The Difficulty of Landscape

I was recently asked to judge a small international photographic competition, of which landscape photography was a genre. Readers will no doubt assume that I am about to go off on a tirade against the plethora of overworked and essentially false impressions of places and spaces - the spirit that I understand led to the creation of the Natural Landscape Photography Awards. To an extent they would be correct. There were indeed a number of images that were simply ‘overcooked’; not just a step into the valley of the uncanny, but a wholehearted plunge beyond reality. There are of course a range of arguments allowing for the ‘anything goes’ approach, such that photographers can stretch mountains, bend trees, and create kaleidoscopic skies since that is what they ‘felt’ they were looking at. I’ve been guilty of saying much the same in the editing process; that one should edit the image to the way that it ‘looked’ and felt to you when you were shooting the scene in the first place. 

Luphathana remains for me one of the most incredible locations to photograph the ocean. Here the waves break against a rock shelf, creating fairly repeatable blasts of water. If you time pre-visualise your shot and time it right, you can capture really incredible breaking waves.

It wasn’t the overcooked nature of the images that disappointed me though. It was the sense of authentically standing in the landscape that seemed to be missing. Something seems to have happened in landscape photography where the technical prowess of editing has removed the need to be there at the right moment. Photography has always been, from its very inception, about capturing the moment. Landscape photography is no different, except that the ‘moment’ might be somewhat longer than a 1/500th of a second. 

This struck me again while discussing another photographer’s submission of images for her panel to a Photographic Society. A criticism that had been given against her panel was that a number of the images were ‘matter of fact’. Not withstanding the fact that the American photographer Stephen Shore would likely have been thrilled with such a criticism, her response to me was that her images were matter-of-fact, because she doesn’t want them to be fake! 

The base of Sterkspruit Falls in the Champagne Valley of the Drakensberg requires a fair bit of scrambling along a slippery path to be able to access. Without the effort though you only get a view from the top.

Wildlife photography avoids some of the pitfalls of landscape in that the technical difficulty of capturing the moment can sometimes override the aesthetic. This isn’t to say that wildlife images don’t have to be aesthetically pleasing to the eye; of course they do. Rather it means that the decisive moment, because it is so fleeting, makes the viewer more forgiving of other aspects to the image, composition, mood, colour, etc. ‘Matter of fact’ is fine, at least when it comes to the edit, because the moment is all important. With landscape photography it has become expected by the viewer that the ‘drama’ has to be added in the edit. This is somewhat back to front in my opinion. Surely the drama should be there before you even click the shutter. The moment that you are capturing just happens to be somewhat more prolonged than a slice of time measured in nanoseconds. 

The essence of landscape photography is not in the edit. I suspect that the essence is found more in finding the scene itself. I’m not suggesting that there has to be hardship or difficulty involved in finding and photographing the scene (although photographers, myself often included, seem to enjoy the ‘story behind the image’), but for a landscape image to be special it needs to convincingly depict the scene such that the viewer not only feels like they could be there, but that they have the same emotive feeling of being there as the photographer had. None of this easy of course, and I can’t even pretend that I’m successful in this in more than a handful of my own images. But, that is the goal at the very least.

Looking down into the Valley of a Thousand Hills from Monteseel has been one of my favourite viewpoints for almost a decade. I head there fairly regularly (it being a 25minute from home) to photograph the vagaries of the weather. It's one of those places that I regulalrly check out n the weather apps in order to 'get it right'.

How can we do this? For a start explore a little more away from the general footpaths and scenes that everyone else is photographing. A glance through last year’s Natural Landscape Photography Awards shows that the best images don’t have to be taken in the most bucket-list iconic landscapes. Sure, it helps, but the majority of the images that did well in the competition don’t necessarily show off oft-photographed scenes. If they do, a happy serendipity of weather and light show off the scene in an astounding way. So try new locations with fresh eyes, or even old locations but again with fresh eyes. 

Secondly, get out of bed early. The best light is not in the middle of the day. This is of a course a well-trodden truism. Yet, it remains the principle factor holding back photographers’ landscape images. You need to get up and be in place for the light before it happens. If that means traveling, or walking to a location, it means getting up early enough to be there when the light hits (and yes, twilight and dawn light are usually the most dramatic lighting times of the day). The same can be said of the weather. Ansel Adam’s ‘Clearing Storm’ would not be the iconic image of Yosemite if he had captured the image hours after the storm. It is dramatic because it is captured minutes after the storm. This means he was in place during the storm. 

This is probably my classic 'pre-visualised' shot. Myself and another photographer planned well in advance that when a big snow storm was predicted we would head up the Drakensberg to capture it. This was shot two days into an epic snowstorm as it broke and the light started to filter through the clearing clouds.

I often joke with photographers on some of the workshops that we lead, that if you are cold, wet and miserable, and probably wishing you were anywhere but where you happen to be standing right now, then chances are you are in exactly the right spot for an awesome image. Of course it doesn’t have to be as dramatic as this. It’s more illustrating the point that bad weather often leads to awesome light, but you have to weather the storm first. 

The third way to get better landscape images beyond the edit - or perhaps I should say before the edit - is to use your imagination. Pre-visualisation; the act of imagining an image before you shoot it, is extraordinarily important for creating great landscape imagery. Seeing a scene and recognising its potential in different light or weather is critical to creating amazing photographs. Use apps like Photo Pills (I personally use The Photographers Ephemeris), Windy and Mountain-Forecast to work out where the sun is going to be, what the weather is likely to do, and then return again and again to capture the image that you imagined. 

I was cold, wind-battered and feeling a little ill (stupidly having accepted some chewing tobacco our Saami guide and suggested I try - I don't smoke...so I was an idiot). I really did not want to be standing in a blizzard losing feeling to my fingers while my head swam...then these dogs started playing in front of this lone church used by the Saami. Right time!

Landscape photography isn’t easy. If it were we’d all be able to create award winning images simply by arriving and pointing the camera in the right direction. Except there isn’t a single genre of photography that works like that. Landscape photography is something that requires more than an understanding of the camera. It requires at least a passing knowledge of weather, a love of the outdoors and a masochistic propensity for early mornings. That’s why it is difficult. It’s also why it’s so much fun!