Landscape photography, where is it headed?

[delander †]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Why am I getting bored with landscape photography. Is there simply too much of it?

The artificially super colour saturated images, achieved by using all the tools of modern photographic processing software are everywhere in magazines, exhibitions online etc.

Sunsets, sunrises, wide angles, panoramas, the rock in the foreground, flowing water blurred to detail less whiteness, dark skies with clouds enhanced beyond belief are everywhere. I'm beginning to just pass them all by after a cursory look.

 

There seems to be a dearth of alternative creative approaches to the subject?

 

Jeff

[pop]

Please forgive the platitude, but if all landscape pictures were outstanding, none would be.

 

It's been always that way, that the large majority of pictures were at best of passing interest. Perhaps you are right now in a phase when you are less tolerant of the heaps and heaps of garbage which is the norm in so many places.

[Advertisement]

The Leica Q3 is available for pre-order at B&H Photo Video and Adorama

[farnz]

Jeff,

 

I think there's a lot more of it these days because it's more 'accessible' than it used to be. Anybody is able to capture presentable (for want of a better word) pictures with an Anybrand dSLR or point and shoot and 'sex it up' on his pc, and publishers appear to be less fussy about standards than they used to be.

 

The days of lugging a field camera, medium format camera, lenses, and tripod up a mountain in all weathers to skillfully compose and adjust to produce a picture with impact seems to be all but past.

 

Like you, I see a wealth of ordinary landscapes and give them no more than a cursory glance but, alas, I see few that are well-composed that draw me back for a second look or to linger.

 

Pete.

[delander †]

Please forgive the platitude, but if all landscape pictures were outstanding, none would be.

 

It's been always that way, that the large majority of pictures were at best of passing interest. Perhaps you are right now in a phase when you are less tolerant of the heaps and heaps of garbage which is the norm in so many places.

 

I dunno, it seems that landscape photographers have all abandoned any attempt at subtlety in their presentation.

 

Jeff

[delander †]

Jeff,

 

I think there's a lot more of it these days because it's more 'accessible' than it used to be. Anybody is able to capture presentable (for want of a better word) pictures with an Anybrand dSLR or point and shoot and 'sex it up' on his pc, and publishers appear to be less fussy about standards than they used to be.

 

The days of lugging a field camera, medium format camera, lenses, and tripod up a mountain in all weathers to skillfully compose and adjust to produce a picture with impact seems to be all but past.

 

Like you, I see a wealth of ordinary landscapes and give them no more than a cursory glance but, alas, I see few that are well-composed that draw me back for a second look or to linger.

 

Pete.

 

Hi Pete,

 

even today there are photographers, lugging LF film cameras about, but even much of their work seems to be afflicted in the same way.

 

Jeff

[Sailronin]

I agree with the over processed HDR fad showing up way too much. A couple of people are really good at it and created some memorable images but then the software (and now cameras with built in HDR features) have just flooded the media.

I'm guilty of the wide angle "rock in the foreground" photo and other cliche shots but am working to get beyond that. Problem being there is so much landscape work floating around now virtually everything has been done.

 

It goes to the question "Does the world need another photograph of a Antelope Canyon? How about Death Valley? Point Lobos? Sunset over a beach? Cute kittens? etc" Of course it doesn't!

 

We might as well throw all our cameras away and take up underwater basket weaving.

Or we could accept that for 99.999% of us we'll never produce a "Moonrise over Hernandez" and just enjoy the process.

[wildlightphoto]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Why am I getting bored with landscape photography. Is there simply too much of it?

 

I think there's a lot more of it these days because it's more 'accessible' than it used to be.... alas, I see few that are well-composed that draw me back for a second look or to linger.

 

I agree with Pete, and I see the same problem with most of the wildlife photography produced recently. It's been reduced to a 'formula': use the longest lens your piggy bank will allow, set up the AF and drive modes for action, obliterate the background, use fill flash to eliminate shadows, and make the colors 'pop' using Photoshop. The work that relies on subtlety, composition and good field skills is buried in an avalanche of technically adequate and aesthetically numb photos.

 

Meanwhile the markets that allow a reasonable return on the investment (investment in gear and field work) have dried up like last summer's foliage. There are so many technically adequate photos that photo buyers can now pick and choose from the hundreds or thousands that photographers are willing to give away for free just so they can see their name in print.

[janki]

I suppose it is the situation in so many areas today, that we have access to all too much of too many things that we are about to be bored to death.

 

The digital technology has revolutionized everything that has to do with photography, as it has done in most other areas of our lives.

 

If a bad photographer, with help of digital technology, manages to create landscape images he would not be able to, using traditional methods, he must be allowed, even though he is a lousy photographer.

 

I think that also less creative people should be allowed to enjoy taking photos. What harm can it do?

I have seen several examples of people that start to produce helpless images, gradual developing into great photographers.

 

I think we still easily will be able to distinguish high art from the "kitsch".

