Reason for shooting landscapes

phinix

phinix

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Why people shoot landscapes?
What do they do with those photos?
Is it just for themselves? Do they sell them?
I don't shot landscapes often, maybe few when I'm at some nice place and want to keep the view of the scenery, but all those peeps who shoot them extensively with high grade equipment, tripods high res cameras, what do they do with them? :)

EDIT:
I wanted to add - personally, when I shoot those sceneries, I think, for most of my photography actually, I like the whole process - I like to buy equipment (who doesn't!), travel somewhere, take pictues of those places. I'm sad admitting that many times I rarely come back to photos I've taken. Strabgly, I have a feeling that digital photography changed things - back in a days, when we had 24 or 36 frames of film in our cameras, we had to decide what and wehn we are going to take photos during trips. We usually (me and my parents when I was a kid, back in 80s and 90s) had one maybe two rolls of film for a holidays, then once back home, we developed thos films and put photos in a albums - old fashion albums were viewed more often, then today's digital photos - is it just me, or do you guys also noticing this?
I think I'll open a new thread just for that :)
 
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I think the answer is probably "all of the above".

Personally, I enjoy the time spent getting the shot, being in the location, seeing the nice view, and then the setting up & taking of the photo.
I've had a couple of my shots printed and have them on the wall at home (and I've given them as gifts before, too), and I enjoy looking back through my photos. I will get round to offering some for sale at some point too, I expect.

Others will tell you that they take them purely to sell; others may say that they take them and never look at them again...
 
As Kerry says, most probably for themselves or camera clubs, competitions sometimes, and theres a supprising number making a living at it. One near me, has loads about.
I'm not a big landscape photographer, I do a few now and again for myself. The only picture I have hanging on my living room wall is a landscape (panorama) I took years ago.
For some I suspect it's partly an excuse to get out and about in the wild too.
 
I see it like hunting, I identify the prey, work out the best conditions/time of year etc, get out into the country side to find it (and enjoy the thrill of the trace), shoot it, then hang the trophy (print) on the wall at home. All without the blood and animal cruelty.
 
I have to pretty much agree with what's been said already..... The time spent outdoors, watching conditions change, sitting through sunrise or sunset, the challenge of finding a composition usually against the ticking clock, the solitude, the occasional interaction with others...... I haven't shot as much this year tbh.

I was in Cornwall last week, heading to the coast around 8pm, having a wander around, finding scenes, chilling with a beer, waiting for the light and conditions....... Pretty enjoyable to me :)
 
So that people can ask: why do you photograph landscapes? :tumbleweed:
 
I shoot for myself. It's an excuse to get my arse out and get some exercise. I unwind and destress while wandering around looking for a composition.

You also get to see some pretty cool places that many people just never get to see.

EDIT:
I wanted to add - personally, when I shoot those sceneries, I think, for most of my photography actually, I like the whole process - I like to buy equipment (who doesn't!), travel somewhere, take pictues of those places. I'm sad admitting that many times I rarely come back to photos I've taken. Strabgly, I have a feeling that digital photography changed things - back in a days, when we had 24 or 36 frames of film in our cameras, we had to decide what and wehn we are going to take photos during trips. We usually (me and my parents when I was a kid, back in 80s and 90s) had one maybe two rolls of film for a holidays, then once back home, we developed thos films and put photos in a albums - old fashion albums were viewed more often, then today's digital photos - is it just me, or do you guys also noticing this?
I think I'll open a new thread just for that :)
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With regards to above.

That's on you, nothing to do with digital.

On Sunday I went out and spent 3-4 hours wandering around a nature reserve (Woodland), just me, some sheep and some birds. I took three images, one of which I'm happy with.

Also, Print your images, just because the method of capturing photos has changed doesn't mean you can't print them and put them in albums.
 
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I like to capture a wide range of subjects and this includes landscapes. Most of my photography is aimed at competitions though not all. Occasionally, I have seen an interesting landscape in a book, magazine or competition and just want to go there and capture a shot for myself. I also print many of my images. If I was younger and fitter, I would probably do more landscape photography.

Dave
 
I don't really go out to make landscape photos, but when I take them it's because I felt there was something worth recording.

I have largely no interest (as a viewer) in the typical landscape photographs that I come across in here, at camera club or on social media. They tend to be nice pictures full of tropes. I feel these landscape photos lack subject matter that I care about.

