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| © Clyde Butcher |
| Click Photo to see image gallery. |
Clyde Butcher emerges from his Volkswagen New Beetle near Little Hunters Beach in Maine's Acadia National Park. Out comes his 5x7-inch view camera and tripod, and in short order he starts clicking. On this June day, a rocky beach beckons down a gentle, wooded path. But this master of large-format black-and-white landscape photography hasn't even left the parking lot.
In his workshops www.clydebutcher.com, Butcher will cover students' viewfinders, telling them to look at the whole scene, not what's in the frame. "The less you have to think," he says, "the better a photographer you can become."
At another breathtaking national park, Rodney Lough Jr. -- also an eminent large-format landscape photographer and teacher (www.theloughroad.com) -- asks his students to reveal the worst thing that's ever happened to them: Step One in unleashing their inner 9-year-old.
Welcome to the Zen side of photography. Butcher, Lough, and others believe that nontechnical -- even nonvisual -- approaches lead to better pictures. The idea: to tap your creativity through intuition and self-contemplation, to forget your preoccupations, and to enjoy the moment of shooting.
Not that these innovative teachers ignore the technical aspects of photography -- Butcher and Lough both spend significant workshop time on traditional technique. But finessing the composition and exposure is secondary; the eye of the photographer comes first. "Out in the sun, I don't use a meter," Butcher says. "I shoot at f/45 and either 1/2 or 1 second. It's better than an automatic camera -- I can concentrate on what I'm seeing!"
Embrace Simplicity
"Simplify everything, so you can feel the shots out there waiting for you," Butcher advises. This gives you a better sense of your surroundings and more compelling pictures. He claims to have taken some of his best pictures from parking lots and roadsides, and he encourages students to start shooting there, "to see where no one else is seeing."
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| Clyde Butcher portrait by Eric Rudolph. |
In Acadia, spying something just off the trail, he quotes Ansel Adams: "You don't get any points for being a mule." Then the 65-year-old heads down the steep bank of a stream, looking sure to tumble down any second. He photographs the scene just off the beaten path, not 50 yards from his car. (One of these photos is on the previous page.)
His lessons, and example, rub off. "Clyde's message has always been 'Slow down, stop and look -- it's right there,'?" says Jim Dobson, who "builds highrises in Miami." He collects Butcher's work and has taken several of his workshops. He has often seen Butcher find great images hiding in plain sight while students "run around like crazy."
Constantly looking through the camera doesn't help. So Butcher occasionally tapes over a student's viewfinder. "People panic: 'How can I frame? Ansel Adams said you need clean edges!'" he says. "Who cares about twigs in the edges if the scene is beautiful? You don't need clean edges -- you need to find, and be moved to photograph, a mood that draws you into a picture."
Butcher can't see much through his view cameras (he uses several, from 4x5 to 12x20). With his ultrawide optics -- 15mm to 18mm equivalents -- the image in the ground glass is dim, so he mainly uses it to focus and refine.
Although he reminds many of Ansel Adams, Butcher has a very different approach. Take Adams' concept of previsualization -- he hasn't done it in 25 years. "I go out with no preconceived idea, just an open heart, an open mind," he says. "You have to develop a sense of how you feel" about your subjects. "Everyone has a different way of seeing and feeling. So go out and let things happen to you."
His ultimate advice? "The key is having a good time," he says. "Why not have fun?"
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