Photography: Landscape

A landscape is a section or portion of scenery as seen from a single viewpoint. Scenery is the subject of a landscape image. Typically, people and animals are not shown in a landscape, unless they are relatively small in the image and have been included in the composition to show scale. Some photographers argue that the sea coast, the city and man-made structures in general should not be included in a landscape, and images that do contain them are more accurately called seascapes or cityscapes. From a purist perspective, they are probably correct, since a landscape is a picture of the land and its aggregate natural features. However, if natural scenery dominates an image, it can probably be accurately termed a landscape, even though there may be a farmhouse in the distance, a city skyline on the horizon or a road or path in the foreground.

The term “Urban Landscape” describes photographs of the city taken in the manner of a landscape, using buildings and other man-made features as graphical elements of composition that are treated in the same way the photographer would treat mountains and trees.

STYLES OF LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY

Three styles of landscape photography are recognized - representational, impressionistic and abstract. The representational style is also known as the straight or straight descriptive style.

REPRESENTATIONAL

This style results in pictures that show scenery at its most natural and realistic, with no visual manipulation or artifice. It is a straightforward style - what you see is what you get. Successful images in the representational style are not simple snapshots. Although the photographer adds no props or other components to a scene and does not try to “bend” reality, great attention is paid to composition and detail. Light, timing and the weather are critical elements.

IMPRESSIONISTIC

The impressionistic landscape photographer employs photographic techniques that result in images that have vague or elusive qualities. They are less tangible and more unreal, while still retaining their values that make them landscape pictures. The viewer is given the impression of a landscape rather than the clear reality of one.

ABSTRACT

This style - Abstract - could also probably be referred to as the graphic style, since the components of scenery are treated by the photographer as graphic elements, arranged for their compositional values. Natural elements may be rendered as unrecognizable or almost so. Shape and form take priority. Elements may be juxtapositioned for comparison or contrast, isolated by extreme close-up, reduced to silhouettes by severe underexposure, and so on. Design is more important than recognizable representation

POINTERS, HINTS AND TIPS

This section of PhotographyTips.com contains information intended to improve your landscape imagery. We hope you find it beneficial. Landscape photography is a vast topic, and no one source could ever contain all there is to know about it. It is therefore likely that you will have a landscape photography tip of your own that we omitted or just don’t know about. We invite you to send it in to share with our viewers, along with a picture that illustrates the information. If we use it on the site, we’ll be sure to credit you with the tip and the photography.