Flickr: jpn_photography

I'm an amateur photographer. I've taken several classes at SVA and ICP. As of recently I shoot mostly film. My camera of choice is the Pentax 67. I also really like the GF1.

In the essay "Truth And Landscape", Robert Adam makes the following points:

1. We are losing touch in our relationship with our natural and immediate geography.
2. Landscape photography offers three verities which work together to restrengthen this relationship: geography, autobiography, and metaphor
3. Landscape photography is not simply just a representation of geography. It also offers a window into the mind and attitude of the photographer.

Let me just say for anyone who has not yet tried to take a landscape photograph, it is really hard. Yes, photography in general is hard (take a look at most people's Facebook or Flickr accounts). But with landscape photography, there is an additional level of complexity.

What makes landscape photography so hard is that conceptually it is so easy.

1. Bring camera outside.
2. Find nice scenery.
3. Take picture.

But we've all been on vacation to somewhere really beautiful. And we've all came out with our developed pictures really disappointed.

There are a number of reasons why landscape photography should be easy, but probably the most obvious reason is that the Earth does not change. Or at most, it changes really slowly.

Here are a few statistics. There are 6.5 billion people in the world. The earth has 57.5 million square miles of land. 50% of people have a cell phone. I think it's pretty safe to say that about 50% of people also have access to a camera (camera phones, film, etc). That means that for every square mile of the earth, there is about 50 people with access to a camera. Given all this, successful landscape photographs should be abundant. But it is not.

The photograph medium is limiting in the sense that it can never take the place of the actual landscape. It is the fact that it is limiting that gives photographers their ability to bring about an emotion. A photograph forces its viewer to "fill in the spaces". It forces its viewer to imagine. This is why landscape photography is difficult. And why the viewer appreciates the landscape photograph.