Celebrating Landscape Photography Blogger’s 200th Blog Post!

On this special occasion Landscape Photography Blogger presents an excerpt from Drylands: The Deserts of North America, with photographs and text by Philip Hyde. Besides Slickrock with Edward Abbey and a few titles in the Sierra Club Books Exhibit Format Series, Drylands is considered Philip Hyde’s magnum opus, or great work. Yolla Bolly Press, which also packaged Galen Rowell’s Mountain Light, recently donated its archive to Stanford University. Help celebrate Landscape Photography Blogger’s 200th Post by reading a page from the great book that is becoming more rare all the time…

Drylands: The Deserts of North America 1

The Five Deserts of North America

…nature is already in its forms and tendencies, describing its own design. Let us interrogate the great apparition that shines so peacefully around us.  –Ralph Waldo Emerson

White Domes, Valley of Fire State Park, Mojave Desert, Nevada, copyright 1970 by Philip Hyde. Cover Photograph of "Drylands: The Deserts of North America." Color Transparency: 4X5 Baby Deardorff View Camera. Dye Transfer Prints, Cibachrome Prints, and Archival Digital Prints. See PhilipHyde.com for Image Info and pricing.

(See the photograph large: “White Domes, Valley of Fire.”)

Webster’s dictionary defines a desert as “an arid region in which the vegetation is especially adapted to scanty rainfall with long intervals of heat and drought…amore or less barren tract incapable of supporting any considerable population without an artificial water supply…Desert rainfall is usually less than ten inches annually.”

This bare bones definition needs expanding. For one thing, barrenness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Ancients regarded the desert as a place to avoid—literally, to desert. The biblical “waste-howling wilderness” is a description of the Middle Eastern desert, a fearful place for most people. But even then it was for some a place for contemplation, a retreat from the cares of daily life. In our times, the desert is commonly a refuge, though we can be grateful that the deserts of North America were avoided by so many early travelers, and thereby protected. More recently, parts of these great deserts have become increasingly attractive to sun-worshipers. It is an irony that the climate, attractive to so many people, is being gradually altered by air pollution generated by population growth and its attendant requirements for industries and automobiles.

Webster’s definition doesn’t explain the aridity of the desert. High mountain chains intercept moisture-laden storms, keeping rainfall from the land in the lee of the mountains. Wind also contributes to desert dryness. A map plotting the course of trade winds in relation to deserts around the globe would show most arid lands to lie in the path of the trades. Though our deserts are not as directly in the path of the trades as some, strong winds persist over most of them for long periods, particularly in the spring.

The North American deserts are unlike most deserts in that they are not confined to the interior of the continent. They reach to the sea on both coasts of the Baja California peninsula and along the west coast of mainland Mexico as well, creating some unusual meetings of desert and water.

The scarcity of rainfall in the desert has one advantage. The surface of the land in well-watered regions is often obscured by dense vegetation. In the desert, land forms are readily apparent, the often beautiful sculpture of their contours revealed. This may be why geologists are drawn to the desert and sometimes inspired to near-poetic descriptions. A classic example can be found in Clarence Dutton’s monumental Tertiary History of the Grand Canyon District, first published in 1882. Here is his description of the Vermillion Cliffs in the Painted Desert:

During the midday hours the cliffs seem to wilt and drop as if retracting their grandeur to hide it from the merciless radiance of the sun whose very effulgence flouts them. Even the colors are ruined. The glaring face of the wall, where the light falls full upon it, wears a scorched, overbaked, discharged look; and where the dense black shadows are thrown—for there are no middle shades—the magical haze of the desert shines forth with a weird, metallic glow which has no color in it. But as the sun declines there comes a revival. The half-tones at length appear, bringing into relief the component masses; the amphitheaters recede into suggestive distances; the salients silently advance toward us; the distorted lines range themselves into true perspective; the deformed curves come back to their proper sweep; the angles grow clean and sharp; and the whole cliff arouses from lethargy and erects itself in grandeur and power as if conscious of its own majesty. Back also come the colors, and as the sun is about to sink they glow with an intense vermilion that seems to be an intrinsic luster emanating from the rocks themselves.

The stone landscape of which Clarence Dutton writes might appear austere and unfriendly to the casual traveler suddenly thrust into it. Many people would not recognize it as a part of their familiar world, but something about the place immediately appealed to me. Perhaps it struck some of the same harmonic notes evoked by the clean expanses of granite in the High Sierra Nevada I had learned to love in my youth. The place spoke to me of the same kind of purity that Ralph Waldo Emerson was alluding to when he wrote of the integrity of natural objects.

I am not able to take up full-time residence in the desert; my roots are too deep in the northern Sierra Nevada where I live now. I can, however, happily spend a season there and feel quite at home. It was not always like that. The ease I feel now is the product of many experiences, not all pleasant, but all valued for what they taught. Nor did the ease come without struggle, but as a result of an effort to understand, to penetrate the discomforts, to clear away the debris of prejudice and preconception that can so distort one’s view of a natural environment. It is not necessary to change the country—or to develop it. As Aldo Leopold put it so well: “Development is a job not of building roads into lovely country, but of building receptivity into the still unlovely human mind.”

As a forest dweller and desert traveler, I am especially aware of the contrasts between an arid landscape and one that is well watered. The creek that flows beneath my window as I write; the groundcover, trees, shrubs, and flowering plants; the seasonal and atmospheric changes I observe here are all expressions of water abundance. In the desert it isn’t just the paucity of water that impresses me. I am delighted to discover water’s surprising, often beautiful presence in hidden places, as for example, the spring in Monument Valley that flows from beneath a high sand dune—or those few, small, spring-fed pools surrounded by the vast, sere, rocky landscape of Death Valley.

