You might have noticed something... I do a lot of photography in the Utah Landscape. You might be wondering why. I am here to appease your curiosity in why, I think, nature and landscape photography is something more photographers should do.
Recently, I was talking with someone who said they were an amateur photographer. Though they had shockingly good questions and opinions for an amateur. He voiced an opinion I have often heard. A thousand photographers could take pictures of the same thing and each get a different photo.
That's a great opinion, but what does this have to do with nature and landscape? Simple. To the individual the photos of a landscape might seem finite. After all, it's a massive subject. There are only so many ways you can capture that massive subject without needing a helicopter. I would disagree. I would say that, even though there is a seemingly finite number of angles, there is a near infinite number of different photos that can be take ag said angle.
There is a particularly famous section of Yellowstone. You may have seen it before. It's a photo of a specific rock formation inside of a cave featuring sunlight coming down into it. But there are so very many pictures of it at the same angle from the same location. Over the years I've seen many photos of this particular rock formation from the same angle from different photographers, yet it's always a different image. This blows me away.
Some of these differences may be due to nature or just luck. The weather could be different between different photos. Or perhaps it was a particular sunset at the time. Maybe the photographer was just in the right spot at the right time.
Whatever the natural occurrence, I still think part of the difference is human ingenuity. We all perceive the world differently, and photographers are no different. Some might make their photo using a slightly different aperture, maybe a different focus, shutter speed or ISO. Perhaps they might have different cameras. Hey, they might even edit the photos differently. Regardless, they got photos of the same subject yet still got different results.
So what's the point here? What does this have to do with nature and landscape photography? The point is to say that, although photographers might be taking photos of the same subject, they are almost always different. As for why I'm talking about nature and landscape photography, it's different then other categories. Unlike abstract photography, macro photography, or model photography, nature can't (always) be manipulated to fit what the photographer wants. It's very much an "in the moment" type of photography.
This is especially true for landscape photography. After all, a photographer can't move mountains (without Photoshop)! The subject is simply too large to have anything moved. For example, this photo is far too big a subject to do anything the moment it was shot! The same is true for this one and this one as well. Besides, the point of the image is to capture nature. You wouldn't be doing that if you edited it too much.
Have you ever taken a picture of a landscape? How did it turn out? Feel free to contact me and let me know!
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