Concepts Other people's landscape photos

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sirch

sirch

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I was looking at this month's RPS Landscape Group monthly competition entries (assuming its public you might be able to view it here -> https://rps.org/groups/landscape/monthly-competition/) and I got to thinking that there are very few of other people's landscape photos that I really connect with. I'm not saying those photos are somehow sub-par, they are mostly perfectly good landscape photos, they just don't do anything for me and I assume most of my work is seen the same way by others

There are a few landscape photographers, e.g. Mark Littlejohn, Jem Southam, who sometimes produce work that I can really relate to but even then it is hit-and-miss and many more misses than hits for me.

Here's one of mine which I really like however everyone else I have shown it to has been completely underwhelmed by it.

e5336c2d-0cc8-408b-b7af-87ab6aad841d.jpg




There are loads of other photographic genres where I seem to be less picky and can be find more of a connection. I am the first to admit that I am pretty unusual so is it just me? I mainly shoot landscapes so I wonder if I am just too close to the subject?
 
Interesting. I have a few of my own that I really like, which I think are technically ok, but know wouldn't pass muster critically. I do though know also that I like them especially because of the context in which I took them, which of course goes to the idea that there needs to be a backstory or a story within the picture, whereas all too often a good photo is really just 2-dimensional, nice but not moving. Like all art, it has to speak to you or make you think, not just please the eye?
P1010020 by Lindsay Pennell, on Flickr
 
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I think some people do need to feel that connection and a picture that means a lot to me/you may be rather ordinary in picture form to others.

I never used to look at the picture threads but recently I've started and although some pictures mean next to nothing to me I try to see what the picture taker saw or perhaps just appreciate the quality of the capture or even how difficult and skilled the picture is.

I do see a lot of pictures that I can appreciate in some way and even admire but often I'd have no interest what so ever in taking similar pictures myself. I suppose seeing these pictures is actually a very good thing as some are just so far away from anything that I'd be taking it's a completely new experience and idea.

One more thing.... I'm sometimes a little surprised by reactions to my pictures. Something I think is really good might be overlooked while something I think is really rather ordinary and just a filler suddenly gets a load of likes. You can never tell :D Or at least I can't.
 
There are two subjects/genres where I think photography is less succesful than representational (or even abstract) painting - portraiture and landscape. Yet they are the two areas most hobbyist seem to gravitate towards - perhaps because access to subjects is easy.

The reason I think photography falls down with these subjects is its literalness, which in other areas is a strength of the medium.

This is the airy fairy, arty farty bit. Photographs show you what a place looked like, in an instant (even a long exposure is short compared top the time it takes to make a drawing or painting). A painting is an aggregate of what something or someone looked like over a period of time - hours, days, weeks. It might rely on memory if not done in situ. It's an interpretation of appearance and experience.

A photograph is always a snapshot that embodies verisimilitude, paintings can convey what a place or person is like without being precisely accurate.

I don't know how better to explain this. Landscape photos don't do much for me. They always fail to 'take me there' or make me feel what it could have been like to be there in the way a paintings can. At his best even a Peter Brook moorland scene can do it, and he worked from photographs he took himself.

That's not to say I don't like some landscape photography, but it's the sort that (to me) has a life outside of being 'landscape photographs'. Think Jem Southam, Fay Godwin, Raymond Moore, John Davies and others. They all make photographs which work as pictures, and in some cases have a message behind their creation too. Perhaps some of them could be described as 'documentary landscape' photography?

Just some off the top of my head thoughts while having lunch which are probably far too glib.

FWIW I prefer Chris's picture to the ones on the RPS site.
 