Landscape pictures with some narrative or work alongside other pictures to tell a story are more interesting - e.g. Paul Graham's Troubled Lands and I like Joel Meyerowitz's work on Cape Cod.. and so on

Oh and recently bought Paul Hart's Drained and enjoyed that a lot
 
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Ed Sutton said:
Because they like pretty pictures?
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Some find landscapes emotionally involving, in a way that doesn't happen with other pictures. My wife is one such, who finds being in beautiful natural places brings her life and happiness. Others feel awe that the natural world can look so amazing.

As a photographer, it's wonderful to go to those places and great to be able to bring back a representation of them.
 
Ed Sutton said:
Because they like pretty pictures?
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Often the case! My wife snaps landscapes with her phone, so it's not just 'photographers' with serious kit.

For me it's probably for much the same reason I might shoot anything else. Because it's there!
 
Good question. I will shoot a landscape, but more often than not, I won't. The landscape means something special to me. It resonates with something inside that is part of my character, and which I feel deeply connected too. The problem for me is capturing that. It's actually very difficult. You can capture what you see, but it's a lot harder to capture what you feel. And in the end it's often employing artful tricks to get it to work. I have long come to the conclusion that what means something to me are just featureless fields to someone else. So, in the end I don't.
 
1 - good excuse for a walk.
2 - As a middle-aged bloke without a dog, no-one glares suspiciously at you if you look as though you're out on your own for a purpose (photography).
 
I can generally keep up with a landscape without breaking a sweat!
 
For me, it's all about the emotional connection, the moment and memories and if I don't feel it even just a teeny tiny bit I don't take the picture.

And I look at mine, at least now and again and I expect to remember why I took it.
 
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Why do I take landscape photos? Same reason as I take any photo - because it gives me pleasure.
 
Why? Because I enjoy it. No idea why I enjoy it.
What do I do with them? Post them online and largely talk to myself about them through my socials. sell prints of them to other people who also enjoy them.

as for the comment about equipment. I like to keep it simple, usually a camera with a prime and no tripod.
 
Jannyfox said:
When you've walked well over 10 miles across Dartmoor to do it come back and tell me that again :ROFLMAO: :ROFLMAO:
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Might take me a while but I still reckon I'd win the race!!!
 
My landscape photography comes from my interest in walking and geographical features, and also just being in the outdoors, even though it is often frustrating photographically.

I've had a shot planned for many years. I need to be at a particular place at sunset on or around the summer solstice, but so far I either haven't been there or if I have been there the weather hasn't played ball, but that's how it is.

Have to admit of the thousand+ landscape shots I have only a few have been printed.

Dave
 
Plain Nev said:
Good question. I will shoot a landscape, but more often than not, I won't. The landscape means something special to me. It resonates with something inside that is part of my character, and which I feel deeply connected too. The problem for me is capturing that. It's actually very difficult. You can capture what you see, but it's a lot harder to capture what you feel. And in the end it's often employing artful tricks to get it to work. I have long come to the conclusion that what means something to me are just featureless fields to someone else. So, in the end I don't.
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@phinix As explained by @Plain Nev this is very much how I feel about landscape photography, The making of the photograph seems part of realising and affirming my emotional connection to the landscape, and the value I place in that connection.

It's a very different feeling to the one I have when photographing wildlife. With wildlife it feels like it's all about the subject, and with landscape it feels all about some deep relationship with the landscape and the elements within it:: both visual and physical (e.g wind and rain). From childhood, I have found "being in nature" to be a deeply emotional experience. As a child I would spend hours and hours in the local woods, or along the nearby river. and as a teenager/young adult many days walking and camping in the Scottish hills. And a large chunk of my professional life was spent doing ecological surveys across many different habitats.

The ritual of making the photograph, and I don't take that many, even indigital, seems to capture and reinforce my feelings in a more meaningful way than just "being there.. I can revisit those feeling by returning to the files on the computer to re-edit them, where a fresh vision and fuzzier memory can reveal a renewed and refreshed connection with the scene,and suggest better ways of capturing the emotions I am trying to capture.