I also enjoy the contrast between desert vegetation and that of my home environment. In the southern part of the Baja California peninsula, the array of strange, even unique, plant forms is the result of the plants’ special adaptations to water scarcity…

(Continued in the future blog post, “Drylands: The Deserts Of North America 2.”)

Is nature glossy? Is nature always beautiful? My father Western American landscape photographer and conservationist, Philip Hyde, said “Nature is always beautiful, even when we might call a scene ugly.” Is he correct?

Red Canyon at Hance Rapid, Boulders in Dunes, Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona, copyright 1964 by Philip Hyde. First Published in "Time And The River Flowing: Grand Canyon" by Francois Leydet, in the Sierra Club Exhibit Format Series. The book that helped defend the Grand Canyon against two dams.

(See the photograph large: “Red Canyon At Hance Rapid, Grand Canyon National Park.”)

Nature surprises us with patterns we might not have noticed or thrilling textures and colors, but nature also at times presents us with drab or even repulsive sights so ugly they smell, such as a road killed skunk or a field spread with cattle manure. My mother, Ardis Hyde, often repeated the old adage, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” I also remember her saying, “Wow, what a beautiful field of manure,” on more than one occasion when we were hauling cow manure for the garden in “Covered Wagon,” a 1952 Chevy Step Side Pickup, see the blog post, “Covered Wagon Journal 1.”

Dad’s photographs of proposed wilderness areas and national parks documented the natural features of the land. He said he was not interested in “Pretty Pictures for Postcards.” This attitude came partially from his having studied and taught with Ansel Adams. Dad also espoused the straight photography and documentary principles of his other mentors Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange and Imogen Cunningham. These principles included keeping compositions simple and maintaining the camera’s focus crisp throughout the image, as was only attainable with a large format view camera.

Like Edward Weston, Dad presented his black and white photographs with minimal darkroom manipulation. He said, “There is no need to add drama to nature. Nature is dramatic enough.” However, when he printed dye transfer color prints and Cibachrome color prints, Dad found more color adjustment necessary, to meet his goal of making the final color print look more like the scene as he remembered it, than the film.

Today the trend in much of what is called landscape photography is toward heavy saturation, dramatic weather, unusual lighting, sunlight effects and the most dramatic cliffs, mountains or other land features. Making pictures today is in truth often two arts: Photography, defined as what occurs in camera, plus the art of post processing using Adobe Photoshop or other photo editing software. Post Processing is much like dodging and burning in the darkroom, except that in the world of digital prints and photography art, the alteration of images is easy to overdo because it takes no more effort to move the slider to 80 percent than to take it only to 10 percent. In contrast, when darkroom processing ruled, greater alteration took more work.

Landscape photography today displays magnificence. Big scenes of striking beauty possess the viewer, exhibiting an abundance of what photography galleries call, “Wow factor.” In contrast, my father’s photography grunge rocked: gritty, clear, raw and most importantly imperfect. The imperfections were minimized in the darkroom, but certainly not removed or cropped out of the photograph as they are today.

Nature is very rarely perfect. Neither is any kind of photography. While many produce sub-standard photographs, many landscape photographers thrive with quality work and high standards for maintaining a “natural look.” I have looked at much current landscape photography. In my opinion the best work continues to become better.

Nonetheless, much of landscape photographers today could re-learn, or learn back a lesson from Urban Exploration, Urb Ex or Urban Decay photography. The lesson Urban Exploration photography learned from nature. The best way to understand the lesson is to read one of the master lesson teachers in Urban Exploration Photography, Chase Jarvis. Chase Jarvis recently wrote a blog post called, “The Un-Moment: Why Gritty Beats Glossy & the Deceit of Perfection.” I recommend repeated reading of this post for landscape photographers who want to find their own voice and connect more deeply with nature. Any photographer, for that matter, who wants to have an authentic connection with his or her subject matter could learn from Chase Jarvis.

What do you think? Can the beauty of imperfection improve landscape photography? Does gritty make sense in photography genres other than Urban Exploration?

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.  –John Muir

McClure Meadow, Evolution Valley, Kings Canyon National Park, Sierra Nevada, California, copyright 1970 by Philip Hyde. Deardorff 5X7 Large Format Camera. Widely exhibited and published including in "The Range of Light" with quotes by John Muir. Still available as an original vintage darkroom black and white print. Three 8X10 vintage prints left available for sale at this time. Other original vintage black and white prints in the "Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sierra Portfolio" also available in limited quantities. Please inquire for details.

(See the photograph larger: “McClure Meadow, Evolution Valley, Kings Canyon.”)

In his preface to The Range of Light, with Selections from the Writings of John Muir, my father pioneer landscape photographer Philip Hyde wrote about choosing photographs and John Muir quotes for his book. To read more about The Range of Light see the blog post, “Philip Hyde’s Tribute To John Muir.” Philip Hyde described his process in the Preface to The Range of Light:

It was a labor of love rereading John Muir some fifty years after my first reading. In searching for quotations to use with my photographs, I found the same inspiration and delight I recall feeling in the past—more, really, since my love for the mountains has only increased with the familiarity experience has given me… I wanted to go out again, to go in further, to explore all the places I had missed, and I wanted to improve on the pictures I had made to illustrate the heightened savor I was finding in his words. In nearly a lifetime of returning again and again, I began to feel I had barely scratched the surface. But over the life of the project, my view began to shift from unfulfilled desire to gratitude. I was coming to see that I would never satisfy my thirst for wildness and mountains. I could never make all the definitive photographs of them. But hadn’t I already had more than most men’s share of them? In general, the matching of quotations with pictures should be understood as equivalents—some descriptive, some expressing an experience of feeling that seems to parallel in some way one which John Muir describes. Others are visual equivalents of the words in less direct, more personal ways. There was a basic purpose in all this: my hope to somehow discharge a little of my debt to John Muir for his keen observation that informed and sharpened my own; for his words that amplified my feeling and experience, and colored them both brighter; for his boundless enthusiasm for Nature; for his clear vision that it would not be enough, living in an exploitive culture just to love Nature, but essential for Nature’s continued existence unimpaired, that one work to carry those “good tidings” to others who would, in their turn, work to protect Nature.

