What constitutes a landscape image? Which subjects or subject elements are out of bounds in so-called landscape photography, or when included change the image to another genre? Which elements, if any, are (almost) always seen in landscape imagery? How do you approach your definition of landscape photography? Can it be urban? Include people? Why or why not?
Show examples of landscape and not-landscape images of your own or another (credited) photographers'.
This question comes up a lot with an instructor whose agenda is getting folks out shooting and questioning pure and simple. I sometimes feel, rutro, I'm in trouble for being permissive in welcoming too broad a range of content under the landscape tent. Macro, portrait, documentary, social, architectural and built environment, and so on - where do you draw the line?
Anyway, I think a better question might be What's your vision? What are you really looking at?
Great question. Webster's defines landscape as a "picture representing a view of natural inland scenery; the art of depicting such scenery; the landforms of a region in the aggregate."
ReplyDeleteIn addition, Alain Briot's book, Mastering Landscape Photography, doesn't provide a definition--he simply assumes landscape photography is of the natural world--every photograph in the book depicts a natural scene with no manmade object in sight.
Perhaps, then, landscape, or nature, photography is limited to natural scenes, though these can range far and wide. Scenes of urbanscapes and would not be included.