Rod Planck: The Intimate Landscape

Think of landscapes and it's likely that the images you see in your mind's eye are grand vistas, vast areas and huge spectacular viewpoints.        

Outdoor and nature photographer Rod Planck has a modification to make to that thought. For him, there's a landscape other than the vista, and it is, he says, "all the real estate that doesn't cover hundreds of acres." It's the section of the forest, the part of the canyon, the segment of the waterfall—all the bits and pieces that make up the grand whole. He calls his photos of those areas "intimate landscapes."

Examples? All the accompanying images.

"Long Canyon in Utah runs for over two miles, with thousand-foot high cliffs," Rod says, "but from the huge area I was walking through, the section I chose to photograph is probably five feet by eight feet." So instead of trying for a photo that aims to define or illustrate all of Long Canyon, you have the first image you see here.

"What I was looking for, and looking at," Rod adds, "are all the intricate, beautiful things that make Long Canyon, Long Canyon."

The intimate landscape, you'll notice, needn't have a sense of scale. "I don't feel that a true sense of scale is always important in a photograph," Rod says. "If you compare the section of Long Canyon with the mushroom [the second photo], and you had no idea what either one was, I could tell you the mushroom was the size of my house and the section of canyon wall was like a postage stamp. The goal of what I'm trying to do in those photographs is the same: I want you to look at the mushroom photo for the pattern and texture; same thing for the canyon wall. I don't want you figuring out how big either is." 

In these photographs, Rod's not illustrating a textbook; he's aiming for a sense a wonder. He's said that he feels photography serves three purposes: documentation, illustration and creativity. All are valid, and he's comfortable with all, but the intimate landscape has to do, he says, "with using the camera as a tool to explore creativity."

But more important than the camera is the lens, and Rod's choices, and how he uses them, might not be what you'd expect. Many times Rod's intimate landscapes are captured with Micro-NIKKORS—the AF Micro-NIKKOR 60mm f/2.8D, the PC-E-Micro-NIKKOR-85mm-f/2.8D and the AF-Micro-NIKKOR-200mm-f/4D-IF-ED. "They're ideal lenses for this type of expression," he says.