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What is Landscape Photography?
Joe Cornish "The landscape, the whole landscape and nothing but the landscape." But what is landscape? We know that everyone in the On Landscape community (the authors, the subscribers and general readership) is passionate about landscape photography. But when four of us got together to discuss the subject recently, (comprising Onlandscape founder Tim Parkin, photographic guru David Ward, photographer and designer Andrew Nadolski and me, Joe Cornish), we struggled to find agreement about what landscape photography actually was! It is only human more
Am I a Landscape Photographer?
“On Landscape”, is a veritable, virtual on-line temple of landscape photography. So the question posed by the title of this piece might seem almost sacrilegious to some of its readership. Whilst I obviously feel an affinity for the ethos of the magazine and the work presented I seriously wonder if a photographer should be (or even can be) predominantly defined by their subject matter. Schools or genres are of course commonplace in art but photography is amongst the most more
Ingredients for Photography
When it comes to improving their photography many photographers fall into the trap of placing the equipment at the top of the list. They presume that the latest upgrade or the next model up the range will be just what they need to take better photographs. Now don't get me wrong, if you have great photographic craft then better equipment can capture better images but if you're starting out more
Challenge Yourself!
Twisted Birches If, like me, you spend time on photo-sharing websites, both sharing your own work and viewing what others are getting up to, you will doubtless be aware of the dangers of getting too comfortable - complacent, even. Once you get to a level of ability where you can reliably produce images which receive lots of positive comments from your peer group, there is more
Picture Play
The recent sale of Instagram for $1 billion to Facebook has got me thinking about how many people use cameras today and how we - as “photographers” - might learn something from the playful approach of ‘casual users’. First, a little history: the rise of Instagram has been truly meteoric; the service was launched in March 2010 and by March this year had over 30 million subscribers and more
Why I love the Abergavenny hills
But if place isn’t important to landscape photography then I don’t really see the point; surely there is a reason we go out to capture what we do? more
Dark Beach Project
Imagine making a photograph without any defining boundaries, the chances are the image could be vague and unfocused in relation to communicating the subject. more
Taming the Complex
The following is an excerpt from Jon Brock's Blurb book 'Vision and Craft'. Find out more about the book here. Taming the Complex Of the many aspects to photography, the art of composition has most intrigued me over the years. I cut my photographic teeth photographing ‘inner landscapes’, pointing the camera downwards and constructing images quite literally out of the patterns that exist in the ground beneath my feet, more
Joe Blogs
There is something slightly odd about making a living out of something you absolutely love to do. It sounds as if it should be idyllic of course; getting paid to travel the world and make photographs? How much better can it get? Yet somehow pro photographers often seen as grumpy, dissatisfied, cynical and frustrated (sometimes even more so) as everyone else. Regrettably I would have to include myself in that number. I now realise that satisfaction in life is more
Basic Training at North Sands
It was in October 2006 that I first set out to North Sands to take my first ‘proper’ landscape photographs. Armed with a tripod, some Cokin filters, and, oh yeah, a camera, I drove in the darkness along Cemetery Road, past skeletal remains of disused factory buildings and parked at the gates of the Victorian cemetery. Walking past gravestones is perhaps not the most inviting of ways to begin an adventure into landscape photography, but that’s how it started more
A Plea for Broader Horizons
The early American landscape photographers fascinate me, recording ‘wilderness’ has largely set the tone for the majority of landscape imagery produced today. more
Leeming and Paterson
As landscape photographers we are fundamentally solitary predators. Away before the dawn and skulking home long after sundown. Shying the pack culture. Lost in "the zone" of image capture meditation. It is a personal space of peace and calm I love to frequent. A place I feel I am at my best, away from intrusions and thoughts that invade much of the reality of the every day. And indeed, when more
Truth and Lies in Photography
"The camera doesn't lie". This famous phrase suggests that what appears in a photograph is a direct reflection of reality... more
On Meaning in Photography
Photographic description alone will never be inspirational, never make a heart beat faster, never bring a tear to another’s face... more
The Truth, the Whole truth and Nothing but the Truth?
'Honesty' and 'truth' are two descriptors which are applied very frequently to the subject of landscape photography. Typically, they will be applied by 'scapers who fall into one (or both) of two categories: the chap who searches tirelessly for the perfect scene and the perfect light (hopefully concurrently!) and the other who is not quite so pernickety but has little in the way of aptitude or skill to get the best out of his images in post production. In more