Forceful Foregrounds

A PORTFOLIO BY GARY LADD

The secret to great landscape photography-it's right in front of you

FORCEFUL FOREGROUNDS Edge of the Colorado River at the Mouth of Nankoweap Canyon, Grand Canyon National Park

"The nearby Nankoweap granaries and attendant glorious views from the granaries have been published hundreds of times. But near there I stumbled upon a few square feet of sand where water seeped toward the river. Using a mild telephoto lens, I moved in close to capture the drama of this dendritic drainage pattern." -Gary Ladd

Here's the question every photography-workshop student wants answered: What is the secret of great photography?

The secret is this: There is no secret. Successful landscape photography isn't built upon a single foundation rock. It is constructed with little bricks of experience and intuition, mortared with years of experience. Talent and desire quicken the process; shiny new cameras don't. Not much, anyway. Technical expertise helps, but so do patience, pluck and a pinch of craziness and luck. So does an eye for shadow line penumbras, cloud moveAt least, that's the lesson of 25 years worth of photo workshops in the Grand Canyon, the Vermilion Cliffs and on Lake Powell. Today's photographers can use auto-exposure and focusing, programmed bracketing and sophisticated optics, but no matter how clever the equipment, the person behind the camera must still select the composition. A computer can't do it, a button won't initiate it.

It's the foreground-incorporating objects rich in detail or pattern that are close enough to touch and smell that lends life to photographs.

Most people take notice of the distant mesas, mountains and canyons, but remain oblivious to the ground beneath their feet. These people are not effective photographers.

Foregrounds are useful for several reasons:

Imagine 10 photographers lined up on a ridge with a view of a cluster of majestic mesas, each photographer struggling to create a photograph better than the rest. But what can any of them do with mesas that are 2 miles away? Move right? Move left? Climb the ridge? Switch lenses? Will that create a stunning photograph? The answer? No. The mesas are too distant for the photographer to have an effect on the image by moving a few hundred feet.

Now imagine 10 more photographers lined up on the ridge, you among them. Just for a moment, rip your eyes off the handsome buttes and look at your feet. Look for a foreground with Study strong design elements that will complement the distant mesas. Study the pattern of branches of the buckwheat plant. Notice the interlaced symmetry of the sandstone crossbedding. Consider the ripple marks in the sand. And what about that reflection in the pool cradled in a slickrock basin or the cactus flower nearly trampled underfoot?

Usually, the best landscape photographs depend on the near. The distant stuff is often hazy, colorless and kind of wimpy-not eminently fruitful material for art unless haze and predictability can act as foreground foils.

The sandstone and shale and sparse vegetation of the desert landscapes of Glen Canyon present a wealth of diagonals, paral-lels, curves and radials. Look at the desert-varnish motifs, the reflections, the slot-canyon sinuosities and the architecture of alcoves. Move the camera a few inches and you "rearrange" these elements. Composition is a matter of geometry. In photography, geometry is destiny.

But this shameless miracle works only at close range. Good landscape photography does not provide an "accurate" portrayal of reality. Photography selectively stresses the desirable and conceals the unwanted or unneeded. Landscape photography at its best idealizes reality by directing our attention away from the ordinary and toward the quietly spectacular.

Think of foreground awareness as a kind of stealth. You need to MIC-Move In Close. This might mean moving physically closer, or it might involve a telephoto lens to emphasize a foreground pattern or a wide-angle lens to exaggerate perspective and pattern. When you're struggling with a landscape, get closer. Good, that's it; now even closer.

Finally, here's the most compelling argument for forceful foregrounds that I can imagine. Think of a real world in which you are completely forbidden to see anything close at hand-no butterflies, no snowflakes, no grasses or leaves, no stones, no children's faces. Such a world would be dreary indeed. So, too, your photographs if they reveal only the far removed.

The charm of foregrounds is really no secret. It never has been. Yet most photographers still overlook them. Why? Partly it's just the way we're wired. Beyond that, it's simple laziness. Foreground work is often uncomfortable, involving stooping, hunching, kneeling or even lying down in the mud and sand where scorpions roam.

But if you want to make art, you're going to have to be foreground-vigilant. Move in close, real close. Suffer. That's life.

Besides, we "mature" instructors get a kick out of watching you rookies squirm. Al

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"Using a telephoto lens, House Rock Rapid was enhanced by including a foreground element that offered an 'anchor'-a ruddiness of color wildly different from that of the green Colorado River."

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When you're struggling with a landscape, get closer.

Edge of the Colorado River at Fern Glen Canyon, Grand Canyon National Park

"While others unloaded the boats and set up their tents, I stood in the breaking waves to photograph the beach (left) and its repetitive patterns before it was trampled by my fellow river-runners."

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Blue Pool, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area

"The Coyote Buttes area is famous for its colorful sandstone knobs and canyons, but in this instance I focused on the inscriptions of grasses used by the wind as styli. The colorful sandstone forms a backdrop for the photograph rather than the main element."

"I found a great angle of view for the group of sandstone outcrops, but my distance from the domes required that I use a telephoto lens to fill the frame with the crossbedding patterns. A trace of the valley beyond the buttes offers a sense of scale and a neutral counterpoint to the drama of the sandstone."