In 1938, just before he turned 17, Philip Hyde first visited Yosemite National Park and the Sierra Nevada. On that trip he made his first photographs with a Kodak Readyset 120 camera that he borrowed from his sister. He brought the camera along thinking he would photograph his Boy Scout friends, but when he had the film developed, he discovered that most of the photographs were of nature rather than people, a tendency that stayed with him throughout his career. For more on Philip Hyde’s early trips to Yosemite National Park, see the blog post, “Lake Tenaya And Yosemite National Park.” His wilderness photographs participated in more environmental campaigns than any other photographer of his time and helped to establish the genre of landscape photography as a recognized art form while his photographs served as the backbone of the groundbreaking Sierra Club Books Exhibit Format Series. The Exhibit Format Series, invented by Ansel Adams, David Brower and Nancy Newhall, became known for popularizing the coffee table photography book and helping to establish many national parks and wilderness areas of the Western U. S. Beginning with participation in the first book in the Sierra Club Books Exhibit Format Series, This Is The American Earth, Philip Hyde went on to publish more photographs in more volumes in the series than any of the other photographers, including Eliot Porter, who was known for illustrating the best selling book of the series, In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World with quotes by Henry David Thoreau. To read more about these photographers and the development of the Sierra Club Books Exhibit Format Series see the blog post, “How Color Came To Landscape Photography.”

Though the various book projects influenced a generation of photographers and brought his work acclaim, Philip Hyde himself said, “I didn’t want to be distracted by fame.” He was more apt to spend his time working on any of many local environmental campaigns around the West, rather than talking to photography galleries, museum curators or photography agents. Although the best art museums and collectors did take interest in his work, often through recommendations from mentors such as Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and Minor White; Philip Hyde, until recently has been less well-known than some other leading landscape photographers. Now for the first time in more than a decade, Philip Hyde’s vintage black and white prints, as well as his original dye transfer and Cibachrome prints are offered by a select number of the world’s best photography galleries. To read more about the galleries who carry Philip Hyde’s work see the blog posts in the category “Galleries for Philip Hyde” or go to “About Vintage And Black And White Prints.” A limited number of his vintage and original prints are still available for viewing and acquisition on the Philip Hyde Photography website. As we scan Philip Hyde’s original vintage black and white prints and film, a few new images, and on a few rare occasions a whole new portfolio is added to PhilipHyde.com. The selection of photographs chosen for the new “Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sierra Black and White Portfolio” were carefully reviewed by many experts in the art world, in photography galleries and by other professional photographers. Please enjoy and write me as you have questions.

What writers, artists or other influences helped you connect to a place?

View And Read About The Making Of The Latest Philip Hyde First Time New Releases

Formations From Bryce Point, Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah, copyright 1963 by Philip Hyde. Widely exhibited and published including in "Drylands: The Deserts Of North America" and related major museum exhibitions. Dye transfer and Cibachrome prints in permanent museum collections.

See the photograph large: “Formations From Bryce Point, Bryce Canyon National Park.”

Read More…

New Release: Formations From Bryce Point, Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah

New Release And Making Of  “Reflection Pool, Arches, Escalante Wilderness, Utah”

New Release: Matterhorn With Cirrus Streamer, Zermatt, Switzerland

New Release: “Yucca, Cholla, Granite Boulders, Joshua Tree National Park, California”

New Release And Contest: Colorado River From Dead Horse Point, Utah

Continued from the blog post, “Nature Magazine: East Of Zion 1.”

Originally published by Nature Magazine, March 1957

(Nature Magazine was published by the American Nature Association and taken over by Natural History Magazine in 1960.)

Mission of Nature Magazine: “To stimulate public interest in every phase of nature and the outdoors, and devoted to the practical conservation of the great natural resources of America.”

A Glimpse of the Geology of Zion National Park:

Celebrating The Divine Artistry Of Falling Water Through Deep Canyons

By Philip Hyde

Cascade, Tributary To Clear Creek, Zion National Park, Utah, copyright 1978 by Philip Hyde. From "Drylands: The Deserts of North America." 4X5 Baby Deardorf Large Format View Camera. Original dye transfer prints, Original Cibachrome prints, archival digital prints by Carr Clifton.

(View the photograph large, “Cascade, Tributary To Clear Creek, Zion National Park, Utah, 1978.”

The great architect of this beautiful landscape is moving and falling water, and to this builder and remover of the landscape can be attributed the deep canyons of the region. The violence and power of moving water is often forcefully demonstrated during a summer thunderstorm. One of the writer’s earliest and most vivid recollections of travel in this area stems from a summer visit to Zion Canyon, when he arrived in the midst of a cloudburst. The violence of the storm was enough to justify repetition of Chicken Little’s oft-quoted exclamation: “The sky is falling!” I still have a vivid mental picture of the brown torrent that was the Virgin River, gnawing great chunks from its banks, ripping out trees, carrying debris before it in the surging current. After the climax of the storm passed, the raging water quickly abated, and within a few hours the brown flood disappeared, to be replaced by the river’s normally quiet murmurings.

