Two Ways to Shoot a Landscape

	© Jim Richardson
	Click photo to see more of Jim Richardson's images.

Perhaps no photographic genre is more popular than the landscape, and today there may be no more important one. The poignancy of the landscape -- fragile, beautiful, ever-changing, threatened -- has long called out to photographers.

And they have responded, driven by the urge to document, celebrate, and remember what they have seen. In that sense, all landscape photography is a kind of conservation photography. Here we take a look at how two very different people with two very different visions, Jim Richardson and J. Henry Fair, set out to photograph the lay of the land.

Jim Richardson Masterclass: The Flint Hills of Kansas

National Geographic photographer Jim Richardson has shot the Celtic lands of Cornwall, the architecture of Venice, and the whisky country of Scotland. But when he returns home, it is to Lindsborg, Kansas, that most American of places.

"Kansas is where I grew up, and it's where I choose to live," he says. "For me, no other place smells quite right, you know." Two years ago Richardson proposed a story for the magazine on the state's Flint Hills region, the last remaining expanse of tall grass prairie on the continent. But he knew going into the project that he was facing a photographic problem.

"It's a place I'd been back to many times in my career, and as a photographer I'd never done very well there," he says. "It is a prairie, and prairies are tough to shoot." The Flint Hills are simply rolling hills and grass, with few landmarks to place in the foreground to create a sense of depth. "Once you pick up a camera and point it at them, they just kind of diminish in the distance. They're not like the Tetons in Wyoming, which are big enough to fill a 4x5 frame."

Richardson's solution was to "work the story for all it's worth." A landscape is rarely successfully photographed in one day. "One of the things you do is to drive a hell of a lot of miles to find the place that has the look you envision," he says. Richardson had the advantage of a lengthy shooting schedule: He began work in March 2006 and didn't finish until late the following autumn. He was able to shoot as prairie chickens began their courting, or "booming," in early spring, and later in the summer, when ranchers burn off dead grasses in a man-made version of the natural prairie phenomenon that keeps nongrass vegetation from taking root. Still later he shot the intense regrowth period, when new grass turns the region emerald green.

The backing of National Geographic also allowed Richardson to hire a plane for aerial shots, but he essentially relied on his knowledge of the area to get the pictures he wanted. He knew that Kansas thunderstorms create a lot of visual drama, and he knew the back roads that led to little-known corners of the state. Most of all, he says, he remained alive to creative possibilities -- shooting lightning bugs over a field of wild alfalfa an hour after sunset, or creating a panoramic image of the Milky Way with four separate exposures.
-Jeffrey Elbies

© J. Henry Fair

Click photo to see more of J. Henry Fair's images.

J. Henry Fair's photographs are deceptive. Mostly aerial views shot from a small plane, their rich palette and texture give them the quality of abstract paintings. But in fact, the images illustrate some of the ugliest places on the planet.

Fair photographs environmental destruction, but he does not limit himself solely to industrial wastelands. Still, the glorified images of substances such as bauxite waste and petroleum coke are startling. Why would Fair want to make such poisons look so painterly? He thinks it's an alternative to the grim realism of depicting environmental devastation -- another way to call attention to the unreasonable demands we place on the world. "My goal is to entice the viewer on an aesthetic level, to draw them in," Fair says. "But I don't want anyone to forget that these are industrial nightmares."

Because such sites are usually well fortified against visitors, Fair often shoots from above. "Frequently you can't get to a spot on the ground that isn't fenced off," he says. "I started aerial photography out of necessity. As it turns out, it's actually really cool."

Fair's photography comes only after careful planning. "When you look at a picture of bubbling goo," he says, "I want to be able to tell you exactly what's in it." He examines the deleterious effect of industries from a number of angles to encompass a larger picture. The abstract image here is of an aluminum manufacturing site in Louisiana. "Aluminum production is very picturesque from the air," says Fair. "My next project is going to be uranium mining, which is less photogenic." Indeed, the radioactive element's most damaging effects are invisible, so it will be interesting to see how Fair captures them.

The photograph on pages 50-51, which Fair calls "The Last Stand," shows a small cluster of trees in West Virginia about to be demolished by a bulldozer. It is a more literal image than Fair's aerials but full of symbolism nonetheless. The machines seem to represent humanity's determination to wage industrial warfare against the natural world, while the trees stand as soldiers of the earth about to lose yet another battle. Fair shot from ground level after observing the stand for two days from the air. "I went looking for something powerful, and I was lucky enough to find it."
-Amanda Star