What is 'landscape'?

[RSL]

I have a feeling it's the hand of woman.

[Rob C]

Unfortunately, I can't help identify gender: I never did see any more of the person.

Guess Fate just dealt me an odd hand. Quite, a concept, that. A new circulatory system wouldn't go amiss, though; I'm still wearing gloves where tourists are into bare legs and T-shirts. But they're crazy.

Rob

[AreBee]

Graham,

Brett Whitely said he looked for landscapes shaped like a woman's body. Subliminally it works...

How can you tell?

[petermfiore]

How can you tell?

If you have to ask! Says alot.

Peter

[AreBee]

Peter,

If you have to ask! Says alot.

What does it say?

[AreBee]

If landscape photography is about the landscape, which should be patently obvious to all but the most obstinate of individuals, perhaps this explains why those who consider themselves poor at landscape photography are poor at landscape photography: they constrain the photograph to be about them instead of about the landscape.

Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer - and often the supreme disappointment. Credit: Ansel Adams

Perhaps the supreme test refers not to the level of difficulty required to make a photograph of the landscape, but to something far less trivial; something far more profound: that the challenge is entirely personal in nature -- to impose nothing of self and to let the landscape speak for itself.

[GrahamBy]

If landscape photography is about the landscape, which should be patently obvious to all but the most obstinate of individuals,

"Nothing is more equitably shared than common sense, since no one, no matter how much he may feel deprived of other wants, believes he lacks of it"
(Voltaire? Not sure...)

Landscapes in photos are only interesting to me for what they make me feel and think. The same landscape may have very different resonances for different people as a function of their past, their interests and desires. Many remind me of NSW country trains in the 70's, which had a B&W landscape panorama in each compartment (Dmax=1).
But of course I'm bad at them 

[Rob C]

"Nothing is more equitably shared than common sense, since no one, no matter how much he may feel deprived of other wants, believes he lacks of it"
(Voltaire? Not sure...)

Landscapes in photos are only interesting to me for what they make me feel and think. The same landscape may have very different resonances for different people as a function of their past, their interests and desires. Many remind me of NSW country trains in the 70's, which had a B&W landscape panorama in each compartment (Dmax=1).
But of course I'm bad at them 

That's my line too!

But the thing is, I feel no pain on that score at all, because I have yet to come across anyone doing (landscape) stuff that grips me for very long. I've seen some crackers from our own in-house Michael, but the ones I thought great were more 'atmospherics' than landscape: exercises in tone, not geology: I have this memory of silver plate sea and black lave.

There's very little of that about - mostly it's 'hey, look what a great climber I am!' or, 'I camp in the desert for weeks and don't shave!' Well good for you, and so what?

Jaundiced? Don't think so. Just not grabbed by it.

Basically, I suspect that the problem comes down to what photography, as process/art, is actually good at doing, and I'm not referring to photographers.

It seems to me that things such as the natural world are better served by pencil and brush, with things more artificial coming off better via the modern medium of the photograph. People, cities, automobiles and all our constructs mean something more in photographs than they do as paintings. That '59 de Ville I always craved looks far better in snaps than it could on canvas (I won't even think about that bastard medium of canvas photography!) and there's good reason for it: it's of us, of our times.

Maybe Hopper's Nighthawks comes close to crossing the tracks with success...

Rob

[HSakols]

Charlie Cramer made some interesting comments in his last news letter.  He talked about the art of editing and how in landscape photography we really need to forget about the work that it took to get the image.  Just because one hiked 20 miles doesn't make it a better image, but to the photographer there can be that bias. Not everyone understands the draw to landscape photography.  I thinks that one component that must be taken into account when looking at landscapes is the idea of conservation.  Western landscape photography evolved with the the conservation movement of the 60's and 70's.  Another aspect of landscape photography that hasn't been mentioned is the idea of place.  Yes, landscape photographs don't speak to everyone because place evokes some sort of emotional response. I think the photography of Charlie Cramer, illustrates the nuances of places, but it helps to have already experienced these places to properly appreciate what is going on. 

