Landscape photographer John Been discusses the difficulties of finding compelling landscape photography locations in his home country of the Netherlands. Despite what some might consider a relatively featureless landscape, typical of the low countries, Netherlands photography has so much to offer. This article first featured in Issue 04 of Light & Landscape.
The Challenges of Landscape Photography in the Netherlands
I am a fine art landscape photographer from Holland. In our twenties my wife and I loved to visit countries like Iceland, Norway and Sweden for their dramatic landscapes and coastlines that we missed in our own country. We felt at home in these landscapes, in which we enjoyed hiking as well as just sitting on a rock for a while to visually breath the landscape and be part of it. As a result of a terrible accident in 2000 my wife was confronted with a nerve and muscle disease. She has been tied to her bed ever since. Due to her severe disability we were not able to visit these beloved places anymore and were bound to settle for “less”.
As a passionate landscape photographer, not being able to photograph landscapes abroad anymore, I was forced to find my muse in our own country. From a natural perspective Holland has a relatively simple landscape with not much to offer. Unfortunately we are not blessed with a “backyard” of mountains, valleys, waterfalls and wild streams. The landscape is flat. Only in the south do we have some elevation. Our highest peak is a “mighty” 323 meters above sea level, but most of the land is at sea level or even below. Hoorn, the little city I live in, is even lower than the surface of the IJsselmeer it lays next to. So we need dikes to protect us from flooding.
With every photograph I make I try to be distinctive. My photographic approach is not journalistic. I do not take pictures of things, but aim to craft my photographs. But the lack of significant natural features in the Dutch landscape gives me as a landscape photographer a real challenge to fulfill my creative vision. Faced with the obvious limitations of our landscape, I think it is much harder to create a spectacular photo of a landscape without real intrinsic potential for beauty, than to create a special photo of a visually appealing landscape that is spectacular in it self. Fantastic areas like the Grand Canyon, Bryce, Zion and the Norwegian Fjords have so much potential that it seems almost impossible to make a bad picture.
The limitations in the Dutch landscape forced me to find the natural beauty in often small, undervalued areas, overlooked by others. Therefore my photographic goal shifted towards making visually grand landscapes out of small ones. And by showing people how beautiful Netherlands photography can be, I try to let them reconnect with their natural surroundings close to home. In this article I want to share my vision on photography and the way I cope with the challenges I have to face in my own simple, flat country.
The Characteristics of the Dutch Landscape
To understand the way I adjust to the landscape that is available to me, I want to share some characteristics of that landscape. In my opinion one of the most important aspects of being a landscape photographer is having an in-depth knowledge of the landscape and the effect the light has on it in different seasons on different moments of the day. Getting familiar with both the qualities as well as the limitations is a valuable starting point. There are some important limitations that define the Dutch landscape for which photographic solutions must be found:
- There is no real wilderness anymore. Every spot has been touched and impacted by man.
- Almost everywhere you look there is something on the horizon that has been made by man.
- Lack of boulders in the landscape.
- Lack of jagged coastlines.
- There are no mountains and the sim- ple hills in the south are inhabited or used as farmland.
- Due to the lack of elevation we do not have waterfalls or fast flowing rivers.
How to Handle These Limitations
The fact that I am tied to Netherlands photography seemed at first a limitation in my photographic journey. But along the way I learned it is not a disadvantage at all and maybe even a great opportunity, since it forces me to specialize in the little that is available to me. Sometimes less is indeed more. I do not have to divide my attention between several countries or places that I probably would visit only once, with the most likely outcome of mediocre pictures at best. Now that I can no longer travel far away, I am forced to return to the same spots over and over again and have the opportunity to really understand the landscape. This gives me the opportunity to get to know these places in depth and find the hidden beauty overlooked by others. And in the end I hope my in-depth knowledge of a location provides better and more balanced photographs.
Lack of Wilderness
It is difficult to find a spot in the Dutch landscape that isn’t touched by people. Even the forests are not authentic since they are planted by hand as a replacement to all the trees cut in the past. All the young new trees were placed in neat rows so in a lot of our forests these perfect but (from an artist’s point of view) unwanted parallel lines are still visible after years of cleaning up dead wood and removing trees that are in the way. But we are learning. Lately, for some of these places it has been decided that there will be less intervention. Letting nature do her job results in a more chaotic, but a more natural-looking landscape as well. Luckily one of these places is only a one-hour drive from my house, so it’s relatively easy to visit it more than once to experience the landscape.