I actually like quite a few of them but I'm not really a landscape photographer. :)
 
lindsay said:
Interesting. I have a few of my own that I really like, which I think are technically ok, but know wouldn't pass muster critically. I do though know also that I like them especially because of the context in which I took them, which of course goes to the idea that there needs to be a backstory or a story within the picture, whereas all too often a good photo is really just 2-dimensional, nice but not moving. Like all art, it has to speak to you or make you think, not just please the eye?
P1010020 by Lindsay Pennell, on Flickr
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I've got a long running project of shots like that for which the title is "Custodians"
 
It seems that so far we have a worrying amount of agreement. :)

@Ed Sutton I agree with what you say but I also see that as part of the challenge and fascination, how do I convey what I see in the landscape to other people. I have dabbled with landscape abstracts and composites but have only managed to get a few that I feel express what I trying to say. I think I need to do more in that vein
 
Rather than suggest that people take landscapes because they're easy and available, I wonder if it's because they feel a connection to the land more so than many of the other things they might photograph. However with most pictures, we haven't been to these places ourselves, so we don't have the same connection.

FWIW I almost never view pictures of birds, macro, nature, street etc apart from those by just a couple of key individuals - Des ong is one of them.
 
Brentor said:
All photography is subjective IMHO. If you are pleased with your photos that’s all that matters. If others like them so much the better.
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What if you want to improve? Particularly what if you feel you have something to communicate about the world but find that people aren't speaking the same language as you?
 
sirch said:
What if you want to improve? Particularly what if you feel you have something to communicate about the world but find that people aren't speaking the same language as you?
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well, if you're anything like me, 11.5 years ago you join a photography forum, and ask lots of questions, listen to lots of answers, eventually learn to ignore the codswallop some will spout, and eventually you'll find enough confidence in your own voice that you'll realise that all you can do is put your work out there hoping that it gets your message through - but be aware that equally, every person who views it will also see it through the filters of their own experiences and will write their own interpretation of that message.
 
and back on topic - I started shooting landscapes primarily as record shots - proof i'd got to the top of whatever hill, mountain etc. Eventually, I also realised that some of the shots had a certain "something" that the others hadn't - usually "light". At this point my photography changed, as did my hill walking - when I was out on a new hill, i'd just have something like a tiny canon ixus with me - record shots, no more - but for re-visits and places I haunted regularly like the dales and lakes, more of my trips became about the photo and less about the mountain - so i'd be wild camping / bivvying to get a sunset and sunrise shot if the weather conditions were appropriate. During the whole of this time, frankly other people's "landscape shots" didn't move me in the slightest. However, give me the colour plates from something like the Bonnington / Scott / Haston / Messner era coffee table climbing books and i'd be in heaven.

I think that other peoples landscapes only serve a single purpose in me - and that's to drive me to go to that location, and experience it myself - and - maybe come away with a photo that will help my memory as advancing years dim the details - and if, through 40+ years of learning and craft I manage to make that photo something that others like as well, then that's a bonus.

of course it's probably fair to say that I don't really see Landscape photography as being the genre where I "stretch my artistic wings" - for me it's still very much "turn up, hope for the weather, and frame it up the best I can and try to get the exposure right."
 
That RPS page keeps on reloading for me. (Safari Mac) Will try it in a different browser.
 
Hmm, having looked at them I an under-wowed. But that's probably because I tend to like more graphic images - more in the style of the Ribblehead viaduct one. As for doing landscapes, not really my bag to go somewhere and choose the time of day for the best light etc.
 
sirch said:
What if you want to improve? Particularly what if you feel you have something to communicate about the world but find that people aren't speaking the same language as you?
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There is always room for improvement, particularly for me. I do look at other peoples’ photos as they often provide inspiration but many competition winners do nothing for me, much like you. It is subjective. As for your second question, I don’t think that will ever apply to me.
 
As a landscape photographer and nothing else, I rarely connect with landscape images other people take. I can like them and take them on face value for what they are. TBH there's only one in that whole RPS thing, the rest, I probably see better on here daily. Subjective, yeah, but so is photography as a whole.

