Hi Rachel,
I have been letting your pictures sit. My intention was just to let others reply, since I have previously written on this and I don't want to be a teacher or some guru in a position to offer salvation. I just bring pain, I'm afraid and uncertainty as I happen to be just like you, rowing a fragile boat on the river that although passes through great landscapes and villages, but still pulls us over the same rapids in the end.
WHAT MIGHT BE LACKING? Let me just give my quick impression that has lasted looking at your these images a number of times and some of your older river pics. We do not have enough of a subject from all around it to be content that we have a totality of something. Your pictures here seem to be "part" of this and a "bit of that" If that's true? How can we get away from that? Also, other matters are there which don't add anything or provide some useful contrast or balance.
EXERCISE: Making units of art. If you would go along with me, I'd propose trying to photograph some 20-30 simple objects. Yes, that's a lot of work! The first objects, do on their own, say on a table top, with a wide aperture so nothing else is included and then do the same thing using berries on trees, a flower, one tree, a lamppost, a shop window, a garbage can and so forth. This way, you are trying to hone in on a concept of a unit of something. All art seems to have this feeling that it's one thing that the artist has created and left for us to muse on. O.K. this is done and now you have an idea to photograph corn!
PREPARATION: You have an idea of what you want to shoot. So let's prime our brains. Take a dual track: see what others have done and then imagine what you might do. First go to a museum or look at an art book for at least 30 minutes, on the subject you want to photograph. You don't need to think hard on this, your brain is greedy for knowledge and it will just get sucked up and filed away. Don't make any conscious plan to copy anything. You have already primed your brain. That's how brains work. Looking at things beforehand will enhance your visualization of the subjects you seek to photograph. Next make some simple sketches, doesn't need to be complicated.
COMPOSITION: I personally believe that one's sense of one's compositions comes from our life experience. You, Rachel, deal with people. That's your main strength. Yes, that seems condescending, but I need an explanation for the differences between your landscape work and portraits. For people portraits, you have in your brain millions of nuanced expressions that you have been trained to read. That is your field of comfort and also of pain. You do not hunt or sail. Navigating by the stars is not your passion nor do you use the landscape and nature in your everyday living and decision-making. Yes, this sounds extreme, but anyway, as radical at this proposal is, I have a feeling that this is where you are at present. You are in perhaps a rather foreign world and don't have a concept of what units might be. Whether or not this might be valid or nonsense, the solution that this idea brings to mind should yield the pleasure from your landscape photographs you seek.
When a work of art is complete, it often looks like it is "one thing". Somehow there is a balance or imbalance of all the factors of shape, lighting, patterns, textures, similar and dissimilar shapes and more so that we appear to have "a something" to consider. There may be awkwardness, but it's balanced somehow by what is in synergy.
Now our brains are tuned to make judgments. This is based on human nature, our personalities, preferences, needs and mood at the time, as well education symbols and mythology from our culture.
You seem to make landscape pictures with no reference to much of the ideas which can work for us and which you seem to use with portraits. Your struggle then is to "Express the beauty and sentiments I feel when looking at the corn lit in a particular way". It should not come down to "Taking a picture that people will like"!
First what I am about to write, are not rules, since that would be hubris. These are just some hopefully useful practical ideas that should open up a pathway between Rachel's inner mind and what Rachel sees around her and then what is in her work. There's obviously a gap. The job in delivery of art is to narrow the gap between what the mind has put together in its mysterious grand cathedral and what we dare to show people is a physical representation of that, be it a picture, a sculpture or any other art. This is work each artist has to do. This is not needed for police photography or even wedding photography. Each of these can be trained into anyone that is not seriously impaired. However, having Rachel express her adoration of corn lit by declining sunlight is more than the object, as much of what went into making Rachel and other people, is recruited and harnessed to make the mental image much richer than what the camera sees. So, against all odds, Rachel needs to now make the picture, choosing, excluding, altering perspective to be unusual until somehow, magically perhaps, what the mind cannot talk about is expressed in this simple picture! So of course most tries will not work at first. Walking away to another fascinating topic won't work either. So corn it is until it "works". What is the measure of "works"? Simply speaking it works when the gap between your imagination and the picture you see is brought close to zero and you feel that what you have done is part of you that now lives on its own.
Remember, that at this stage, whether or not anyone else likes your work is unimportant. If you cannot please yourself, what do you have to offer anyone else? (Let's leave out the talented artist who is destructively self-critical, that is a major and difficult subject).
