Day Nine - Much ado about very little
We began the day with good intentions -- hike to Llandogo for a riverside view (like all those postcards), then a trip up to the 365 steps, and another view at the Eagle's nest overlooking the Wye, Lancaut, Piercefield, and the Severn... it's a big view. But I'm getting way ahead of myself.
The day started as usual; after breakfast we headed down river to Brockweir and managed to find a car park close to a segment of the Wye Valley Walk and headed back upstream to get a photograph of the village of Llandogo. It's a pretty village rolling up the sides of the valley and disappearing into the woods. A lot of the east bank (the English side) has little or no tree cover, so views are across meadows. As flat expanses, these meadows are a bit boring and I found myself looking for a foreground to minimize this flat space.
I began to think about how painters solved this problem, or any other spatial problem they encounter while depicting a realistic landscape. Nothing seemed available until I spotted a small herd of cattle grazing up in the distance. "Oh great," I thought, "more rules from the picturesque days -- cows or sheep or gnarly trees." As I gave into my lazy inner-self and focused on the closest cow a large black helicopter roared by overhead. Now that was exciting!, but not so picturesque as the cows, so I shot both to cover the scene.
It's still boring, even with the cows OR helicopter and I started thinking about the real object of this tour -- the stability of the quality we know as the Picturesque. Seriously, we still use rules of composition like the thirds ( a very simple way to distribute sky or landscape in a picture), vanishing point perspectives (where the eye is naturally draw into the scene), and multiple, overlapping horizon lines to show depth. Who can deny these work? Who can break these rules successfully, time after time, and still engage a viewer? And what came first, the picture or the lens? (Ask David Hockney, because I'm less interested in that question than I am in) what happened when photographs became a viable alternative to depict space and compete with painting?
For argument sake, I pose a question: What would photography have looked like if the Impressionists were the dominant painting/pictorial style in 1839? (I know the Impressionists were responding to both photography and the speeding up of everything in their social lives, but this is hypothetical) Would we have seen a style of photographic landscape similar to the Pictorialists or would photography have stayed with the hyper-realistic form?
I think about this when I see landscape work which breaks away from the tradition of skies glowing over the land, or dramatic perspectives, or whatever the compositional rule. I've recently been introduced to such work by a photographer named Pete Davis, who as luck would have it, lives and teaches in Wales. We drove over to Newport and met Pete today. With a generosity rare today, he introduced his school, program, and excellent facilities at the Newport School of Art, Media and Design at the University of Wales at Newport, in Caerleon. His recent work -- landscapes of places telling their own stories, has evolved beyond the picturesque, and seems to not require many of the old formal rules of composition. It's a fresh view of the land, ancient as it might be in years. Look at Wildwood, Vermont, and Strata Florida.
So again, what if the Abstract Expressionists had been active when Talbot labored to fix an image at Lacock Abbey in 1835? Would he have dribbled emulsion over the paper and proceeded to photograph a window? What might Ansel Adams have done with Yosemite, if Mondrian and the De Stijl group were the reigning kings of the art world when Daguerre perfected Niépce's process? Maybe these are silly questions, but I'm always looking to the "why" of things we usually accept before moving on to current topics. I guess I'll continue to be stuck in the past, searching for the connection(s) between the Picturesque and photography.
Meanwhile back at the Wye Valley...
After spending time away from the tour to visit Newport, we decided to return to our plans for the day and rushed to the lower valley and managed to squeeze the remaining shots in, but only by cheating on the 365 steps. Since we actually climbed all 365 steps previously, we felt there must be some sort of club membership which we could use as our "get out of a difficult hike pass." We drove to the top of (Upper) Wyndcliff, walked up a short distance to the Eagles Nest, a short 235 fairly easy steps from my car door and took a nice Claude Glass view showing two views simultaneously. We then proceeding down to the Lower Wyndcliff car park and walked up to the beginning of the 365 steps and made some other views. Cheating, ok maybe, but you get the picture. ;-}
I received a note from our new friend, Ray Mitchell, who as an instructor and photographer for the Army Apprentices College in Chepstow photographed "...the boys from the building classes (who) helped on the project of the 365 steps." as part of their education as Regiment Engineers. The original steps were part of the picturesque walks created for the Piercefield Park landscape design, visited by Gilpin in 1770 as did many later Romantic tourists. In this constructed panoramic it's possible to see the Wye, the Severn, the Tintern Road, Piercefiled Park ruins, the finger of land known as Lancaut, and Wintour's Leap.
We finished up at dark and made our way back to the B&B stopping off at The Florence Inn for a nice evening meal. The Inn is on the Tintern Road and overlooks the Wye. It's amazing to me what can be done so easily with a digital camera with adjustable ISO settings, just amazing.
Check out the daily gallery, with an extra Claude Glass shot for Fred Marsh in Columbus.