Even to take an image that I like, I have to connect with that place, feel it, breathe it. I live on the edge of the Lake District, but I just don't connect with the area. It's beautiful, but it doesn't offer anything to me to make me want to shoot it. I'd rather drive 3 hours to the Highlands than 30 minutes to the Lakes, because the Highlands holds my heart and soul, I connect with the rugged beauty and the wild weather it so often can throw at you. I shot the Lakes last weekend, but it was an area (Langdale) I really do like in the Lakes purely because it's more craggy and Scotland-esque, and I got some wonderful images, because I felt that connection.

I very much doubt others feel the same way about my images as I do, and that's fine, but I firmly believe that to make a good image, you need to connect with your given subject.
 
All my images are records first and foremost, so my intention is to illustrate what I found interesting. I don't set out to show a "pretty scene" but if the viewer gets that from the picture, I regard it as a bonus...

Houses and trees on the valley side Sidmouth FZ82 P1000763.JPG
 
As someone who considers themselves primarily as a landscape photographer, I feel I should have something to say here. But my attempts at writing a reply have so far failed, mainly, as I'm about to demonstrate, I'm not sure I understand what makes me like some landscape photographs over others.

Firstly, people take/make landscape photographs for many different reason, and I assume this will also bias the way they look at them. I also think that landscape photographs can be the easiest and also the most difficult of all the subjects available to photographers.

At the two extremes there seems to be one school of landscape photographers seeking a technically perfect realistic renderings of pretty or dramatic views, and at the other end, people who feel a deep and spiritual connection to the land, which they are trying capture in their photographs. The former is relatively easy, the latter extremely difficult, and certainly in my case proven to be pretty well impossible. But with the vast majority of photographers/photographs lying somewhere in between these two extremes.

The former is probably easier to understand (who doesn't like a pretty view), both by the photographer and the viewer, as it requires only a minimal emotional or intellectual commitment by either party. This can result in a rather clinical, realistic and superficial representation of how something "looks" with little evidence to suggest any meaningful connection between the land and the photographer. This is the extreme, but a lot of landscape photographs (especially from Youtubers) seem to err to towards this end of the spectrum.

Erring toward the other end of the spectrum, there are photographs which move away from a "perfect" rendering of what was there, to something that seems to capture aspects of not only the subject but also the photographer's reaction or connection to the subject.

Chris's photograph in the OP illustrates this, for even at it's simplest interpretation, the fact that it isn't a pretty landscape makes me think about the photographer and why they felt the need to make this image. This in turn makes the photograph more interesting and encourages me to spend more time looking at it. I like the simple shapes (and their relative weights) and the textures, and I can see why someone would be drawn to photograph it.

The audience for this type of photograph is probably much more limited than the pretty landscape, because while almost everyone can recognise a pretty landscape, far fewer are likely to appreciate the message behind photographs of less obviously interesting subjects.

I think, I like landscapes that seem to be more about the photographers interpretation of how they see the landscape, rather than how the landscape actually looks.

This may well be why I generally prefer black and white landscapes as they immediately identify themselves as not trying to replicate reality. It's also why I think I also often like images that have obviously been "processed" (black and white conversion or careful colour grading) where you can see the hand of the photographer in the image (e.g. as Chris mentioned, Mark Littlejohn's pictures).

But, I don't really know the answer to why I like and appreciate some landscape photographs, why I appreciate, but don't like other landscape photographs and why I find some uninteresting. This is just me brainstorming through a possible explanation.

Like many on here I found the majority of the RPS images uninteresting.

The ones I like best are "Late light on lonely farmhouse" for its simplified colour palette, and simplified structure, Hillside wood as I get a feeling of travelling through the wood (but not keen on the composition) and Ribblehead viaduct for its strong graphics, but it comes across as compositionally unbalanced to me, and I don't think it really works as it is.
 
@myotis - What a great response Graham, I hadn't see it as two schools and a spectrum in-between but I think you are on to something there, perhaps obvious now it has been said but certainly not something I had considered. The landscape photos that I like tend to be in second (perhaps pictorialist? ) school.