Disruptive Elements
As mentioned earlier I live nearby the largest lake of Holland. It is only a five-minute walk. Each time I go there, which is almost every week more than once, I really enjoy the wide vista. But one of the problems in this landscape is that on the horizon there are many objects visible like buildings and electricity pylons. I don’t like those in my photographs. Of course Photoshop is perfect to get rid of those objects, but I don’t want to remove objects that are actually part of the Dutch landscape. I want my photographs to represent the landscape as it really is. Therefore my approach is to use an extreme wide-angle lens, which has the effect of enlarging objects in the foreground while minimizing those on the horizon. The end result is that these objects are still visible, but are not as disruptive as when seen with the naked eye.
Lack of Boulders
We do not have a dramatic coastline. It has no inlets or cliffs and has a lack of boulders. Because I miss this kind of coastal spectacle I am even more driven to capture the unexpected combination of a Dutch coastal landscape with natural looking rock formations. Luckily for me the little city I live in lays a couple of meters below the surface of that same lake five minutes from my home. And to prevent it from flooding the whole lake is surrounded by a rocky dike. And although initially man placed these rocks by hand, through the years storms and waves have had a major impact on these coastlines. When you really look for it there are some nice spots where nature has changed the landscape towards a more natural looking setting. And these are the hidden gems often missed by others that I try to find to distinguish my work and show how beau- tiful our landscape can actually be. One of these locations that I visit a lot is only a couple of meters wide and tall and when looking in both directions there are a lot of disruptive elements. When I show people the photograph on the previous page they can’t believe it is actually right next to a soccer field. Via my compositions I try to give the impression that the places I choose to photograph are actually part ofalarger,morespectacularlandscape. In this specific spot I always choose for a vertical approach with my extreme wide-angle lens from a low point of view. The result of shooting in portrait orientation is that I get rid of the unwanted elements on both sides of the composition. The wide-angle lens reduces the elements on the horizon and enlarges the foreground elements, which helps in sharing the physicality of nature. And by looking for s-shapes or leading lines I lead the viewer through the composition the way I want and try to compensate for the vertically narrowing effect.
No Jagged Coastline
Holland has a lot of beaches. I love the North Sea and her tides. But I miss the jagged coastlines of for example the Norwegian fjords or the Icelandic coast. In my compositions I always look for foreground interest, leading lines or s-shapes. Without these elements the Dutch beaches seem of no interest for my style of photography, but when you do some serious scouting, although difficult to find, these elements are actually there. In the image on following page you see a construction of rocks that once was being created to preserve and protect the coastline from strong waves. There are not many elements to play with, because outside the composition there is actually nothing of interest there. But by intensively searching for the right angle, the right height, the right light and by using a long exposure to mimic the effect of moving waves, it can deliver unexpected, natural looking images with the impression of being in the middle of a visually more dramatic rocky coastline. One of the things that stupefies me and is a huge disappointment, is that a few months after I made this picture, the local government decided that these rocks where not needed anymore and removed them. Again one, less nice place to come back to.
Lack of Elevation
Elevation in a landscape, when used right, can be a strong compositional element. Unfortunately, Holland shows little variation in height. So I am eager to look for alternatives with almost the same quality and visual impact. What we do have a lot of in Holland are clouds. Thick fluffy clouds, thin long clouds, multi layer formations, you name it, we have them. And most of the time, with the right light, these are very diverse, very beautiful and rapidly changing compositional elements. So the landscape is different with every visit. For me the clouds are, with some help of the correct graduated neutral density filters for optimal balance, one of the most important ingredients in my compositions. I never go out for a shooting trip if we have blue sky. Blue skies are boring. The clouds don’t have to be spectacular as long as they deliver a perfect compositional balance against the placement of the foreground focal point.
No Fast-Moving Water
As a side effect of the lack of elevation, we don’t have waterfalls or fast moving streams. But I love the effect of silky smooth water tumbling down, photographed with long shutter speeds. So how to achieve that effect without the required elements? I must admit this is a real challenge in Holland. Of course I achieved the smooth water effect by using long shutter speeds at the beach, but I really wanted to scout for a more compressed and intimate location of a dynamic stream surrounded by trees. After years of research and scouting I found a place nearby my home. This is a small forest situated right next to the before mentioned lake with the root base a couple of meters below the surface. With a system of concrete pipes and narrow ca- nals the water is routed through the forest. By accurately determining the composition and excluding unwanted objects (like those concrete pipes) from the photograph on the next page, I was able to give the impression of a natural fast flowing forest stream.