I don't feel any desperate need to share these photographs with others (maybe I should, but they aren't taken with sharing in mind), but I do like looking at the work of other photographers where I feel their photographs share a connection to the landscape that I can identify with. Indeed, over the years I've come to realise that I'm probably more interested in photographers, and what their works says about how they see the world, than in their photographs.

So for me, while my wildlife photography feels like a hobby, my landscape photography feels like part of who I am. Wildlife pictures are easy to understand because they only really need to be sharp, well exposed, adequate composed and show something interesting about the animal (even if, occasionally, they can be much more than this). Trying to work out whether I have creted a landscape picture that really captures what I want it to say, is, as you say, far more difficult, and possibly impossible in my case.

But I still make landscape photographs, because the whole process of making and processing the photographs still seems to make my time in the landscape that much more meaningful. Every photograph, even those that are obviously failures, still add something to my personal landscape experience, even if its photographs of "featureless fields" :)

Having said that, I still take some "pretty picture" landscapes which don't require any emotional or intellectual commitment, but they always leave me wondering why I bothered when I get them onto the computer. I also like pictures with strong graphical elements, almost regardless of subject., And documentary photography, And...

So, while I think of myself as a landscape photographer, in truth, I can't really explain my relationship with my photography, or why I take landscape photographs, as it's just as confused and messed up as the rest of my life :)
 
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Ed Sutton said:
Because they like pretty pictures?
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I think you are too cynical about landscape photography. There's a place for photographs which celebrate the beauty of natural landscapes just as there is also a place for photographs which show how the landscape has been abused or how strange it sometimes is. Each approach is equally valid.
 
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digital is so "cheap' and immediate that you can (generally) shoot "loads" of everything in front of you, versus when photography was the reverse
 
ancient_mariner said:
Others feel awe that the natural world can look so amazing.
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A lot of good points in the thread, but it's summarised well for me by Toni I think.

I don't get up early. I don't go specifically to traditionally awesome places to take photos. My landscapes are all local and as Neville said...
Plain Nev said:
I have long come to the conclusion that what means something to me are just featureless fields to someone else
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There is a walk I do regularly through local woods. Every time I take my camera I stop at the same point, looking at the same tree and very often take a photo. I've taken that photo on a myriad of cameras, with a bunch of different types of film and with different digital cameras too over a number of years. It's not a special tree really, it's just that spot that I find beautiful half a mile from my home that I resonate with. It's an A2 framed print on my wall that relaxes me every time I look at it. It's a success vs many images of the same thing that don't quite represent how I felt. It would score badly in a competition and would garner very few likes on social media.

About 15 years ago I did a road trip up Highway 1 in the US. From LA to Seattle, stopping at Yosemite and the Grand Canyon along the way. I took a lot of photos on that trip, and none of them are on my wall(s) today. I did a book which I hardly ever look at, but all they are to me are memories of a trip I went on. They have far less meaning than that one tree. (Or the willow down by the local drug-use pond that looks beautiful all year round. If only someone would remove the damn car tyre.... but that's another story...)
 
I feel that much landscape photo work is about an aesthetic 'surface' - a prettiness, a romanticism, a stylisation. How to portray a communicable deeper essence?

Hotshoe Issue 209 was titled 'An Emotional Landscape' & had images interspersed with photographers' quotes about their background thinking. The 1980 Lustrum Press book Landscape:Theory contains essays by the contributing photographers.

It's all interesting!
 
phinix said:
I don't shot landscapes often, maybe few when I'm at some nice place and want to keep the view of the scenery,
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And therein lies the crux.

The most common advice for noob photographers is to ‘shoot what you love’. It’s only by doing that, that we can gather the required effort to make a good job of it, to want to continuously improve.

And it seems that much like me, you don’t love shooting landscapes.

There’s nothing wrong with that; other than you seem to have forgotten that we’re all different and you’ve unintentionally come up with a judgemental question regarding something you should have walked past without comment.
 
I shoot them to capture moments in time in the places I love to visit. More often than not you come home empty handed when it comes to photographs, but mentally and physically stimulated for being outside and that's the main reason I go out anyhow, photos will always be secondary even on dedicated photo trips.
 
I have several sets of shots that were taken from the same spot with the same framing but at different times of year, usually the 1st of the month (or similar). Individually, some of the shots are rather uninspiring but as a set, they show the progression of the scene throughout the year. I have a few sets in a similar vein but taken a year apart to show how an area has been developed over a decade or 2.
 
