CCC Forum

Iggy wrote:Noticed that Don liked shooting in portrait rather than landscape.

SteveBudd wrote:Hi folks.

I'm up for trying for a shot a week from this point, so opening the batting is 'Black sky', a shot snagged on the Ricoh GRII while Ruth and I were out thrashing the dogs at Selsdon Wood. I've been a fan of Don McCullin for well over two decades. McCullin would often shoot landscapes between conflicts, as a means of trying to escape the psychological consequences of the terrible things he'd recorded through his camera over the years.

He admitted that even so, his experiences still led him to style his routinely monochrome images in a dark and brooding way that deliberately rendered the landscape almost overtly threatening, with high contrast tones.

I had Don in mind as we stopped at a bench mid way up Great Field. The sun was in and out from behind clouds when I glanced up at the over reaching branches and with the Ricoh set to 'High Contrast Monochrome' ran off a few shots, anticipating adding a red filter in post processing to blacken the sky and lift the cloud.

In McCullin-esque style, the dark branches reach over the viewer, filtering the view of the sky, while the trees beyond are an impenetrably dark barrier.
Looks like I chose the wrong week to quit amphetamines...




TTFN

Steve