Even during its quieter periods, however, the river is actively working on the confines of its bed. The low resistance of sandstone to erosion, combined with the steep gradients of the streams in this region, result in a rapid deepening of the stream canyons. Because of these two factors, the stream plays a lesser part in the process of widening the canyon. Seepage of ground water, direct action of rain water, and frosts produce the curves and crenelations that add so much to the sculptured beauty of the canyon walls.

The east side of Zion National Park displays progressive steps in the erosion cycle. In the beginning of this cycle, the land is relatively flat, illustrated by the present tops of plateaus. Where a stream gathers its waters from a small area, the stream remains small, probably runs only in response to rainfall, and manages to cut only a small canyon. The east Zion area contains many examples of this phenomenon; they are within walking distance of the highway, and can be more closely studied. In many respects these small streams are miniatures of the larger ones. They demonstrate processes and effects similar to those evidenced on a larger scale by their bigger brothers.

Another most interesting feature of the Zion region is the frequent occurrence of rock pedestals on the broad stone pavements near the highway. A closer examination of such pedestals reveals that they are capped by a material differing from the soft sandstone of the base; a layer of iron oxide that geologists believe was intruded, in solution into the sandstone. Since this material is harder, and therefore more resistant to erosive forces, it has protected the softer material directly beneath it while the surrounding material was being eroded away. So, when you look at these pedestals, you are really seeing a remnant of the layers of stone that formerly covered the presently exposed surface. The balance of this material has been carried away, either as wind-borne sand, or by stream action, to be deposited as part of a sandbar somewhere downstream. Or, perhaps it will find its way eventually to the sea, to be laid down as part of a delta at the Colorado River’s mouth.

In these pedestals, as in the rest of the landscape, can be read one of the grand lessons of geology—that Nature is not at rest, but is ever active, ever changing the face of the Earth; that even the stones, cold and dead to our eyes, have their own inner life and being. In the slow passage of geologic time, the surface we look at today will pass away to join its predecessors, each succeeding layer following in its turn, until Nature decrees a major change—such as has occurred we know not how many times past—to commence the cycle again at what men are pleased to call the beginning.

Corn Lily Leaves, Proposed North Cascades National Park, Washington, 1959 copyright Philip Hyde. One of the original vintage black and white prints on consignment at the Peter Fetterman Gallery.

The Peter Fetterman Galleryhouses one of the largest inventories of classic 20^th Century photography in the United States. The Peter Fetterman Gallery is also the number one photography dealer in Southern California and a member of AIPAD, the Association of International Photography Art Dealers.

Peter Fetterman came to the Los Angeles area from his birth city of London, England over 30 years ago. Peter Fetterman’s first exposure to still photography, through Hollywood while he worked as a filmmaker, interested him in pursuing the art of photography as a collector. Over 20 years ago, Peter Fetterman established his first photography gallery. In 1994, he became a pioneer tenant of Bergamot Station, the Santa Monica Center of the Arts when it first opened.

The diverse holding of the Peter Fetterman Gallery today include work by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Sabastiao Salgado, Ansel Adams, Paul Caponigro, Willy Ronis, Andre Kerstez, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Lillian Bassman and now pioneer landscape photographer Philip Hyde.

The Getty Museum And Documentary Photography

The Getty Museum of Los Angeles recently acquired a major selection black and white prints by the social documentary photographer Sabastiao Salgado. Peter Fetterman is largely responsible for the development of Sabastiao Salgado in the US and in Europe. Sabastiao Salgado, originally from Brazil, now lives in Paris. He was a photojournalist for such agencies as Sygma, Gamma and in 1979 he joined Magnum. The Wikipedia article on Sebastiao Salgado said, “He is particularly noted for his social documentary photography of workers in less developed nations.” Photographer Hal Gould, founding member of AIPAD and of Camera Obscura Gallery of Denver, Colorado, said that Sabastiao Salgado is one of the 21^st Century’s most important photographers. Hal Gould gave Sabastiao Salgado his first US Exhibition at Camera Obscura Gallery. To Read more about Camera Obscura Gallery see the blog post, “Hal Gould And Camera Obscura: 50 Years Of Photography Advocacy.” Philip Hyde exhibited at Camera Obscura Gallery twice: once in the 1970s as part of a group show and once in September-October 2010 as one of the last exhibitions at Camera Obscura Gallery see the blog posts, “Philip Hyde’s Mountain Landscapes at Camera Obscura Gallery,” or “Vintage And Digital Prints Together In One Exhibition.”

More recently Sabastiao Salgado’s Genesis project on landscapes and wildlife in their original settings helped spark Peter Fetterman’s interest in representing the best landscape photographers who made their own film era vintage prints. Philip Hyde was one of the few photographers of the 20^th Century who was considered a master of both color landscape photography and black and white photography, as well as hand print making in both mediums.

Peter Fetterman On Collecting Photography

What Peter Fetterman advises about collecting photography:

One of the wonderful things about photography is that it is still possible to build up a significant collection for relatively small sums of money, if you go about it in a smart way. You may love Modigliani, or Rubens, or Rembrandt or Matisse but for most of us that would be fantasy collecting. Fortunately it is still possible to acquire images by the equivalent masters of photography, at an accessible level, and in a market that has so far only ever gone up in value.

‘How do I go about it?’ you may be wondering. The best advice I give my new clients is to do what I call “photo aerobics.” Exercise your eye. Take every opportunity to look at as many images as you can, be it in museum shows, galleries, art fairs, and build up a library of photography books. As in any field of collecting the more knowledge you can acquire the greater the pleasure you are going to experience from the whole process. Find a dealer you can communicate with who is willing to share their own knowledge and expertise with you. Finding the photographs that inspire you is a highly creative endeavor in itself, and can even be an act of self-discovery. As your learning curve grows you will soon understand and appreciate the difference between a silver print and a platinum print, a vintage print and a modern print.

