Hand of Man

Quite a few years ago, when I was in the relatively early stages after becoming serious about landscape photography, I was a member of a camera club with a focus on nature as a subject.  The club had regular slide competitions (this was back in the film era), with a set of rules that included a prohibition of the inclusion of “the hand of man.”  In other words, for images to qualify for competition they could include no trace of man-made subjects.  Since the vast majority of my shots don’t involve man-made elements this didn’t really impact my ability to take part.  And–particularly given the stated predilection of the club for nature subjects–I understood that it was easier to simply implement a hard and fast rule to disallow the hand of man than to try to enforce a more amorphous (and potentially contentious) set of guidelines about which non-nature elements were incidental and permissible and which would result in exclusion.

Nevertheless, as I’ve continued to pursue my own work as a landscape photographer I’ve found that man-made subjects often enhance landscape imagery as secondary elements.  Sometimes, they work nicely as primary elements.  (Whether photographs with a man-made object as the center of interest qualify as “landscape images” is a subject that has occasionally been much debated in some forums and which I find essentially irrelevant.)  Occasionally they’re simply there, adding little or nothing, but not really subtracting anything either.

Perhaps as a function of my involvement with the camera club, there was a time when I typically ignored man-made elements as I sought out images in the field, but that’s no longer true.  Inclusion of certain man-made objects as complementary elements can, at times, add compositional structure to an image.  Use of man-made objects as a center of interest can, on occasion, produce a compelling image where one otherwise wouldn’t exist.

Here are a few examples:

Newfound Gap

Newfound Gap at Sunrise, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee

There are certainly shots to be had at the Newfound Gap overlook that omit the road, but I don’t think this is one of them.  The inclusion of the road gives the viewer’s eye a starting point and serves as a pattern-breaking element in what would otherwise be a fairly non-descript set of tree-lined ridges at a time of year before the foliage reached the high country.

Bridle Path

Bridle Path, Turkey Run State Park, Indiana

There would probably still be a shot here without the trail and bridle fencing, but it would be a very different image, lacking in the sense of depth that these man-made elements convey to the photograph, and to be honest I’m not sure if my attention would have been attracted to the scene without the trail and fence line.  This is a classic example of leading lines, and in this image it’s the hand of man that is producing them.

McConnells Mill

McConnell’s Mill, McConnell’s Mill State Park, Pennsylvania

The mill serves as a kind of subdued center of interest–if that makes any sense–in the above image.  The mist coming off Slippery Rock Creek combined with the straggling leaves of late autumn produce a softness to this shot that creates a distinct mood, but without the anchoring presence of the mill in the background, I doubt there would be much to grab onto–to anchor the viewer’s eye–with this photograph.

Cannon Beach

Crescent Beach and Cannon Beach from Ecola State Park, Oregon

It’s hard to tell at this size, but the buildings of the town of Cannon Beach are present along the shoreline in the background; in a good-sized print, it’s easy to see them.  This is a good example of an image where hand of man elements add absolutely nothing–clearly there’s still a shot here without them–but they don’t ruin the image either.  They’re incidental and basically irrelevant.  Whether someone likes this image or not is unlikely to have anything to do with the adornment of the man-made elements.

Nachusa Grasslands

Prairie Dawn, Nachusa Grasslands Preserve, Illinois

The presence of the lone tree means that there would almost certainly be some kind of a shot here even without the man-made elements, but it’s hard for me to imagine that things would lay out as nicely as they have with the inclusion of the hand of man.  The sweep of the road leads the viewer’s eye to the tree in the upper right of the frame, which is balanced by the barn in the upper left-hand power point.  The top part of the inverted S-curve created by the road is mostly hidden by the prairie grass, but just enough is visible to allow the viewer to fill in the missing details…and naturally draws the eye to the barn.  Man-made elements aren’t necessary here to produce an image but they’re absolutely essential to whatever success lies in this image.

I hope this set of photographs illustrates a point that it took me some time to learn years ago:  hand of man and landscape photography do not necessarily represent an either/or proposition.  Man-made objects can be parts of the landscape that are:

1. at worst, no detriment to your image-making;
2. possible enhancements to your landscape images as secondary or tertiary elements;
3. occasionally the difference between a keeper image and no image at all as crucial pieces of the compositional and/or emotional puzzle.

Perhaps it will take you less time to draw these conclusions than it took me.