Start with a Microsoft word document. All images in RAW and small jpg. Don't touch the RAWS, most you'll never use for now. All the jpgs of interest get imported into Word. (using insert-picture-from file and point to where your images are stored).
At the top of the page:
1. SUBJECT. Write that down first.
Answer: "Reflections of evening sunlight on corn." Add why you chose that: "I saw this driving home on Route 34 at about 6pm." Keep track of ideas and intentions.
2. SCOUT the location: This is best done without the camera. Just look around at the different corn formations. Notice individual stalks that seen to make an interesting pattern or ones that are just so plump and perfect that they need to be photographed up close to fill the frame.
3. IMPLEMENTATION: Describe the components you want and need. What elements are essential: there are just two: corn and sunlight!
a) Corn: at least one stem with light on one side and a beautiful light pattern showing the structure
b) Corn; a group of corn stalks with sun lighting one side
c) A field of corn with sunlight one side
What might enhance the picture: Sky perhaps, a field mouse, a bird? Maybe, maybe not! Try leaving them out at first if they don't come easily.
What might spoil the picture: distracting elements that you do not like, space with no detail (some empty spaces can add value to balance a picture sometimes but we'll put that aside).
STRATEGY: You have your special place and know the right time to return.
GEAR: You need what? Camera, zoom lens perhaps, Macro lens? Wide-angle fixed lens? You decide. Each time you do this you'll do better. Add in tripod and small ladder perhaps and sandbag to hold camera on wall or ground above dirt.
TACTIC: You have chosen! Now let's start with the widest first. Can you get what you are thinking of by a wide shot. Photograph the top of the grass (you need a small light step ladder in the car, always useful!) Now drop down and skim across the grass and include a vast field of corn glistening in the light. Now get on the ground and use a macro lens and focus on a few ears. Try opening the aperture wide so that everything else goes out of focus.
EVALUATE IMAGES: Look at your pictures in a viewing program: Lightroom, iview media, Bridge, Aperture or whatever you like. Delete all the ones you dislike. Forget about mechanics of composition. Which of the pictures gives you the most satisfaction? That's what you must decide!
SELECTION: This is part of life, the hard part. Only when you make active selections will you get in contact with what is "yours". This can be very hard. Out of 100 pictures you need the best 5. When you know that, discard the other views and insert these images into your Word document. Devote your attention to make comments on each picture as to what you like and dislike. Print the pages out in color. Yes, it costs ink, but it's worthwhile! Now mark up the pages with colored pencils/markers. Put arrows, lines and circles to encompass all the features you see that you find wanting or good.
"I like this corn", "the light perfect but stalks out of focus". "Missing bottom of stalks!" "Tops of stalks not needed" or "are needed!" So "Next time include more sky and add a polarizing filter to get the clouds better use a tripod...etc".
Now make a new page in word and put down a new plan. Print it out. Add a sketch of what your new shot will consist of and go back to the same place and re shoot. This is the only way I know how to solve such problems.
That's the work you must do. The camera has no idea of what constitutes an interesting subject.
You can go to all the courses in the world. Nothing will help you as much as such an exercise as I have described wherein you devote yourself to one defined subject and work on it so your own natural senses can find, in the whole field of corn, one image which seems to have an independent life and says to you, "Rachel, you made me, I am one thing, I'm whole, it's done, I'm free of you and carry your ideas for ever".
One issue that may cause confusion is that we may leave our house with all the responsibilities and go for a relaxing time in nature, walking past a field of corn. So when we look at the corn, we are bringing much more to that scene which cannot be easily caught be the camera!
Now you may well achieve your vision with a tutor. I really doubt that until you have struggled more on your own. I think, for now, an exploratory approach, personal to you, may be more fruitful than a didactic one since this way works in "Rachel foster Units" not any other terms of reference. I have faith that when you are moved, so will we too. So you will do better. Now you will have a new plan and return to take that one planned shot, but still move around that chosen part of the cornfield, perfect your subject, from the many variations that catch your eye.
I hope this provides some useful ideas for you to work with. You have all the sensibilities. The struggle, however must be yours. Yes, someone could give a formulaic critique. Let them! That will be useful too. I still think you will find your means of expression yourself, naturally, by looking at works of art and then selecting from your own efforts, the best, making notes and returning to take more pictures.
You would not think of running a marathon without self-preparation. It's the same with art! You must train your own brain.
Asher