Happily it is still possible to buy an important print in the $1000-$5000 range, and by important I mean a photograph that is going to have longevity not only in terms of the image itself, but also the reputation and importance of the artist. To do this today in any other medium is virtually impossible. This will of course not always be the case with photography either. The realities of increasing demand as more and more collectors enter the arena, will mean a diminishing supply of available of affordable prints of classic images by recognized masters.

Peter Fetterman Is Now Working To Develop Philip Hyde Collections In More Major Museums

The Peter Fetterman Gallery offers a large selection of Philip Hyde vintage black and white silver prints and vintage color dye transfer and Cibachrome prints, most of which are still in the price range mentioned above. Peter Fetterman has also already begun talking to more world-class museums about Philip Hyde. World class venues that have shown or collected Philip Hyde include The Smithsonian, New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Time-Life, The Cosmos Club, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, University of Arizona in Tucson Center For Creative Photography, National Geographic Society, George Eastman House, Oakland Museum, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, California Academy of Sciences, Yosemite National Park Visitor’s Center, Grand Canyon National Park Visitor’s Center, the Ansel Adams Gallery, Weston Gallery, Alaska State Museum and many others.

What in the world is “Monday Blog Blog? Find out in the blog post, “Monday Blog Blog Celebration.”

Backlit Icebergs, Jokalsarlon, Iceland, 2007 by Lewis Kemper.

After I wrote the blog post, “Monday Blog Blog: Photoshop For Pros,” I had a strange feeling that I had forgotten at least one or perhaps more professional photographers who are important to mention in any discussion about Photoshop or Photoshop training. Sure enough, one of those who I inadvertently left out was landscape photography master Lewis Kemper.

Lewis Kemper lived in Yosemite National Park for 11 years. From 1978 to 1980, he worked at the Ansel Adams Gallery. This gave him the opportunity to meet many influential photographers of the time including Philip Hyde. In the summer of 1979, Philip Hyde led the Color Landscape Photography Workshop for the Ansel Adams Gallery. His two assistant instructors were Jeff Nixon and Lewis Kemper.

“It was a dream come true to meet and teach under one of the photographers I had admired since I was a kid,” Lewis Kemper said. He continued:

I remember growing up looking at Sierra Club Books, Philip Hyde and Eliot Porter’s photographs, Navajo Wildlands, Slickrock, and the Sierra Club Calendars. Prior to Philip Hyde and Eliot Porter, landscape photography was limited to the big general scene. Eliot Porter sort of stole the title for ‘intimate landscapes’ but that was what I admired about Philip Hyde’s work too: the close-ups and the smaller and mid-sized scenes. Originally landscape photography was about trying to photograph everything. Now the Sierra Club photographers were showing us that you could take pictures of part of everything and still convey everything.

Part of what landed Lewis Kemper the job at the Ansel Adams Gallery was his B.A. in Fine Art Photography from George Washington University. In photography school, Lewis Kemper studied black and white photography and the zone system, but even earlier, starting in high school, he was more drawn to color. While helping Philip Hyde teach the Ansel Adams Gallery Color Landscape Photography Workshop, Lewis Kemper showed the lead instructor his Color Cibachrome prints of “Sand Dune,” “Cedars In Snow” and others. See more of Lewis Kemper’s photographs at LewisKemper.com.

“Philip liked my prints,” Lewis Kemper said. “He kept saying, ‘I can’t believe you’re getting this with a 35 mm camera.’” Subsequently, with a friendly push from Philip Hyde, Lewis Kemper began to use a large format 4X5 view camera. Listen to Lewis Kemper’s podcasts that mention Philip Hyde’s influence at the bottom of the page here. Later, in the early 1990s, Lewis Kemper bought an Imacon Scanner and began making high resolution digital scans of his 4X5 transparencies. He learned digital printing with the first 25 inch pigment printer, the Epson 7500. The Epson 7000 had been an ink printer, whereas with the advent of the Epson 7500, digital printers began using pigment. Lewis Kemper also printed commercially for other landscape photographers.

In 1992, Photoshop came out with version 2.5.1. Lewis Kemper said he remembered the instruction manual being very hard to follow. He said, “I had been screaming and struggling for 45 minutes with the clone tool and the instructions that came with Photoshop 2.5.1, when my wife came in to help. She started pushing buttons with the mouse and playing with the keyboard and all of a sudden the program cloned. I asked her, ‘What did you do?’ She said, ‘I don’t know.’ Then she tried to repeat the steps she had made when it cloned and it cloned again. Finally we had figured out how to make the clone tool work.”

Lewis Kemper began teaching photography workshops including Photoshop classes in 1995 at the Palm Beach Photographic Center, the same year Photoshop came out with version 3.0, the first version with layers. Read more of Lewis Kemper’s articles and tips: go here. When Lewis Kemper first started writing for PC Photo Magazine, he was using a small point and shoot digital camera, but through his work with the magazine he became enthusiastic to step up to a Canon 1DS, which had an 11 megapixel sensor. Lewis Kemper made his first serious digital capture with the Canon 1Ds in January 2004. He now represents Canon as one its Explorers of Light, an elite group of only 62 photographers around the world including Art Wolfe, Barbara Bordnick, John Paul Caponigro, Adam Jones, Robert Farber, George Lepp, Tyler Stableford, Rick Sammon, David Hume Kennerly and Douglas Kirkland. Lewis Kemper currently uses a Canon iPF 6300 24 inch printer and his two main cameras are a Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III for landscape photography and a Canon EOS-1D Mark IV for wildlife and outdoor sports.