 

My theory is that the more people who get to enjoy the pleasure of photographing; the better place the world will be.:)

[delander †]

My theory is that the more people who get to enjoy the pleasure of photographing; the better place the world will be.:)

 

I agree but there seems to be a herd like instinct developing with respect to landscape photography. It would be refreshing if alternative approaches to the subject were tried.

 

Jeff

[pop]

It would be refreshing if alternative approaches to the subject were tried.

 

That's for the artist. It's for the crowd to follow (a little or much later). But then, who's to say which alternative approach to follow?

[wildlightphoto]

That's for the artist. It's for the crowd to follow (a little or much later). But then, who's to say which alternative approach to follow?

 

The artist creates a new alternate approach.

[andybarton]

There are certain proponents of landscape photography who have made a fortune out of large format, Velvia 50, multi filtered photographs.

 

Because they have made said fortune, other photographers think that is the only way to do these things - hence all the look a-likes.

 

I take a lot of landscapes, but I try not to put forward copy-cat stuff (although others will no doubt beg to differ and describe my work as derivative. Fair enough). I bought my first filter during the summer, for use with my Hasselblad. I never have filters on my Leicas or my Nikon SLR.

 

I am actually much more interested in trying to develop a style in black and white landscapes. When I get my mojo back next year, that is what I am going to concentrate on.

[pico]

[...] It would be refreshing if alternative approaches to the subject were tried.

 

New ideas? With all the photography being done, I don't know if any are unique ideas.

 

Under-water (under ice) photography of the Winter carp harvesting of the Upper Mississippi River. It would use multiple bulb flashes. (I have applied for a grant to do that one.)

 

Outdoor landscape (no buildings) photography with distributed multiple bulb flash. Medium format to LF. It could range from pastoral to perverse (the later being public park at night). I've begun the plan to do the giant cottonwood trees around my local lake, isolating the largest with flashes (2/3 ratios).

 

Pictures at night of ocean waves crashing on rocks. High-speed electronic flashes. (Have generator. Will schlep.)

 

More?

[pgk]

Why am I getting bored with landscape photography. Is there simply too much of it?

 

There seems to be a dearth of alternative creative approaches to the subject?

 

Jeff

You are right in that its all become very 'samey' and much is derivative (even if it is exquisitely done). To look through images today is to see a very refined view of the world which is all too often a fantasy, and which bears little relationship to the world we actually experience in reality. Many images represent fleeting moments which are then modified to fit a genre.

 

On the other hand when a fresh ('alternative creative') approach is taken it can be out of sync with the styles demanded by the many and so often gets ignored. Or perhaps its just considered boring dross?

Edited December 19, 2010 by pgk

[daveleo]

Very insightful thoughts here to a good question.

Possibly photography will have to go through the same slow evolution(s) that artful painting has over the centuries. Photography is still very new, and the avaliable technologies are changing all the time. It's possible that as we learn the new technologies, we try too hard to replicate what was done using the old ones. So we see them same stuff over and over, then the cycle begins again.

 

Maybe what we need are some bold photographer-artists to break loose, not with a techno-jump, but with new ways of seeing and portraying things. (I could name a name or two that are hopeful, but I won't.)

 

Of course, those bold people will suffer criticism and probably ridcule until we all get educated enough to appreciate what they will be showing us.

 

As a side note . . . if we want to see bold new ideas, whether in landscape or other genres, let's not dump on people who venture outside the box.

[andybarton]

The same could be said of just about every genre of photography, of course.

[delander †]

I suppose for me it is not just the post processing and presentation, but also the content, mountains, waterfalls, sea shores, rocks - ad infinitum.

 

But perhaps it is also that I can view so much of it, everywhere one looks so it no longer captivating.

 

I like the idea of B&W landscapes however.

 

Jeff

[andybarton]

Mountains, seashores, waterfalls etc. That's really what landscapes are all about

 

It's a bit like saying one is bored of portraits with people in

[delander †]

That I cant deny, but the image treament is so often the same.

 

Jeff

[Advertisement]

Hallo,

Look here: Interesting Leica gear

[stickan1]

Every photograph is strictly speaking unique. There is never exactly the same light, your choice of camera and lens and the parameters chosen are always unique. But the boring thing is that so many persons try to make their images follow a standard formula. The new technique has certainly given us many more good photographs, at least in a technical sense, but also in a more general sense. The more photographs that are published and discussed critically, the more photographers are able to raise their standards.

 

This is a technically oriented site and is very good for someone, like me, who just have started to use a Leica camera. But for general discussions on images there are some sites that sets a higher standard, like 1x.com.

 

As we all know good technique is not enough. I have taken some of my best photographs so far with a 18-250 Zoom. Good technique helps and it is a pleasure to work with really good gear. But it will not make you a better artist directly. But maybe indirectly as you are more likely to think before if you are using primes and have to plan in advance how the final image will look.