General Lack of Interest
One additional important limitation that isn’t directly landscape related, is the lack of interest in the Netherlands for landscape photography as an art form. Portrait, wedding and journalistic photography get a lot of attention in the media, the magazines, contests and the news, but there is minimal attention for fine art landscape photography. As I see a lot of interest for landscape photographers and their work in the rest of the world, here in the Netherlands it is painfully absent. So it is very difficult to get some exposure locally. Of course I primarily make photographs for my own pleasure, but I love to share them with the world as well. Luckily thanks to modern technology I am not bound by Dutch borders to get recognized for what I do, but more important to get serious feedback to become a better photographer. Websites such as 500px and Flickr, and of course internationally available magazines such as Light & Landscape Magazine, are perfect platforms to share our creations on a global level.
Netherlands Photography – Final Thoughts
I started this article of the opinion that my challenge to create distinctive Netherlands photography must be much harder than that of a landscape photographer living in a visually more appealing country or region. In those places just point your lens somewhere and you always have a nice result…or not? While writing and reflecting on different aspects of my own photographic journey I learned that I was being somewhat shortsighted and was probably being negatively influenced by my own struggle. My opinion has really changed and I realize that fine art landscape photographers in the rest of the world deserve a lot more of my appreciation. And here is why. A growing number of people are getting interested in photography. This is both a good and a bad thing. On the positive side I see that the technology helps people to go out and connect with nature again. On the other hand, because of advancing within-camera technology it is simple to make a technically good photo. This is in my experience, increasingly often being confused with a skilled photograph. For example here in Holland, but I believe this is a commonly occurring phenomenon in the rest of the world as well, painful examples can be seen in wedding and portrait photography. The perception is that nowadays everyone can make a good photograph, so professionals and artists are struggling against uncle Joe with his happy snapper. So they need to work harder than ever before to stand out of the crowd in demonstrating their distinctive value.
For us landscape photographers, taking just a nice or technically correct photo, or just capturing the moment, is not enough.
It is not about capturing what is in front of you, but about composing balanced images out of interrelated elements in the landscape. A serious landscape photographer wants to create distinctive images, not recreate postcards of iconic places that you can buy in the local store. Photographers with the luck of having a fantastic national park nearby or within reach, therefore have their own challenges to stand out against the masses. For me it is a challenge to compete against photographs of monumental landscapes abroad with more visually appealing elements. But these photographers probably have an even bigger challenge due to the fact that there are numerous com- petitive colleagues and wannabes with access to those same areas having the same possibilities. So to do something different we have to work harder and go further. In the end it doesn’t really matter where you live. Landscape photographers all around the world, ultimately have their own challenges to work for that little something extra to stand out in the crowd.
John Been Profile
John Been was born in 1970 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. For the last 8 years he has lived in Hoorn, a nice little city founded in the year 716, in the north of the Netherlands, situated nearby the largest lake in Holland, the IJsselmeer. There he lives with his wife Tonja and their cat Missy. To counterbalance his hectic daytime job, John uses a lot of his spare time to explore his creative side, which gives him some peace of mind. At about 10 years old he became, partly due to his grandfather, very interested in photography. John has always been creative, pursuing hobbies such as drawing and painting, but the camera and all its possibilities have the largest attraction creatively. John is a self-taught landscape photographer who is passionate about combining the outdoors with his lifetime devotion to fine art photography. Residing in the Netherlands, not blessed with a “backyard” with mountains, valleys, waterfalls and wild streams, has ensured that he has become skilled in finding the natural beauty of often small, undervalued areas, often overlooked by others. His goal is to make grand landscapes out of small ones. His line of approach is to get very familiar with a location by returning there over and over again. He is often asked why he keeps coming back to the same places and why this doesn’t bore him. But by doing this at different moments of the day in different seasons, John becomes able to see the effect of the constant changing light on a landscape. This information determines where he will be and on what moment to try to capture the perfect light. John admires the work of people like Joe Cornish, Hans Strand, Di Fruscia and Joseph Rossbach, but most of all he is inspired by the work and the approach of Ben Horne, a large format photographer who scouts American National parks in solitude for days and shoots only one or two photographs a day. John’s gear consists of old Canon 1D Mk II and Canon 5D Mk I bodies and Canon 17-40 f/4L, Canon 70-200 f/4L and Canon 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L lenses. He uses soft grad, hard grad, polarizer and full neutral density filters and measures the light with a Sekonic L-558 spot-meter. The Photographer’s Ephemeris app helps to familiarize with unknown landscapes and the effect of the light before even going there for the first time.
You can find more of John’s work at 500px.com/JohnBeen.
