The Ephemeral Landscape
As I spend more time photographing landscapes I am coming to appreciate the dynamic state of many compositions. There are, of course, many ways to incorporate dynamism into a composition. The type of dynamism I want to discuss in this blog is the result of changes over time. I have many landscape photos that can no longer be duplicated. For one reason or another, the sites have changed.
The most frequent reason for the change is there is one or more, elements in the composition that are ephemeral. This could be a rainbow or some fog. This is an obvious state, I would think.
Double Rainbow Over the Hills Around Devils Tower by Steve Eckes
Foggy Morning on the Ranch by Steve Eckes
As can be seen in the above two photographs there will never be similar photos taken of these scenes. Even if some of the conditions were to be repeated there would still be large differences between the original photos and the newer photos.
In other types of dynamism, the changes are more stark and less expected. The following photograph depicts a complicated scene that is still glorious in its dynamism. Within a year after this photo was taken, the trees on the right were cut down. Possibly a result of wind damage. Aside from the clouds and corpuscular rays of the setting sun being all but impossible to approximate. The trees are gone. It would take Photoshop to even approximate the original composition, let alone duplicate it.
Beautiful Sunset Over the Oil Fields By Steve Eckes
The above image is an example of elements that are permanently removed from a composition. The following photo is an example of new elements being added to the composition. There are still ephemral elements in the photo. The area around the ghost building has been built up. Houses, streets, trails and industrial buildings now surround the original building. Not to mention that the build was new at the time the photo was taken so there were no cars in the parking lot or lights in the windows.
The Ghost in the Building by Steve Eckes
So you can see that there are very dynamic aspects of landscape photography. The time scale can make it seem more static than it really is.