“Mountain photography” (8)

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

Choice of subject: Many mountains are subjects of inherent beauty and dramatic quality and have strong personalities of their own with which the photographer cannot compete.

The Matterhorn by H G Ponting, FRGS, FRPS.

Illustration from Mountain Photography by C Douglas Milner.

Any attempt to express one's personality in a picture of, say, the MATTERHORN, is almost certain to result in a victory for the MATTERHORN. As CHARLES SIMPSON, R.I., says: "Subjects whose nature ensures a certain impressiveness as pictures ... mountains, lakes and scenic landscapes on the grand scale, do not afford the same opportunities for artistic paintings or photographs of those of a simpler character whose beauty has to be sought for and studied. Variations on a simple theme are more satisfying than grandiose panoramas."

Perhaps the idea worth aiming at may be conveyed in three imaginary comments by an observer of three mountain photographs, each of the WEISSHORN.

"I remember when we were caught in a storm on that."

The right comment for a record photograph. The mind of the observer has not been arrested by the surface of the print, but has passed on to the mountain itself, recognised it, and without any more consideration has recalled something from his memory.

"It's amazing how they get their cows up those slopes . . . Is that you standing among them?"

The WEISSHORN is lost at the top (or back) of the picture, whilst the interest has been seized by a group of cows and a man in the foreground. A very typical result of including too much.

"What a beautiful photograph. . . . Is it in the Alps?”

That may represent pictorial success to the photographer. It is recognised as beautiful, it is clearly accepted as a photograph and not an imitation of an etching or mezzotint, yet its subject matter is not a determining factor in appreciation but a mere afterthought.

A Himalayan glacier by F S Smythe.
Illustration from Mountain Photography by C Douglas Milner.

So that to make a first selection of subject matter, avoid scenes which conform to guidebook standards of beauty. Competent records of beauty spots can, indeed should, be made: the Blau-, Grün- or Schwarz-sees of the Continent; the BLEA TARNs at home; but their place is among the other documentary photographs of a district.

Into the same category of the pictorially impossible fall the impressive arrays of mountain summits catalogued at well-known Aussichtspunkte: and a good deal of conventional landscape in the traditional manner. Swiss scenery is especially difficult to handle with any degree of originality. Most valleys offer the mixture "as before". A few chalets, the ranks of pines, the glacier leading to the upper snows, and, finally, the rock buttresses of the distant peak standing crisply into the dark sky. One such photograph serves to ilustrate the type, all others are variations upon the same theme, and a succession of such views easily becomes dull.

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.