“Mountain photography” (6)

Hints on the art and technique from a practitioner of the nineteen-forties.

The middle way: For all ordinary purposes the best position on a mountain is around "half-way up the one opposite". There at least the lens of normal focal length can reach up to the summits and down to the valleys, enabling good use to be made of the picture area, and giving good proportion of upper detail to lower.

Winter in the Tyrol by Paul Wolff.
Illustration from Mountain Photography by C Douglas Milner.

The idea of a half-way position is not a precise one: somewhere above valley level and below summit level is the viewpoint we need. In favourable circumstances a viewpoint only 50 or 100 feet above the valley floor may be enough to open up the foreground so as to give a much better picture than in the valley itself.

A glen in the Cairngorms by G B Kearey FRPS, FIPB.
Illustration from Mountain Photography by C Douglas Milner. 

For instance, it is well worth trying for views just off a road, which always occupies too much of the foreground, and this expedient of moving a little way up the hillside can usefully be adopted. With mountains of moderate height, backed by higher neighbours, something a little lower than half-way may be best, for then the summit can be placed against a background of sky, as the highest point of the picture, whilst if a higher viewpoint is used, the bigger peaks may be a little too prominent.

References

From C Douglas Milner, Mountain Photography: Its Art and Technique in Britain and Abroad, The Focal Press, First printed October 1945, reprinted June 1946.