March Photo Challenge

Embracing detail and the intimate landscape

Hello and welcome to March’s challenge.

Each month I will be sharing a new post with a different theme and a challenge for you to go out and complete, should you wish to do so. The idea is to share some of your favourite images from the challenge on the chat page of my substack. Please feel free to post your images and comment on others so that we can build a supportive community around our shared love of photography.

This month the theme is detail and the intimate landscape.

Grass and leaves in still water. I have darkened the background in this shot to make the subject stand out more.

The term intimate landscape was first coined by photographer Eliot Porter in 1979 who used it as a title for an exhibition he held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The images that he selected for his exhibition can be seen on this website and will give you an idea what he meant by the term intimate landscape.

What is an intimate landscape?

An Intimate landscape is a term used to describe a small scene which has been extracted from a wider landscape view and put into a frame of its own.

It might just be a smaller area of the landscape, usually where the sky has been omitted or it could be a composition that focuses on shapes, lines, colours, textures or patterns.

It is similar but different to macro. Macro focuses on tiny elements that we cannot see very well and brings them to our attention by magnifying them to make a picture. Intimate landscapes are much more about framing a smaller area of the landscape to bring it greater prominence.

Intimate landscapes are really worth exploring because they are a way of creating an image that is unique to you. It is very unlikely that anyone else will see the same elements or composition as you even if they visited the same location. Intimate landscapes are personal to you, they are your take on the world and are more emotive than the classic view that many photographers jostle to take.