What makes a good Landscape shot?

1) a nice landscape

 

2) photographer positioning in relation to the landscape

 

3) media use

 

4) a nice landscape

 

I always thought all the "wow" response to landscape images were

because the landscapes themselves were great.

 

WHat's your take on this?

I allways thought all the 'wows' on landscapes were from people who never travel or shoot landscapes themselves.....

 

Greetings,

the landscapes i like best always have very strong graphic qualities. the long view often affords great opportunity for abstraction. i think people really enjoy seeing patterns in the chaos of nature, especially if the patterns evoke the familiar in som eway. it is comforting to find order.

 

oh yeah. and get the fu**ing horizon straight.

1) A reasonable landscape

 

2) Time of day either early or late

 

3) Descent clouds, too many blah, too few blah

 

4) Some interesting detail

 

5) Fine grain film or a good digital sensor

 

6) Color or B&W it doesn't matter

 

This makes for the best photos IMO, you can modify 3, I have seen nice photos in clouds or dense fog.

 

GS

It seems to be a very commercial area of photography, with most

of the work ending up in calenders/coffee table books/

magazines/postcards. A lot of it is hideous. Landscapes are

difficult to do well.

 

Tom

Travis,

 

I don't think that the "wow" is solely attributable to the quality of the raw landscape. Although it is easier to produce a good photograph with compelling subject matter.

 

Lighting, composition, technique, print technique, all contribute to the "wow" response. For example, my "wow" response to a number of Ansel Adams landscape changed when I viewed the images in the "Ansel Adams at 100" exhibit. AA reprinted a number of images later in life based on how he was feeling about the environment and other factors. For me, the "wow" went up and down based on his reinterpretation relative to prints that he made earlier.

 

Personally, I'm less wowed by the grand landscape then I am by say, Eliot Porter's studies of details within the landscape.

 

Good topic.

 

-Nick

Beyond the obvious straight-on pictures by Ansel Adams et al, I like the ones that abstract a bit and emphasize relationships between objects... <a href="http://www.mastersofphotography.com/Directory/sabell/" target="_blank">Sam Abell's work</a> comes to mind.

I like clues in the shot about the photographers understanding of / feelings about the landscape he is portraying.

 

Two photographers could photograph the same scene and one would produce a technically capable, sharp, pleasing view that could grace any calendar. The other photographer may be trying to portray a message about the landscape. (Its fragility or economic hopelessness or the horror of some bloody battle that took place or the culture that shaped the landscape etc etc.)

 

For two extremes (among UK landscape photographers) try Joe Cornish (eye candy merchant for the UK National Trust) and Fay Godwin.

 

There is a long and interesting and still evolving relationship between us and the landscapes we build/admire/picture/work in/despoil/ignore. The photographer brings his/her own agenda and philosophy and history to every landscape portrayed.

 

Here in the UK we have no such thing as 'natural' wilderness. Even the truly wild and remote tracts of Scotland were at one time intensively farmed before the crofters were forcibly cleared to make way for game birds and the rich folk who shoot them for sport. The land carries clues to all of its different ages and uses.

 

Many an English landscape has been through as many 'evolutions' as the hundreds of generations of folk who have lived and fought and farmed and died in them!

 

I only have to travel 15 minutes out of my house or work to find obvious evidence of Iron age / Bronze age / Romano celtic / Saxon / Norman / Tudor / Victorian landscape influences. (Some pretty major ones at that.)

 

Within the same 15 minutes scope there have been great plagues and great battles and wealth and crushing poverty as well as many hundreds of years of peace and steady farming.

 

I am not sure what you mean by 'nice'. Is Fay Godwins superb record and testament of Derek Jarmans last home and garden, in the marshes around Dungeness (adjacent to one of our largest nuclear power stations) nice? He died of AIDs shortly afterwards but the photographs show a wonderful Japanese inspired 'garden' created from found objects from the local foreshore. Always there is the looming presence of the sinister in the shape of the power station just as Derek Jarman celebrated his creativity right to the end with the looming presence of his fatal illness.

 

Those landscapes tell us more than 'nice' or 'pretty' or correct positioning or media use I think.

