Creating the perfect landscape

Regarding digital manipulation in Photoshop, I tell my clients on photo tours that you have to decide if you are a 'photo journalist' or a 'photo artist'. If you are the former, then altering an image is against your way of shooting and seeing the world. If you are the latter, anything goes in terms of embellishing photographs -- even images of nature. You can also create scenes that never existed.

This is the Old Man of Storr, a stunning landscape in the Isle of Skye in Scotland. If I used a wide angle lens to include a dominant foreground, the pinnacles seemed too far away and unimpressive. If I used a medium telephoto lens, the foreground wouldn't be dramatic. In addition, even at f/32, I couldn't keep the elements close to the camera sharp. I could focus stack, sure, but I had a better idea. I took two pictures: One with a 24-105mm lens consisting of the distant landscape, and another using a 16-35mm lens with a huge rock in the foreground. I then cut and pasted the rock into the distant landscape shot to make the kind of image I really wanted. I used the pen tool in PS to precisely select the rock.

2 Comments

Mar 3, 2018, 7:43:04 AM

Jim - Thank you, Bob. I've used this same idea in a lot of situations, and it is great for producing something that the laws of optics make difficult or impossible.

Mar 3, 2018, 1:41:15 AM

Bob Vestal - I like this image very much. It looks very natural and it reflects a previsualization of a desired landscape composition that we would hope to capture. The use of two images is a technique to be remembered.

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