Lewis Kemper first taught classes through BetterPhoto.com in the Fall of 2003. He has also taught at the Santa Fe Workshops, Light Photographic Workshops, Aspen Workshops, and George Lepp Digital Institute. He is the author of The Yosemite Photographer’s Handbook, The Yellowstone Photographer’s Handbook and his latest Photographing Yosemite Digital Field Guide, which was voted in the top 20 of all such field guides. He also produces the acclaimed Photoshop training DVD’s, The Photographer’s Toolbox for Photoshop. His photographs have been published in numerous other books including those published by the Sierra Club, The National Geographic Society, Little and Brown, Prentice Hall and many others. Besides having his photographs appear on the cover of many of the best magazines, currently Lewis Kemper is a contributing editor for Outdoor Photographer and Digital Photo magazines and NANPA Currents magazine.

After School Redux, Reno, Nevada, 2009 by David Leland Hyde. "Hey, wait a minute: was that image Photoshopped?"

Whether you love or hate Photoshop, it is transforming photography and how photography is perceived. Many of you reading this may be more experienced with Photoshop than I am, but you might gain insight from the Photoshop masters who have helped me in the digital interpretation of my father pioneer landscape photographer Philip Hyde’s photographs, as well as the journey I have been on in the process.

“Most of Ansel Adams’ iconic images required greater printing skills than most photographers possess,” John Sexton said in the newly released book, Ansel Adams in the National Parks. (Be sure to catch the upcoming Landscape Photography Blogger review of this excellent new book about arguably the best black and white printer of the 20th Century.) John Sexton is a master black and white darkroom printer and was Ansel Adams’ photographic assistant in the 1970s. Landscape photographer Carr Clifton and other acknowledged Photoshop masters such as Terrance Reimer of West Coast Imaging, Kim Reed of Reed Photo Imaging, David Staley, Jr. of Outdoor Plus Digital Photo Lab and Ed Cooper, who was also a pioneer mountaineer and large format photographer and now works mainly on restoring his own color shifted early Kodak large format film, these Photoshop experts have all helped me work on Dad’s photographs. Future blog posts will feature some of them. These five gentlemen have a combined Photoshop experience of over 60 years. Even so, matching the printing of my father’s black and white silver gelatin, color dye transfer or color Cibachrome and Ilfochrome prints, has been a challenge for even these very best in the business.

Fortunately Carr Clifton was a friend and neighbor of Dad’s for over 35 years and a photographic protege as well. With the color prints that Carr Clifton has made, we have improved on a number of Dad’s prints, a large number are essentially nearly as good or equal and a small number of Dad’s prints just can’t be matched without whole days of time invested tinkering in Photoshop. Typically in our process in the last two years, after Carr Clifton finished his master work on Dad’s images, I took the finished prints and put them in front of some of the top gallerists in the world representing landscape photography and Dad’s professional landscape photographer friends. Then I often returned to Carr Clifton for more tweaking. However, from now on I need to do more and more of the Photoshop work myself rather than outsourcing it. I also intend to do all Photoshop work on my own photographs. This puts pressure on me to learn 10 years worth of skills in a year or two or less. I have to become one of the best Photoshop masters ever in crash course fashion, to have what it takes to work on Dad’s photographs. In the midst of fulfilling my many other obligations, over the last year I have been looking around and learning, gearing up for an inevitable transition to me doing most of my Photoshop work. I will share here some of the resources I have found that I like. If I forget any resources that I ought to have included, please chime in and tell me about those that have helped you.

Carr Clifton himself recommends Lynda.com because he says it teaches all levels of Photoshop skills, even the most advanced fixes to difficult problems. Lynda.com also sells a video called, “Photoshop CS5: Landscape Photography.” After meeting Bob and Betty Reed of Reed Photo Imaging in Denver, who print for John Fielder and David Muench, and meeting their son Kim Reed, the technical backbone of the business and a Photoshop genius, I bought Kim Reed’s Photoshop course called, Inside The Master’s Circle Training: Adobe Photoshop Edition. Kim Reed and John Harris, the course’s instructors, according to the DVD’s back matter, “have been retouching images for renowned fine artists and Fortune 500 companies since the early pioneering days of digital imaging.” I have only started the course and had a few short lessons from Kim himself, but from what I have seen so far the presentation is easy to follow and covers A to Z everything photographers need to master. (See a future blog post for a specific review of this DVD set.)

At the end of 2008, I first started learning to use Photoshop by purchasing Elements and attending a three evening basic class through the Boulder Valley School District’s Life Long Learning For Adults program. The teacher recommended the Classroom In A Book series for learning Photoshop. I also bought Teach Yourself Visually: Restoration and Retouching with Photoshop Elements 2. In time I graduated to Photoshop proper and now have a large list of e-books that my computer guy downloaded for me, but I have not yet had a chance to read. I also have several printed books on Photoshop Lightroom 2.

Speaking of Lightroom, recently I was browsing around on blogs and ran across Rob Sheppard’s new blog called Nature and Photography. I remember him as the former Editor and now Editor At Large of Outdoor Photographer who had published articles about Dad numerous times and without hesitation paid Dad’s rather high minimum licensing fee for using Dad’s photographs. Ah, how times have changed, and Rob Sheppard has too. He is producing a range of interesting new books and materials as he freelances and photographs. In one blog post he discussed the use of Photoshop 9 with Lightroom. What he had to say is surprising. Here’s a taste:

Adobe just announced Photoshop Elements 9 last week, and this is a very significant upgrade that does affect digital photographers, including nature photographers. It now allows us to do some things that make work easier for certain techniques, such as double-processing RAW (really an important technique for nature photographers — more below). I have been working with the beta for a few months as I worked on a book about it, Top Tips Simplified, Photoshop Elements 9. I believe that most photographers using Lightroom and Photoshop Elements work on images more effectively and more quickly than any but the most proficient users of Photoshop…

