November 2025, Nature Closeups by Great Photographers

News about happenings at Deliberate Light and photography instruction (see Digital Photo Academy). My views on this month’s photography topic: Nature Closeups by Great Photographers.

NEWS

Upcoming Workshops. I am next scheduled to teach workshops for Digital Photo Academy on January 3rd at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. You can sign up here.

· Mastering Your Camera Controls (1.5 hours) – intended for DSLR/Mirrorless/Compact cameras (smartphone tutorial available separately)

· Composition in the Field (3 hours) – walking tour around the venue with instruction and hands-on practice composing photos (bring any camera)

New Photo.

Autumn Moment. On this calm morning, as the world wakes up and autumn lights up its glory, I walk down the street to absorb the tranquility. Feeling more of a sense of urgency, a squirrel hops across the road on its busy way, preparing for the coming season. I do not wish to interrupt it, but rather to simply absorb the depth of beauty of this moment and stay in it.

(Rose Valley, PA, 2022)

For a more detailed, enlarged view, see it on my website.

VIEWS

Nature Closeups by Great Photographers

Everybody occasionally (frequently?) likes to photograph some detail of nature, a flower, a leaf, a stone, tree bark, a seashell. Let’s look at how a few great photographers of the past have approached such shots and think about what makes their images so good. Along the way, I will tell you a little about these important photographers.

Èduard (Edward) Steichen (1879–1973)

Steichen, the brother-in-law of Carl Sandburg, grew up in the midwest in an immigrant family, and was to become one of the most influential photographers of his time. He began a career in the visual arts at the age of 15, taking up painting and photography. An early Pictorialist (see my March 2025 newsletter), Steichen caught the eye of Alfred Stieglitz in 1900 and his career took off, first as a co-founder with Stieglitz of the Photo-Secession movement, and then as the father of modern fashion photography. He served as the Director of the Photography Department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York from 1947 – 1961, his most well-known achienvement being to curate the groundbreaking exhibition The Family of Man (1955), later a book (The Family of Man | MoMA).

The following photograph captures his early fascination with light and form and was taken at the time he was leaving behind the softness of Pictorialism and moving to the sharpness of Straight photography. He lit the central element, the flower, well and, using depth-of-field, made sure its texture is in-focus, while leaving the surrounding foliage a bit darker and even fuzzier so it is clearly the background framing the flower. The lines of the petals and leaves flow mesmerizingly together. He was not afraid to move the flower off-center in the image (almost following the rule-of-thirds, but not quite), with the flower seeming to be emerging from beneath the larger leaf above it.

Èduard Steichen, Lotus, Mt. Kisco, NY, 1915

Robert Weston (1886–1958)

Another Midwesterner who took up photography in his mid-teens, Weston moved to California at the age of 20, starting his own portrait photography business by 1911 and would stay in California the rest of his life except for a few years in Mexico. Like Steichen, he began his career as a Pictorialist and by the 1920’s had moved on to Straight Photography, often with a more abstract bent, becoming one of the most admired photographers of his time. He was one of several co-founders in 1932, along with Ansel Adams and others, of the west coast “Group f/64”, so called because of their predilection for really tiny aperture settings to achieve maximum focus in their images.

It may take you a moment to realize that the next photograph is of two shells, one nested in the other. As with Steichen’s Lotus, this image makes exquisite use of light and shadow on the forms. Here Weston allows a bit of glare emphasizing the gleaming curved surface of the inner shell. Unlike with the Lotus, Weston extends the sharp focus to the whole of the shells, letting the light highlight the fully visible textures. The arrangement of one shell inside another brings an abstract quality that foreshadows Weston’s likely most famous photograph Pepper No. 30 (1930) (Pepper No. 30, Edward Weston | Mia).

Edward Weston, Shells, 1927

Imogen Cunningham (1883–1976)

A contemporary of Steichen and Weston, Cunningham was born on the west coast and spent most of her life there. She took up photography at the age of 18, determined to pursue it seriously, and immersed herself in Pictorialism. Unable to find a photography school, she got a college degree in chemistry instead, enabling her to study photographic chemistry in Germany, a unique skill among fine art photographers. By the 1920’s, she was developing a reputation as a sophisticated and creative photographer, and in 1932, co-founded Group f/64 with her friends Edward Weston and Ansel Adams. Moving beyond the sharp-focus strictures of Straight Photography, her later work is marked by experimentation and Pictorialist-like willingness to manipulate images that is at times surrealist. Working prolifically into her 90’s, she passed away shortly before the publication of her book After Ninety.

Cunningham’s photograph below of the gracefully arranged leaves of a Voodoo Lily has the soft light and sharp focus of the preceding images, but she adds a brilliant touch by placing her hand in bright light at the top of the image. The tension of the hand energizes the image, contrasting with the drooping softness of the leaves, while the forms of the leaves and fingers echo each other.

Imogen Cunningham, Hand and Leaf of Voodoo Lily, 1972

Cunningham sometimes incorporated other elements into her botanical photographs using double exposures to add depth of meaning. In the image below, the leaves of the aloe plant and the hands meld together in a surrealistic dance.

Imogen Cunningham, Hands and Aloe Plicatilis, 1967

So, the next time you want to take a closeup picture of some detail of nature, maybe you will consider some of these things: look for interesting forms, use light/shadow to highlight the forms along with focus to emphasize texture. Like Imogen Cunningham, do not shy away from abstraction or surrealism just because it feels contrived or weird: sometimes amazing things happen.

Carl Finkbeiner

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