The great nature photographer Eliot Porter rarely included the sky in his photographs. “The sky is too blue,” he is reported to have said on more than one occasion. I have reflected on Porter’s approach more than a little, particularly of late. It is very difficult to capture the moment in Owyhee Country when the clear sky is included in a shot. As Porter noted, the color is so strong and devoid of texture it overpowers the more subtle complexities of the landscape. But it is also very difficult to capture the broken tops of the giant rocks that crowd most canyons without showing a good deal of the sky in the process. The shot above is a perfect illustration of the quandary so often presented to shooters in these circumstances, as you can prove for yourself simply by using something opaque to crop out the sky.
There are a couple solutions for this problem, one that I am certain Porter utilized many times in his own work and another that he may have been too much of a purist to use. First, get on top of the image. In other words change your position in such a way that the sky helps guide the viewer's glance deeper into the center of the shot. I tried that approach in the photo below but unfortunately ran out of hilltop before I reached the vantage point I wanted. That particular spot was just fifty feet above my head, but what my GPS map had failed to mention was that this particular fifty feet was a vertical column – a basalt plug – that I was both too ill-equipped and too ill-disposed to climb. Still, I think the shot below gives a better sense of the enormity of the place, even if it cost a little in the way of detail to pull it off.
In addition to changing perspective you can try to milk the sky for any variation in tone and texture it might be able to give you. In this day and age of digital image manipulation the ease of making “corrections” is pronounced that most shooters simply can’t resist the temptation to take liberties with the documentation of the scene. In Porter’s day this kind of post-production “artistry” would have been both difficult and expensive, particularly where color imagery was concerned. In the image below I messed with the sky to the east (frame right), adding a little density and motion to the edges of an approaching thunderhead that was just a few miles out of frame. Nothing too heavy handed I hope, but maybe enough to make the sky even less obtrusive?
Finally, you can check off your initial approach completely and crop the damned thing down until the sky is a non-factor. But this shot is more about the contrasting colors and textures than it is about the rugged grandeur of the place.
At any rate, isn’t this place magnificent? I am sorry to say my pictures only hint at the overall power of the area, but I’m pretty used to that kind of shortfall where things Owyhee are concerned.
On the way up to the vantage point I happened to spot a herd of Rocky Mountain sheep on a distant hillside. When I first saw them they were scattered all over the slope, but minutes later they had crowded together in the herd shown here. No doubt some kind of predator on the down slope, but exactly what I could never tell. They stayed like this for more than fifteen minutes before swiftly leaving the area. (Double click on the image and it should open to a larger size.)
Seems like where ever you hike in the canyons or along the rims there’s some wonderful rock or rocky feature that you just have to shoot. I’m not sure what kind of bird is perched on the rock in this first one. It wasn’t there when I took the shot!
This outcropping has the look of turrets to it, a common characteristic of crumbling basalt formations.
Back down on the road to the parking area I was surrounded by these kinds of columns. Just wish I knew more about geology. I’m sure there are several interesting stories showing here, if only I could read them.
I'll return to this wonderful place as soon as possible. There's a trail here that leads all the way down to the lake and I am very interested in seeing what that stretch is like. And then there are always the rocks....