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

What about abstract photography? If landscape photography is about the landscape (which it isn't, at least not necessarily), than abstract photography is about...what? Surely not the object being photographed. We certainly see something else there, anything but the object itself. By the same token, one can find much more in a landscape photograph than the landscape itself.

[Zorki5]

What about abstract photography? If landscape photography is about the landscape (which it isn't, at least not necessarily), than abstract photography is about...what?

It is about shapes, in a nutshell.

A lot can be added to that, of course, but it all boils down to pure geometry eventually.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

What about abstract photography? If landscape photography is about the landscape (which it isn't, at least not necessarily), than abstract photography is about...what? Surely not the object being photographed. We certainly see something else there, anything but the object itself. By the same token, one can find much more in a landscape photograph than the landscape itself.

Well said, Slobodan.
Some photographers who specialize in narrow fields other than "Landscape" seem to think that Landscape Photography is a form of reportage, just trying to show what the scene looks like.
Landscape and Abstract photography both can be very expressive. But that doesn't mean they always are.

Eric

[Zorki5]

Some photographers who specialize in narrow fields other than "Landscape" seem to think that Landscape Photography is a form of reportage, just trying to show what the scene looks like.

That's not "reportage", that's "snapshot".

Some of the very best abstract images I've seen would instantly remind you of, say, a face of a person, with some deep emotions. But it doesn't make it anything "about human faces", it is still about beauty of shapes that can form amazing juxtapositions.

Pretty much the same applies to landscapes.

[GrahamBy]

It is about shapes, in a nutshell.

Yes, you beat me to it. Shapes that our brains find interesting, in some way or another.

[Rob C]

Shapes? Landscape? Possibly, and in some circumstances definitely.

However, I'd have imagined it to be more about textures and colour blocks as distinct from shape in the sense of accurate renditions of absolute physical form.

If you take the archetypical Tuscan landscape of poplars, rolling hills and single building with the almost inevitable little road winding up to it, what does it mean? What is the flavour? Why do some satisfy where others induce yawns of déjà vu? And I don't think it's all about technical mastery, either.

Rob

[Patricia Sheley]

~same tripod holes, 365 days and nights, yet every now and then a "seer" with slightly bent vision and determination, is open when springs forth the almost unbearable inner relatedness of place, the history before our spirit of its emanations~ surely there are no words for such unfoldings, and then, yet another threshold to cross when other eyes are not ready for that transformation from behind their own eyes~

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

~same tripod holes, 365 days and nights, yet every now and then a "seer" with slightly bent vision and determination, is open when springs forth the almost unbearable inner relatedness of place, the history before our spirit of its emanations~ surely there are no words for such unfoldings, and then, yet another threshold to cross when other eyes are not ready for that transformation from behind their own eyes~

Amen!

[GrahamBy]

If you take the archetypical Tuscan landscape of poplars, rolling hills and single building with the almost inevitable little road winding up to it, what does it mean? What is the flavour? Why do some satisfy where others induce yawns of déjà vu? And I don't think it's all about technical mastery, either.

This might be the minimalist version, with some interesting textures, as you suggest. The photographer says something about seeing a face, which I didn't... but I like it as an abstract.
No idea if it's in Tuscany.

https://500px.com/photo/153036709/can-you-see-by-alcol75?ctx_page=1&from=gallery&galleryPath=22724669&user_id=10643117

[Rob C]

This might be the minimalist version, with some interesting textures, as you suggest. The photographer says something about seeing a face, which I didn't... but I like it as an abstract.
No idea if it's in Tuscany.

https://500px.com/photo/153036709/can-you-see-by-alcol75?ctx_page=1&from=gallery&galleryPath=22724669&user_id=10643117

Hi Graham,

Re. the link: it can't be Tuscany, only poplars are allowed to have their portraits made.

Re. the link again: could even have been fathered by Jeanloup Sieff!

;-)

Rob C

[GrahamBy]

Rob, indeed some Sieff DNA in there. And Jeanloup did seem to share lots of cups of tea with his models, so who knows?

https://500px.com/photo/152144743/urban-reflection-by-alcol75?ctx_page=1&from=user&user_id=9309661