 

If you have the time or interest I would especially recommend the book 'Landscape and Memory' by Simon Schama. The forest landscapes of Anselm Kiefer are worth the price of the book alone! Try looking out for the dark brooding landscapes (of the Somerset levels) by Don Mccullin in his retrospective published last year.

 

The original derivation of the English word Landscape as we use it was from the Dutch work 'Landschap' which became 'Landskip' in England. One can do an awful lot worse than to study the great Dutch landscape painters of the 16th and 17th century for inspiration with composition.

WOw Trevor..

 

WHere I live, SIngapore, landscapes are rare to find. No hilly mountains, no vast oceans, no large fields and certainly no deserts..

 

Most times, I have to play with what I can define as landscapes, sometimes they don;t even qualify.

 

I agree with Roger that if I can go very WIDE with the scene, it'll be eye catching at least.

 

Here's one posted before. Does this qualify to be a landscape scene?

 

It's tough living in a small island.<div></div>

They say a picture is worth a thousand words and a good landscape shot would be difficult to put in words. Don't you think ?

Hi Travis. I forgot you were from Singapore. (The Mother in law almost had a 'fling' with an officer whilst staying at Raffles Hotel in the 1950's !!)

 

I also live on a small overcrowded Island. The UK has 62 Million people and would easily fit inside the boundaries of California!

 

It becomes ever more difficult to photograph rural landscapes without electricity pylons, motorways, new out of town warehouse and mega store developments, mountain bikers in dayglo coloured waterproofs, new Yuppy nesting box 'homes' being 'chucked up' everywhere in the south of England designed by the same people who make LEGO! (Always on the outskirts of beautiful villages that have already had the indigents thrown out of their homes and lives by rich London based execs who only live in their £500,000 cottages at weekends.)

 

Every quaint village street is nowadays 3 deep in huge BMW 4x4 vehicles and is spoiled by UPVC double glazed frames and steel security roller blinds and Everest conservatories in tasteful white plastic. The local pub is usually full of 'heehawing' middle class trash comparing the size of their husbands incomes, with friends, over a £55 (each) 'pub supper' that would take a real country dweller (like a farm worker) 11 hours of menial labour to afford.

 

It is why any English historical drama is now set in France or Ireland to get anything like a decent timeless landscape unspoiled by the last 40 years of consumerist blight.

It seems that Tervor and Travis would do better to look for the intimate landscape as Eliot Porter did rather than the grand landscape of Ansel Adams.

The best landscape shots usually have people in them. Preferably in the foreground, blocking all those stupid trees, mountains and clouds in the background.

Yes piles of machine gunned Media execs from London in the foreground.

 

In the background mountains of burning BMW 4x4s and more media execs and rich London lawyers hanging from lovely trees.

 

Everywhere the glittery sparkle of shattered double glazing!

 

My favourite John Betjeman poem sums it up really well even though it was written in the 1940's.....

 

http://www-cdr.stanford.edu/intuition/Slough.html

<p>For me, landscapes are a "Right Thing". That is, being in the right place at the right time with the right gear and the right vision. Good photographic landscapes have a lot in common, as has been mentioned, with good landscape paintings. Most often, they show the almost idealized beauty of a place, and allow the viewer to escape there in their minds or hearts. They are, as a result, the antithesis of "street photography", where the concentration is usually on the nitty-gritty aspects of life. </p>

<center>

<img border=2 src="http://www.rbarkerphoto.com/misc/Travel/DV2003/DV0203-G3-600c.jpg">

<p><small>The "Badlands" of Death Valley from Zabriskie Point at sunrise</small></p>

</center>

Hi Travis,

<p>

Great responses and a question I often have asked myself. I wrote a few articles on landscape photography related issues: <a href="http://www.fotografiewimvanvelzen.nl/articles.htm">articles</a>, especially <a href="http://www.fotografiewimvanvelzen.nl/webarticle06.htm">approaches to landscape photography</a>.

<p>Wim

Jeez, Trevor, sounds like 'ol Blighty's becoming more like the U.S. everyday! And not in a good way, either; you've developed your own self-absorbed consumer class. Sounds like both sides of the pond have given up on the old 'Roman virtues' and jumped right into Roman excess. Close your eyes and it's easy to imagine Caligula rolling through town in a Hummer motorcade.

