here. The nearest two trees feel a bit truncated (pun intended 😉). The right hand portion also doesn't seem to contribute much except to place the nearer trunks in the centre.
But the colours are amazing and a worthy subject to work with.

The first thing that catches my eye is of course the texture of the ripples caught by the low sunlight - wonderful. The overall composition is great too, with the diagonal row of sandy humps leading us to the right, then I backtrack up to the left to the highest mountain peaks and their cloud caps. Lots to explore.

Love the face with it's illuminated eyes!
I think your 'failed sunset' pictures are probably better than a clear horizon would yield. Much more interesting colours.

English Pastures

I took this on a walk last September in the UK to "Constable Country", where the artist John Constable hailed from. It's honestly not hard to see how the scenery there could inspire such loving renditions of the English countryside.