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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
4 comments:
The half-way-up principle can be generalized to modern means of gaining an elevated viewpoint. A mountainside looks bigger from an elevation because the peak is less foreshortened. In a strong case, the summit will appear above, but not far above, the horizon. In recent decades it's made easier shooting from an aircraft. In olden days, we could always wonder, where was the photographer standing, and how did s/he get there? Low-aerial photos remove that puzzlement, for better or worse. :--)
Thanks for reading, Stephen50: agreed - "the halfway-up principle" is so fundamental that it's somewhat amazing how infrequently one sees it in print. In the Alps, one only has to think of the viewpoints from the Matterhorn (Gornergrat) or the Weisshorn (Dom Hut) etc, or the way in which today's mountain photographers are using helicopters to go about their business. Same applies to Mt Fuji - one of the most famous Fuji photographers photographed the mountain from sea-level upwards. But many of his best images were made from the surrounding mountaintops - including the one that appeared on a famous banknote. See https://ridgelineimages.com/musings/recapturing-500-yen-banknote-classic/
John Scurlock took 9 years to build his own small plane to fly above the ground yet below the summits of the Cascades. Compared to that, a helicopter in the Alps seems like cheating, though I know that's an unfair judgement. :--)
Many thanks for the John Scurlock reference, Stephen - I have just visited his website. Very, very impressive, with images rivalling anything coming out of the Alps today. For anyone following this exchange, the url for Scurlock's website is
https://www.pbase.com/nolock
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