That is a strong claim and well-substantiated by the rest of his informative post. Also in the Lightroom vein, Mark Graf on his Notes From The Woods blog, posts a link to a site called Lightroom Killer Tips as well as an extensive resource called Photoshop News. Robert Rodriguez, Jr. on his Beyond The Lens Blog, posts great videos on various Photoshop methods and other topics. Here’s one called, “Controlling Exposure and Blending in Photoshop.” Jim M. Goldstein keeps us informed with dozens and dozens of posts on Photoshop, it’s uses, techniques, and darker side. Master landscape photographer Lewis Kemper teaches Photoshop classes through several organizations and offers a superb Photoshop Training DVD set. For more on Lewis Kemper and his expertise see the blog post, “Monday Blog Blog: Lewis Kemper.”

Guy Tal’s Web Journal On Landscape and Images, often holds forth more on the philosophy of digital print making and landscape art, than on specific methods or strategies, though he covers those too. He is a crusader on behalf of the good that can be done with Photoshop and its possibilities versus old printing and developing technologies that a nostalgic minority work to hold over from the film era. Michael E. Gordon wrote an excellent review of Guy Tal’s new e-book, “Creative Landscape Photography,” that shares more on Guy Tal’s approach. Stay tuned for the soon upcoming Landscape Photography Blogger review of “Creative Landscape Photography” as well.

One of the finest teachers I have seen yet of digital landscape photography is Michael Frye. His popular and entertaining blog posts called the Photo Critique Series offer some of the best advice available today on how to whip your photographs into shape. They also encourage a lively discussion that is the most energizing and interesting aspect of all, particularly with Michael’s experienced moderation. Here’s one recent post in the series and another here to give you a sense of how it goes.

If you choose to go beyond landscape photography there are dozens, perhaps hundreds of resources out there. I will share one top quality one here: Chromasia. Anyone who wants to be impressed by a professional, high-traffic photoblog, go see this expression of the new era in which we now live. You may not even like what David J. Nightingale can do to photographs, but you will know you are seeing something that not many can do, though he does offer a full range of tutorials and coaching, so look into that too if you like too.

If I know you or I don’t know you and you provide a significant or even minor amount of Photoshop teaching, tools or some form of skill development, please don’t take it personally that I did not include you here in this post as I am typing into the wee hours and going bleary-eyed. Please do take two minutes to add a link and short, tastefully helpful blurb about your offering in the comments below.

WHO:            Gallery I:  Philip Hyde’s Mountain Landscapes

Gallery II: Affirmations of Spirit: Photographs by Carolyn Guild

WHERE:            The Camera Obscura Gallery

Across From The Denver Art Museum

1309 Bannock Street, Denver, CO   80204

303-623-4059

WHEN:            October 1—November 13, 2010 Opening reception for Carolyn Guild and David Leland Hyde:  Friday, Oct.1 , 5:00 to 9:00 PM—Gallery talk with David Hyde 7:00 PM

"The Divine Jewelry of Winter" -John Muir, Ice Plates On Indian Creek II, Northern Sierra Nevada, California, 1976 by Philip Hyde. This will be one of several original Cibachrome prints made by Philip Hyde in the Camera Obscura Exhibition.

STAY TUNED: The Entire Exhibition Will Be Displayed On the Camera Obscura Website Starting The Week Before The Show.

Photographs by Philip Hyde and Carolyn Guild

The Camera Obscura Gallery presents two exhibitions of photographs.  Gallery I will showcase the exquisite color and black & white landscape work of the late photographer and environmentalist, Philip Hyde, titled Philip Hyde’s Mountain Landscapes, and will include both modern prints and rare early vintage prints.  Gallery II will feature Carolyn Guild’s contemplative black & white landscape and nature imagery, Affirmations of Spirit. This exhibition offers a continuous time line of landscape photography from the past into the present as Carolyn Guild first began exhibiting her work around the time Philip Hyde passed on in 2006.

Philip Hyde’s Mountain Landscapes

Philip Hyde, American Landscape Photographer and Environmentalist, b. 1921 d. 2006

In 1951 the Sierra Club and Wilderness Society sent Philip Hyde on the world’s first conservation photography assignment. As a result of his trip to Dinosaur National Monument in Northwestern Colorado and Utah, Philip Hyde became photographer for the first book published for a conservation cause: “This Is Dinosaur: Echo Park Country” edited by Wallace Stegner. Born in San Francisco in 1921, landscape photographer Philip Hyde dedicated his life and 60 years of full-time photography to conservation.

Hyde first exhibited his original black and white prints in national venues in 1947 with his Group f.64 mentors from the California School of Fine Arts: Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and Imogen Cunningham. Lead Instructor, Minor White, also curated several exhibitions of his work for major museums in the Eastern U. S. including George Eastman House and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Hyde’s color prints have also been widely exhibited and collected by major national museums. His photographs are part of over 50 permanent collections.

The Sierra Club Exhibit Format Series popularized the coffee table photography book and the modern environmental movement began. Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” was published in 1962—the same year color came to landscape photography.  The Sierra Club published Eliot Porter’s “In Wildness Is The Preservation of the World” with quotes by Henry David Thoreau and Philip Hyde’s “Island In Time: The Point Reyes Peninsula.” Philip Hyde’s book helped raise funds to acquire the land for Pt. Reyes National Seashore. His innovations in composition and style in the Series influenced a generation of landscape photographers and helped establish or expand such national treasures as the Grand Canyon, Dinosaur National Monument, Canyonlands, the Coast Redwoods, Pt. Reyes, North Cascades, Wind River Range, King’s Canyon, Big Sur and many others.

