reframing the world one picture at a time
Last of the Indian landscapes shot in the Nilgiris mountains around Ooty and Coonoor for today. They are standalones and I think actually work as a single set to demonstrate the diversity of the region – everything from untouched virgin forest to a hybrid cultvation of tea bushes to a little entropy and human evidence in the margins. Enjoy! MT
Except for one image, this series was shot with a Hasselblad 501CM, CFV-50C and mostly the CF 4/150.
I was having a discussion about the presentation of landscape and color use the other day with one of my students – which in turn got me thinking about why we see so few modern landscapes that work in monochrome, typically unless the shooter is trying to imitate Ansel. My theory is that it’s much, much harder to make a compelling image of nature without color – there is the tendency for the scene to look dead, rather than vibrant and alive. You also lose all of the delicate color gradients in skies and the like – which further deadens the scene. But as with all monochrome, surely we could also use these properties to imply a sense of timelessness, surreality or detachment?
Today’s post is a little sampling of the forests in the Nilgiri mountains in India – with quite a range of altitude, you get a wide range of flora from tropical to almost alpine and trees clinging to sides of steep escarpments, in places transitioning into tea plantations – complete with tigers, elephants and other wildlife to match (which also rendered large areas off limits – both for reasons of wildlife and human-life preservation). We didn’t encounter any of those, but we did spend quite a bit of time traveling through the predominantly montane forest. I of course also continued the Forest project of gigapixel-plus stitches, which I’ll probably never show digitally – the effect is completely lost. Nevertheless, I’ve always found forests to be very relaxing and tranquil places – and I hope the effect carries through on screen, even though digital media isn’t the best way of reproducing a fractal subject. What should of course carry through is the tonal palette – I’m pleased because this is about the closest I’ve gotten so far to almost full transparency, thanks to the CFV-50C. Enjoy! MT
This series was shot with a Hasselblad 501CM, CFV-50C digital back and a variety of lenses, and post processed with PS Workflow II.
And for something a little different today: the images do not follow in any particular sequence, nor do the contents of the images themselves make a story that makes any kind of immediate sense – this is of course deliberate. There is a narrative here, but I think it’s an extreme example of the message being far more dependent on the interpretation of the audience than the presentation of the photographer – so I shall leave these images without titles (probably much to the great relief of half the audience). If the images make too much sense, look closer – and form your own conclusions… MT
This series was shot with a Leica Q, Hasselblad 501CM, CFV-50C digital back, various lenses, and post processed with Photoshop Workflow II.
I have this habit of shooting against the sun at dawn and dusk – I think it must be a natural aversion to having the light source directly behind me, which it otherwise would have been had I been facing the other way. I didn’t consciously curate the images this way, but it turns out pretty much everything from the early morning and late night sessions in Ooty were shot contra-jour; there’s something about the light hitting the mist or dust or other particulates trapped between hills and creating nicely recursive (and slowly vanishing) layers into the distance. I could probably have used an EVF in some of these situations to avoid going temporarily blind… Enjoy! MT
This series was shot with a Hasselblad 501CM, CFV-50C and processed with Photoshop Workflow II.
Half an hour before we were to meet our contact from the wildlife preservation department, we arrived in Coonoor, the Nilgris range, India, to find the town sleepy and barely stirring. Sunlight was just hitting the very tops of the highest buildings upslope, and the few residents stirring were dragging their feet – a massive contrast to the scene a couple of hours later, which was so different you could not imagine the place empty. As we did a quick walk through, I felt like I was observing the aftermath of the night before…a sort of crime scene worker, if you will. What follows is from the body of evidence, filed under ‘environmental context’. MT
This series was shot with a Leica Q, and post processed with PS Workflow II.
Behind the scenes videos
If you enjoyed the content, please consider 
-ing or subscribing - thanks for your support!
Ming Thein | Photographer 