Repeat Photography in Landscape Research

Historical Landscape Change in Yellowstone National Park: Demonstrating the Value of Intensive Field Observation and Repeat Photography

“…Peter Goin's work employs a broader methodological approach by considering the social context of the photographs equally as important as what is actually visible in the photographs (2001). Similarly, Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe blend art and ethnography and lay out specific guidelines for their methodology (Klett and others ; Klett ; Klett and others ). In national parks, repeat photography has been used to gather cultural and human‐environment data in Yosemite (Vale and Vale ) and Grand Canyon (Klett and Wolfe ), and across the border in Canada's Jasper National Park (Cronin ).…”

“…Scientists measure physical landscape change through a variety of visual indicators, including vegetation cover (Butler and DeChano ), debris flows (Bahre ; Webb ), glaciers in Glacier National Park (Fagre and McKeon ), and riparian corridors in the Grand Canyon (Webb ), as well assessment of ecosystems more generally (Swetnam, Allen, and Betancourt ). To yield good, useful environmental data, rephotography requires a nearly perfect match to the original in terms of location, time of day, season of the year, and even type of camera, film, and focal lengths (Klett ). Mark Klett outlines two approaches: “finding the exact location where an original photograph was made, and accurately reoccupying the position and framing the initial view,” or focusing on capturing the historic image location but with less concern for “the exact relocation of the original position or frame,” concentrating instead on the “context surrounding the photograph” to find the “stories associated with those images and location” (2011, 115).…”

Estimates of landscape composition from terrestrial oblique photographs suggest homogenization of Rocky Mountain landscapes over the last century

“…During summer months (June-August) since 1998, MLP field crews return to the vantage points from which the historical photographs were taken. Using prints of the historical photographs as a reference, crew members position their tripods by verifying the alignment of foreground and background features in the camera's viewfinder (Rogers et al 1984;Webb 2010;Klett 2011). Repeat photographs are shot with high-resolution digital camera systems.…”

Repeat photography, post‐phenomenology and “being‐with” through the image (at the First World War cemeteries of Asiago, Italy)

“…Repeat photography, or “rephotography,” is a method used over the past 50 years, mainly within geomorphology and other natural science studies, to qualitatively (but recently also quantitatively) assess changes in the physical landscape (Cerney, ). The method has also been deployed in the social sciences (Finn et al., ; Klett, ; Rieger, ), ethnography (Garrard et al., ) and education (Lemmons et al., ). Ten years ago, artist‐anthropologist Smith () wrote about creative repeat photography as an expressive and embodied strategy for generating questions about the relationship between subjects and landscape views.…”

“…In general, the rephotographer must find the vantage point of an original photograph as precisely as possible and then replicate the lighting, time of day and seasonal conditions/time of year. Even if his work was not concerned with measurement, Rigon wanted to repeat the vantage points accurately, so that his photographs would look more alike as repeated images, thereby encouraging greater participation from viewers in interpreting the pairs (Klett, , p. 116). By capturing and reproducing the atmosphere of the past photograph, he wanted to enhance the emotional impact of their “visual juxtaposition” (Metcalfe, ), or the invitation for comparison, which is characteristic of the rephotographic genre and is spontaneously activated by the viewers without the aid of additional texts.…”