We began the day with good intentions -- hike to Llandogo for a riverside view (like all those postcards), then a trip up to the 365 steps, and another view at the Eagle's nest overlooking the Wye, Lancaut, Piercefield, and the Severn... it's a big view. But I'm getting way ahead of myself.
The day started as usual; after breakfast we headed down river to Brockweir and managed to find a car park close to a segment of the Wye Valley Walk and headed back upstream to get a photograph of the village of Llandogo. It's a pretty village rolling up the sides of the valley and disappearing into the woods. A lot of the east bank (the English side) has little or no tree cover, so views are across meadows. As flat expanses, these meadows are a bit boring and I found myself looking for a foreground to minimize this flat space.
I began to think about how painters solved this problem, or any other spatial problem they encounter while depicting a realistic landscape. Nothing seemed available until I spotted a small herd of cattle grazing up in the distance. "Oh great," I thought, "more rules from the picturesque days -- cows or sheep or gnarly trees." As I gave into my lazy inner-self and focused on the closest cow a large black helicopter roared by overhead. Now that was exciting!, but not so picturesque as the cows, so I shot both to cover the scene.
It's still boring, even with the cows OR helicopter and I started thinking about the real object of this tour -- the stability of the quality we know as the Picturesque. Seriously, we still use rules of composition like the thirds ( a very simple way to distribute sky or landscape in a picture), vanishing point perspectives (where the eye is naturally draw into the scene), and multiple, overlapping horizon lines to show depth. Who can deny these work? Who can break these rules successfully, time after time, and still engage a viewer? And what came first, the picture or the lens? (Ask David Hockney, because I'm less interested in that question than I am in) what happened when photographs became a viable alternative to depict space and compete with painting?
For argument sake, I pose a question: What would photography have looked like if the Impressionists were the dominant painting/pictorial style in 1839? (I know the Impressionists were responding to both photography and the speeding up of everything in their social lives, but this is hypothetical) Would we have seen a style of photographic landscape similar to the Pictorialists or would photography have stayed with the hyper-realistic form?
I think about this when I see landscape work which breaks away from the tradition of skies glowing over the land, or dramatic perspectives, or whatever the compositional rule. I've recently been introduced to such work by a photographer named Pete Davis, who as luck would have it, lives and teaches in Wales. We drove over to Newport and met Pete today. With a generosity rare today, he introduced his school, program, and excellent facilities at the Newport School of Art, Media and Design at the University of Wales at Newport, in Caerleon. His recent work -- landscapes of places telling their own stories, has evolved beyond the picturesque, and seems to not require many of the old formal rules of composition. It's a fresh view of the land, ancient as it might be in years. Look at Wildwood, Vermont, and Strata Florida.
So again, what if the Abstract Expressionists had been active when Talbot labored to fix an image at Lacock Abbey in 1835? Would he have dribbled emulsion over the paper and proceeded to photograph a window? What might Ansel Adams have done with Yosemite, if Mondrian and the De Stijl group were the reigning kings of the art world when Daguerre perfected Niépce's process? Maybe these are silly questions, but I'm always looking to the "why" of things we usually accept before moving on to current topics. I guess I'll continue to be stuck in the past, searching for the connection(s) between the Picturesque and photography.
Meanwhile back at the Wye Valley...
After spending time away from the tour to visit Newport, we decided to return to our plans for the day and rushed to the lower valley and managed to squeeze the remaining shots in, but only by cheating on the 365 steps. Since we actually climbed all 365 steps previously, we felt there must be some sort of club membership which we could use as our "get out of a difficult hike pass." We drove to the top of (Upper) Wyndcliff, walked up a short distance to the Eagles Nest, a short 235 fairly easy steps from my car door and took a nice Claude Glass view showing two views simultaneously. We then proceeding down to the Lower Wyndcliff car park and walked up to the beginning of the 365 steps and made some other views. Cheating, ok maybe, but you get the picture. ;-}
I received a note from our new friend, Ray Mitchell, who as an instructor and photographer for the Army Apprentices College in Chepstow photographed "...the boys from the building classes (who) helped on the project of the 365 steps." as part of their education as Regiment Engineers. The original steps were part of the picturesque walks created for the Piercefield Park landscape design, visited by Gilpin in 1770 as did many later Romantic tourists. In this constructed panoramic it's possible to see the Wye, the Severn, the Tintern Road, Piercefiled Park ruins, the finger of land known as Lancaut, and Wintour's Leap.
We finished up at dark and made our way back to the B&B stopping off at The Florence Inn for a nice evening meal. The Inn is on the Tintern Road and overlooks the Wye. It's amazing to me what can be done so easily with a digital camera with adjustable ISO settings, just amazing.
Check out the daily gallery, with an extra Claude Glass shot for Fred Marsh in Columbus.
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