Rangefinder Magazine
June 2005

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Rf Cookbook: The Road Not Taken by Scott Mansfield

I arrive at images in different ways. I often find myself roaming with no preconceived idea of the image I am seeking. I simply explore, hunting the landscape for a scene. Some trips, though, are deliberate. The destination is known, and the images I seek are somewhat, if not completely, defined. Then there is the imagery that is always with me. Pictures created in psyche, pieced together with bits of other scenes and built into finished products. Studio photographers use a mixed bag of tools, from models and artificial lights to manufactured backgrounds and costumes, to recreate the images in their heads.

Commercial photographers aren’t the only ones plagued by these preconceived images. As a landscape photographer I’m constantly haunted by scenes that are completely created in my mind, and I am forced to search for them in reality. This image is one of those.

It was the last few days of a weeklong trip to southern Utah. Several days earlier I had stumbled onto a fantastic shot of a herd of bison wandering through a field. It was one of those moments where all things photographic come together: light, composition, time, art. Now, near the end of my journey, I was happy and satisfied. I had gotten my trip-defining image. I shot many other scenes over the week, though none with the same magic as the bison until I came around a 90° bend in the road.

The scene unfolded in front of me, and before I knew it I had pulled off the road into the dirt. For months I had envisioned this exact scene, a diminishing road with spotty clouds. Not an original idea, it was just one I wanted for myself. As I got out of my truck I remembered I wasn’t the only one on the highway. For the next two hours I played chicken with dozens of cars, 18-wheelers, and motor- homes. I waited for clouds that kept building and withdrawing and for shadows that kept dancing this way and that. It was early afternoon, so the light let me take my time and wait for the scene to fully develop. Between cars whizzing by, I ventured into the middle of the road to compose. I wanted it to be as low to the ground as the hyperfocal distance would allow me to get (about three feet). I threw on a polarizer to separate the clouds and a two-stop split neutral density filter to bring down the sky and cut the brightness of the distant mountains. I could get off a few exposures between cars, cars approaching from behind or popping up in the distance. After a few hours I had a couple of rolls of film and felt content I had gotten what I wanted. It was a good trip.

To see more visit www.scottmansfield.com/.

INGREDIENTS
• Camera: Hasselblad 501
• Film: Fujifilm Velvia 50; E.I. 25
• Exposure: 1⁄8 second at f/16
• Lens: 50mm
• Light: Natural
• Filter: Polarizer, 2-stop split ND