What makes a good Landscape Photo?

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22 Jul 2010 - 1:14 PM

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ljesmith

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22 Jul 2010 - 1:15 PM

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Good light

JJGEE

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22 Jul 2010 - 1:42 PM

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Depends in what context you are judging a good / great landscape.
Magazine front cover, calendar, competition entry, true record of what you saw at the time.... etc.

Personally I usually judge my own images by a couple of technical points, composition & exposure.
Not too bothered about lighting as my "challenge" is an attempt to record what I see at the time.
If it is flat a boring and the image looks like that I have achieved what I saw.

Not withstanding that, images with nice lighting, contrast, saturation and of course an interesting subject are perhaps more attractive and pleasing to the eye.

Dennis_Bromage

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22 Jul 2010 - 2:17 PM

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For me there are two key elements;

- The first is composition, which must be balanced and have a flow.

- The second is matching the location to the right light and weather. By 'right' I mean weather and light that reflect the mood of the location which might be a beautiful sunset over Saltburn pier but might equally be a misty morning in the highlands.

BUT does the subtle misty morning in the highlands have less attributes than the dramatic sunset at Saltburn?

Tooth (Critique Team)

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22 Jul 2010 - 2:39 PM

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The above two posts in that order sum it up for me..

Dennis_Bromage

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22 Jul 2010 - 3:08 PM

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Thanks for the comments so far guys much appreciated. Obviously patience, planning and dedication are key to capturing the best images. What I'm really interested in isn't so much what you need to do to capture the image but what makes the image good or bad once you have captured it?

What criteria do people use when judging an image and I guess deciding to offer a vote or not?

Niknut (e2 Member)

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22 Jul 2010 - 4:02 PM

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It's alomost impossible to categorise what makes a good landscape.....every one is unique, & has to stand on it's own merits. Also no two people have the same feelings about a particular image, or conversely given a particular scene to photograph each person would create their own idea/vision of what's before them. When I look through the gallery shots, at a landscape, I look for impact, how the scene has been interpreted & framed, has the camera just been lifted to the eye & clicked the shutter, or has some thought & feeling gone into the shot. This can be extended into the final image after processing & presentation....there are images in the gallery that are beautiful in their own way, but with a little manipulation to squeeze out every ounce of quality, an image can be transformed from 9/10 to 10/10. One has to consider that a lot of people prefer to present their images more or less as taken in-camera, & I'm happy with that, but personally I prefer to wring every ounce of quality out of my shots, to create a mood or feeling.....& if I see a gallery image that makes me wish that I'd taken that shot, then it's a 10/10'er for me ! But we're all different, so who's to say who's right & who's wrong, each to their own tastes, we're all entitled to that !

joolsb (e2 Member)

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22 Jul 2010 - 5:01 PM

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For me it's simply insight. It's easy to take a decent landscape shot in good light using the tried-and-trusted rock-in-the-corner/leading-lines/rule-of-thirds composition but what does that really say - apart from "what a pretty scene!"?

The landscape photographers I admire (Jan Töve, David Ward, Jack Dykinga, Shinzo Maeda, Eliot Porter, etc.) bring real insight to their subjects and they do it with a combination of precise and beautifully-balanced composition and matching the light to their subjects. Subjects which are often anonymous but which show their true beauty before the lenses of these master photographers.

It also helps a lot if you use large format.