More often than not, dense textures annoy me.
During that morning at Grand Prismatic, I was having a hay-day with the fog. Crating surreal images of an already surreal environment was…surreal. I spent a lot of time looking for distinct forms on the ground beyond the walkway, and this loop-like water flow caught my attention.
However, despite it sticking out to me, I struggled with composing an image around it. I briefly talked about balance in a few previous Ones that Didn’t Make It, and that was a big problem with this loop of water.
In an upcoming One That Didn’t Make It, I talk about another attempt at photographing this very form. The search for balance in landscape photography is probably one of the hardest aspects of the genre.
While, yes, technically this photograph is balanced, it’s not balanced in the way I wanted it to be. While some landscape photographers don’t mind having man-made structures in their traditional landscape images, that’s a hard “no” from me, dog. I used the walkway in the upper-right of the frame to offset the look of water, but it doesn’t work very well. For me, my eyes instantly go to the left of the frame and stay there. Generally, you’d want the viewer to travel around the frame, even in more minimal scenes.
This photograph was a disappointment to me. For finding an interesting and distinct form and not being able to find a good composition around it is quite unfortunate. It’s the bane of every landscape photographer’s existence .