It's a good excuse to get out and see the beautiful scenery, and it's also the challenge of getting the composition, light and everything else to come together to produce the image you want.
 
snerkler said:
It's a good excuse to get out and see the beautiful scenery, and it's also the challenge of getting the composition, light and everything else to come together to produce the image you want.
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That was probably about Stage 2 for me.

Stage 1 was- Oh I do like this hill-walking lark....maybe I should get a camera.

Stage 3 was when I started to get more ambitious and it all became a bit more serious. I was hopeless at earning a living and began to wonder if I could do it through photography. I'd seen photographers in Scotland (eg Colin Baxter ) publishing their own postcards so I decided to take the plunge myself in Wales. I began small, became modestly successful and I'm ending small. My sales are down by about 75% from their peak about 15 years aqo. An annual calendar followed (now deceased) and a series of books and exhibitions about the Welsh landscape - and later wildlife as well.. So I was constantly questioning whether what i was doing would help me earn a living or not. I did quite well.

Stage 4 This kind of ran alongside stages 2 and 3 which was - can I make a difference through my photography? I've always been an environmentalist (although probably a frustrating one) and I felt that it was possible for the photographer to make a statement about the landscape, wildlife and the threats they face. So there have always been two threads to my landscape work - the celebratory and the (arguably) more realistic. Eventually the former became my colour work and the latter often black-and-white.

Stage 5 is where I'm at now. I'm definitely no longer flavour of the month (or the decade). Almost every avenue I followed for 30 years has either faded away or stopped completely, with the exception of the postcards. This is quite the opposite of what I originally envisaged. Now I send out an exhibition or book proposal and nobody bothers to even reply. My track record means nothing. So I still get a thrill from a good landscape photography experience although most often there's no end use in sight. But my trips are far more structured than they were in stages 1 and 2.
 
jerry12953 said:
That was probably about Stage 2 for me.

Stage 1 was- Oh I do like this hill-walking lark....maybe I should get a camera.

Stage 3 was when I started to get more ambitious and it all became a bit more serious. I was hopeless at earning a living and began to wonder if I could do it through photography. I'd seen photographers in Scotland (eg Colin Baxter ) publishing their own postcards so I decided to take the plunge myself in Wales. I began small, became modestly successful and I'm ending small. My sales are down by about 75% from their peak about 15 years aqo. An annual calendar followed (now deceased) and a series of books and exhibitions about the Welsh landscape - and later wildlife as well.. So I was constantly questioning whether what i was doing would help me earn a living or not. I did quite well.

Stage 4 This kind of ran alongside stages 2 and 3 which was - can I make a difference through my photography? I've always been an environmentalist (although probably a frustrating one) and I felt that it was possible for the photographer to make a statement about the landscape, wildlife and the threats they face. So there have always been two threads to my landscape work - the celebratory and the (arguably) more realistic. Eventually the former became my colour work and the latter often black-and-white.

Stage 5 is where I'm at now. I'm definitely no longer flavour of the month (or the decade). Almost every avenue I followed for 30 years has either faded away or stopped completely, with the exception of the postcards. This is quite the opposite of what I originally envisaged. Now I send out an exhibition or book proposal and nobody bothers to even reply. My track record means nothing. So I still get a thrill from a good landscape photography experience although most often there's no end use in sight. But my trips are far more structured than they were in stages 1 and 2.
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I've never taken it any further, I've never wanted photography to be anything other than a hobby otherwise I think I'd stop enjoying it. Unless someone wants to offer me silly money like the Rhein II :lol:
 
I seldom shoot landscapes. Try now and then but not often getting anything i like. I think because they don't really have a focal point. Two exceptions are old buildings with nice backgrounds.




And really used to like finding nice waterfalls but haven't gone looking for quite a while. Generally try to frame all my stuff in landscape form as thats the way we naturally see things. Portraits I don't do many of but when I do for one or two it's portrait style.

doing my bird dogs I do them normally landscape mode trying to give them somewhere to go rather than simply standing in a rectangle. But can often do it in normal portrait mode by not getting to close and paying attention to where I frame the dog. much of my dog prints are done twice as long as high. gives the dog somewhere to go. Framing is pretty much everything with animals like dog's, most are longer than they are tall.
 
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