From the RPS set I like Morning Mist, Cheddar Gorge and perhaps misty morning at the lake but with the latter I would probably make it bit softer and a bit more dreamy.
 
sirch said:
@myotis - What a great response Graham, I hadn't see it as two schools and a spectrum in-between but I think you are on to something there, perhaps obvious now it has been said but certainly not something I had considered. The landscape photos that I like tend to be in second (perhaps pictorialist? ) school.

From the RPS set I like Morning Mist, Cheddar Gorge and perhaps misty morning at the lake but with the latter I would probably make it bit softer and a bit more dreamy.
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I think I made a mistake using the word school, as I wasn't' meaning to describe an identifiable school of photography, just the extreme ends of a continuous spectrum of landscape photography.

So pictorialism would tend towards what I called the second school, but, for example, illustrative would tend towards what I called the first school. Exactly where it might sit, and how broad a band of the spectrum it might occupy could make an interesting academic discussion for another day :)

It's really just the same continuous "functional to expressive" spectrum that I've discussed with you before, but focussed on landscape.
 
Steelo said:
As a landscape photographer and nothing else, I rarely connect with landscape images other people take. I can like them and take them on face value for what they are. TBH there's only one in that whole RPS thing, the rest, I probably see better on here daily. Subjective, yeah, but so is photography as a whole.

Even to take an image that I like, I have to connect with that place, feel it, breathe it. I live on the edge of the Lake District, but I just don't connect with the area. It's beautiful, but it doesn't offer anything to me to make me want to shoot it. I'd rather drive 3 hours to the Highlands than 30 minutes to the Lakes, because the Highlands holds my heart and soul, I connect with the rugged beauty and the wild weather it so often can throw at you. I shot the Lakes last weekend, but it was an area (Langdale) I really do like in the Lakes purely because it's more craggy and Scotland-esque, and I got some wonderful images, because I felt that connection.

I very much doubt others feel the same way about my images as I do, and that's fine, but I firmly believe that to make a good image, you need to connect with your given subject.
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For me, I would write this but where you write lake district, I'd write Scotland, and where you write Scotland, I'd write the Pyrenees.

All I do is think about the Pyrenees and count down until I am next back. I only really shoot here because I am local to it.

I do however get a lot of pleasure in looking at other peoples landscapes - there are certain members on here, and on IG who I especially look forward to seeing what they've posted.
 
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Interesting, does familiarity breed contempt? I too live on the edge of the Lake District but I do enjoy shooting there, the Highlands, the Yorkshire Dales and North Wales. Those are all places I have visited many times over the decades and I think I produce better work from places that feel familiar than from different places. I use the term "different" deliberately, I can go to somewhere in say the Highlands that I have never been to before but the landscape is familiar and I feel comfortable there but if I go abroad I find that I don't produce work that I really like and I suspect I would need to go to similar landscapes a number of times to get-my-eye-in
 
sirch said:
Interesting, does familiarity breed contempt? I too live on the edge of the Lake District but I do enjoy shooting there, the Highlands, the Yorkshire Dales and North Wales. Those are all places I have visited many times over the decades and I think I produce better work from places that feel familiar than from different places. I use the term "different" deliberately, I can go to somewhere in say the Highlands that I have never been to before but the landscape is familiar and I feel comfortable there but if I go abroad I find that I don't produce work that I really like and I suspect I would need to go to similar landscapes a number of times to get-my-eye-in
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For my photography, I like familiar landscapes, places that I get to know and feel a connection to.

I like, for example, seeing badger pad marks on a path that weren't there the day before, because I "just feel good" about knowing that within the last 24 hours a badger had passed this way. I think I need to build up a feeling of "belonging", before I know what to photograph.

This is why, for photography, I would far rather to go back to the same place over and over again, than go somewhere new. That's not to say I don't go to new places, but I need to be drawn back to them several times before I know what to photograph.

But I also appreciate your habitat familiarity point. There are some habitats that I've spent so much time in that regardless of their geographic position, I feel I have a head start in developing the sort of connection that would make me want to make photographs.

I've actually thought about this, and wonder if by going back to the same place over and over again, you ease the pressure to take photographs, which allows you to better enjoy and appreciate the experience of just being there. Which may make the photographs, you do take, more personally meaningful.