The Camera Obscura Gallery exhibited Philip Hyde in the 1960s and takes great pleasure in a second showing entitled Philip Hyde’s Mountain Landscapes. David Leland Hyde, Ardis and Philip Hyde’s son, will be present at the opening reception October 1 and will speak at 7 pm about his parent’s western wilderness adventures. The exhibition will continue through November 13. Philip Hyde’s Mountain Landscapes will include original black and white silver prints, dye transfer prints, and Cibachrome prints, as well as Philip Hyde authorized archival digital prints made by Carr Clifton, a protégé and nationally recognized photographer.

Join us for a reception for Carolyn Guild and David Leland Hyde:  Friday, October 1, 5:00 to 9:00PM

Gallery talk with David Hyde:  7 PM

For more information about NEW RELEASES see the blog post, “New Releases Now At Special Introductory Pricing.” To see the photographs go to Philip Hyde Photography.

Printing Materials And Processes

Philip Hyde archival fine art digital prints in color were printed in 2008, 2009 and the beginning of 2010 with a 13-ink Epson 9800 Inkjet printer on Premium Luster paper. The archival fine art digital prints in black and white were printed in the first half of 2009 on a 16-ink Epson 11880 Inkjet printer on Premium Luster paper and in the second half of 2009 and beyond on Crane Silver Rag paper. The color archival digital prints beginning in 2010 are now printed with a Lightjet 5000 printer on Fuji Crystal Archive paper, in which case they are not pigment prints but chromogenic prints digitally exposed with light. On occasion the color prints are also printed with the Epson 9800 on a new archival 100 percent cotton rag paper. The life of any of these prints is much longer than those of print making methods of the past. In addition, the process of translating a 4X5 or 5X7 film original transparency or negative into digital print-ready form is complicated, expensive, time consuming and expert labor intensive. The highest quality equipment and methods known are used at each step starting with drum scanning and ending with print preparation.

Fine Art Photographer And Print Maker Carr Clifton

Landscape photographer and print maker Carr Clifton has made archival fine art digital prints for Philip Hyde since 1998, eight years before Philip Hyde passed on. When Carr Clifton expressed interest in photography over 35 years ago, his mother took him to meet Philip Hyde who happened to be a neighbor. From then on Philip Hyde was a mentor and friend to Carr Clifton. Carr Clifton has become a highly respected outdoor photographer in his own right. The two landscape photographers worked on several book projects together. Also, side-by-side for many years their photographs dominated the Sierra Club Calendars that contained the work of the most famous landscape photographers of the time.

Philip Hyde authorized and signed five of the new archival fine art digital prints before he passed on. The new prints are produced by Philip Hyde’s son, David Leland Hyde and Carr Clifton. This equates with Brett Weston or Cole Weston printing Edward Weston’s photographs, as other famous photographers heirs have done. Alan Ross has made special edition Ansel Adams prints for many years. A great amount of time, effort and expense has gone into matching as close as possible the way that Philip Hyde printed the photographs. Having been around Philip Hyde for many years, both David Leland Hyde and Carr Clifton work to maintain Philip Hyde’s straight photography aesthetics of limiting color saturation and maintaining tasteful photo realism when no Philip Hyde model print is available.

Rare Philip Hyde Original Prints Often Long Sold Out

Philip Hyde original prints are very rare and most of the best images have long sold out. Also, because Philip Hyde lost his eyesight, many of his best later portraits, cityscapes, and landscape photographs were never printed. When Philip Hyde was print making himself, he produced traditional black and white silver gelatin prints, color dye-transfer prints and color Cibachrome prints. He did not print the same best images over and over like many photographers. Each time he came home from a landscape photography trip, he printed only 2 or 4 color prints from that excursion. If there was an order for more he might print as many as 2 to 4 more prints given the time, difficulty and cost of color print making. In the earlier days before his transition to color in the early to mid 1970s, the black and white prints were made in edtions of 4 or 6. On rare occasions with only a few of the images, he printed as many as 10 or 12 prints. After printing from one project, he would go on a new trip, return and print the new images from the new outing. He rarely went back and printed older images. As a result, most prints of the well-known images are now gone.

New Archival Fine Art Digital Prints Allow Collectors To Enjoy New Releases And Old Favorites Again

The new archival fine art digital prints allow collectors and fans of landscape photography to enjoy new releases and the old favorites that in many cases have not been printed or exhibited for decades. The archival fine art digital prints are limited in production by the expense and difficulty of translation from large format film to quality digital images. Each of the archival fine art digital prints are produced in special editions that are numbered. The prints of any given photograph go up in price $100 in all print sizes each time 10 prints of any size sell. For example, “Virginia Creeper” has sold nearly 10 prints and will go up in price $100 soon. Those photographs that sell higher quantities will eventually become much higher valued than the others. For example, when 200 prints of an image have sold, it will be valued at $2,000 more in all print sizes than it was to begin with and $2,000 more than prints of the other photographs. This will not only increase perceived and actual value of the prints over time, but will limit production and sales of each print and make them more attractive to collectors.

The Mission, In Part

A portion of proceeds from fine art digital print sales will fund green energy development, land conservation and other environmental causes. Philip Hyde’s prints are in permanent collections in institutions such as The Smithsonian, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, George Eastman House, Time Life Gallery, California Academy of Sciences, The International Center of Photography and The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

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See Philip Hyde Photography for Philip Hyde Archival Fine Art Digital Prints Pricing

For print acquisitions, questions or to just say hi, please contact:
David Leland Hyde
prints [at] philiphyde [dot] com
Orders can also be placed on the Philip Hyde Photography Website through the Portfolios that contain a Shopping Cart.