Politics. Landscapes are most interesting when they have something to say about

man's impact on his world. Whether it's the destruction of 30 years of war in

Afghanistan, the impact of settlements on the indegenous landscape in Israel,

breeding foxes for hunting, the pollution of the atmosphere in Iraq through oil fires,

suburban gardens, it's all good. There's nothing that annoys me more than a nice

virgin landscape picture. We are doing things to this planet that our ancestors could

only dream of. So let's all bury our heads in the sand and pretend that the world's

most beautiful places are unspoiled by man.

Trevor:

 

Interesting post!

 

 

>>>I am not sure what you mean by 'nice'.<<<

 

Good point. Generally, I am not crazy about pretty pictures of beautiful scenes

because these just produce picture potcard-type photographs that are trite -- the

same way that the run-of-the mill close-ups of a flower or a photograph of a sunset

usually produce boring pictures. I have shot a series of color photographs of Thai

temples that will be exhibited at the Jim Thompson House Museum in Bangkok

starting late-November -- the biggest problem was NOT to produce picture

postcards because the temples are so exotic and colorful. So, my view that the quality

of your landscape photography -- like that of all photography -- depends on your

vision.

 

 

>>>Try looking out for the dark brooding landscapes (of the Somerset levels) by Don

Mccullin in his retrospective published last year.<<<

 

Yes, I love these. They were originally published in his 1989 book "Open Skies" which

I bought in London at that time for £18 and recently found on the web being offered

by a bookstore for £250.

 

--Mitch/Potomac, MD

Hello Wim.

 

Great website. I have bookmarked it for future reading. Thanks. (Espcially Square Scotland! Part of the reason I have started messing around with 6x6.)

 

You and I both come from small densely populated land masses with ancient and bloody histories. However you in the Netherlands are quite unique in making your own country out of drained sea! So most of your 'landschaps' can be nothing but constructs of human endeavour.

 

"Please, Hans, you will stand there with the tripod and I will pump out the sea. In time we will have a nice picture of a tulip field. No?"

 

(We did this on a 'hobby' scale in Norfolk and in the Somerset levels.)

 

I like the dutch. An evil sense of humour AND we borrowed one of their kings once. William of Orange was (successfully) invited by our Parliament to 'invade' England to oust our last Catholic king James II from power because he wanted to re-unite us with the French(!!) under an all powerful catholic Anglo/French kingdom.

 

We and the Dutch were also linked in the 16th century as we were their allies against the invading Spanish forces. (The Dutch flooded the Netherlands in an attempt to drive away the Spanish and we just relied on our abysmal English weather to drive the buggers off!!)

 

I am full of admiration for people living in a country that could disappear after a bad night!

If it's a "decent" landscape / view, you can be assured that some good photographer has already filmed it - - and it's for sale in the postcard racks.

 

I haunt the postcard racks, looking for the landscapes and points of interest. Try it, it's an interesting experience. Choose the landscapes or points of interest you want to photograph. Then, buy the postcards, take them with you, and vow NOT to replicate the other photographer's images. < grin >

"... imagine Caligula rolling through town in a Hummer motorcade."

 

Imagine?? Come to LA; you can see that most any day or evening. "Bladerunner" is reality & prophecy, not fiction.

 

All that aside, I'm with Trevor. It's a landscape in context that can grab me, not the eye-candy shot.

To make an interesting lanscape portfolio (not just a single

photograph), see nature in a new & different way! Yes, you have

to have something to say, but it need not be political. You need a

point of view as an artist., a viewpoint that's not already a cliche.

For God & nature's sake, let it be different from the

Heroic/Spectacular/Monumental Ansel Adams tradition, or the

blighted environment of the New Topographers. IMHO, Edward

Burtynsky's "Manufactured Landscapes" is a wonderful example

of a new point of view.

Mitch you were lucky with 'Open Skies'. I borrowed a copy under the inter library loan system (There was a volume in a library in Somerset) and did good quality colour copies of all the plates. I now have them in an envelope in my bookshelf. I keep a look out in second hand book shops in case one pops up.

Anselm Kiefer! Ha There's a GREAT artist who's made epic landscapes. Van gogh, but make it supersized!

 

Trevor, you really went to town on this one!