As always, I feel the need to say that photographs are taken for many different reasons, and I am very specifically talking about my personal landscape photographs that I feel are "possibly" some sort physical affirmation of how much the countryside and landscape mean to me.
 
I agree about taking the pressure off and I guess a not-insignificant part of it is being able to get there when the light is right so the hit rate is higher.

Going back to the same or familiar looking places seems to be pretty common, from Ansel to Jem Southam to the youtube hipsters with their 2-stops-over-Portra-in-California
 
I live between the sea and the lake district I rarely shoot away from the lakes or the coast of Cumbria in fact I rarely go as far the Eastern half of the Lakes.

I shoot for me and I love shooting a rough sea. If people like my photos great.
 
I am starting to tire of those digital, focus stacked, exposure stacked, stormy weather photos, where it is easier to spot the genre than an individual style. I class myself as an enthusiastic photo taker rather than a photographer and I go out trying to find interesting scenes and shoot them to the best of my ability. I respect those who go out with a shot in mind, set up, and then wait for the correct light and conditions,, but I couldn't work that way (I'm not an angler for much the same reasons). I think the image is more important than the equipment and method, though I am often interested in how something has been achieved.
 
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sirch said:
I was looking at this month's RPS Landscape Group monthly competition entries (assuming its public you might be able to view it here -> https://rps.org/groups/landscape/monthly-competition/) and I got to thinking that there are very few of other people's landscape photos that I really connect with. I'm not saying those photos are somehow sub-par, they are mostly perfectly good landscape photos, they just don't do anything for me and I assume most of my work is seen the same way by others

There are a few landscape photographers, e.g. Mark Littlejohn, Jem Southam, who sometimes produce work that I can really relate to but even then it is hit-and-miss and many more misses than hits for me.

Here's one of mine which I really like however everyone else I have shown it to has been completely underwhelmed by it.

e5336c2d-0cc8-408b-b7af-87ab6aad841d.jpg




There are loads of other photographic genres where I seem to be less picky and can be find more of a connection. I am the first to admit that I am pretty unusual so is it just me? I mainly shoot landscapes so I wonder if I am just too close to the subject?
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I wonder whether you like Awoiska Van der Molen's work? It resonates with me in a way few other landscape photographers' work do - and your image has a similar feeling.
 
juggler said:
I wonder whether you like Awoiska Van der Molen's work? It resonates with me in a way few other landscape photographers' work do - and your image has a similar feeling.
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Thanks, I hadn't come across her. I'd like to see her prints in person, I imagine viewing them online doesn't do them justice but based on what I've seen I would like to see more.
 
lindsay said:
Interesting. I have a few of my own that I really like, which I think are technically ok, but know wouldn't pass muster critically. I do though know also that I like them especially because of the context in which I took them, which of course goes to the idea that there needs to be a backstory or a story within the picture, whereas all too often a good photo is really just 2-dimensional, nice but not moving. Like all art, it has to speak to you or make you think, not just please the eye?
P1010020 by Lindsay Pennell, on Flickr
Click to expand...

The reason it "wouldn't pass muster" is because 99.9% of the idiots who look at it would never have heard or seen any work by Fay Godwin.
Her book 'Land' is the best ever landscape 'tour deforce'
She would say this pic is great and I agree.
It shows the countryside as it is and is not easy to forget.
Unlike the rest of the ridiculous postcard 'stunning' rubbish so easy to fade from everyone's memory

"To see something spectacular and recognize it as a photographic possibility is not making a very big leap. But to see something ordinary, something you'd see every day, and recognize it as a photographic possibility - that is what I am interested in.' Stephen Shore (me too)

Cheers - J
 
J.M.R said:
Unlike the rest of the ridiculous postcard 'stunning' rubbish so easy to fade from everyone's memory
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...or which other people really enjoy looking at.
As has been said so often before: one man's rubbish is another woman's great art! :tumbleweed:
 
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