Favourite colour landscape photography books

[Shawn Rahman]

Steve McCurry is a travel photographer, not a landscape photographer. Nothing wrong with his work, but being a color photographer doesn't automatically make one a landscape photographer.

Agree with what you wrote, Robert. Since this thread seems to have digressed slightly, I thought I'd slip that in.

Have you rethought your position on the definition of "landscape photography". I just spent some time leafing through Sternfeld and Shore, and I want to lean towards these guys being included as landscape photographers. Granted, not "nature" in the usual sense, but certainly landscape. Your thoughts? And I promise I won't ask you about Meyerowitz again.

 

[roteague]

Agree with what you wrote, Robert. Since this thread seems to have digressed slightly, I thought I'd slip that in.

I like his work as well. I'm real weak on photographing people, so I look towards his working hoping to learn something.

Have you rethought your position on the definition of "landscape photography". I just spent some time leafing through Sternfeld and Shore, and I want to lean towards these guys being included as landscape photographers. Granted, not "nature" in the usual sense, but certainly landscape. Your thoughts? And I promise I won't ask you about Meyerowitz again.

I haven't changed my mind about Shore; his work is urban photography, not landscape photography. There is nothing wrong with urban photography, but it is not landscape photography.

 

[VoidoidRamone]

I haven't changed my mind about Shore; his work is urban photography, not landscape photography. There is nothing wrong with urban photography, but it is not landscape photography.

What about the urban landscape or the social landscape?

James Corner writes:

Landscape is a complex and contested concept. Its meaning, value and characteristics are unstable. It has been used to refer to a measurable range of material forms, to the representation of those forms in painting, texts and photos, to a way of seeing, and to the imagined and desired spaces of the mind (Rodaway 1994, p. 129). Despite some scholars suggesting that the landscape concept should be avoided due to its multiple interpretations (Hartshorne 1939) the term persists. This is perhaps because it can be employed to denote both material form and our interpretations of it. There is no simple linear history of the landscape concept and it is not solely limited
to what is seen. For example, the German term ‘Landschaft’ and its derivatives give a sense not only of territory but also of community and polity (Olwig 1996; Olwig 2002). However, a persistent feature within modern usage of the landscape concept is a connection with seeing and the sense of sight (Rodaway 1994; Olwig 2002; Cosgrove 2002; MacDonald 2003).

I think there are many interpretations of "landscape;" natural, urban, social, political, etc. I don't think that just because someone falls outside the visual norm or expectation of a genre means that they should be excluded from it. Their photographs are still presenting similar arguments or information about a certain space- which is what I would say could be a requirement of "landscape photography."

With that, one of my favorite new color landscape photo books is Where We Live: Photographs of America from the Berman Collection Some of the work can be found here.

-Grant

 

[PhotoHistorian]

I like his work as well. I'm real weak on photographing people, so I look towards his working hoping to learn something.



I haven't changed my mind about Shore; his work is urban photography, not landscape photography. There is nothing wrong with urban photography, but it is not landscape photography.

Robert,
Is your image "Ala Wai Boat Harbor, Honolulu, Hawaii" in your APUG Portfolio landscape photography or urban photography?

Walker

 

[roteague]

Robert,
Is your image "Ala Wai Boat Harbor, Honolulu, Hawaii" in your APUG Portfolio landscape photography or urban photography?

Walker

Landscape photography isn't about the location of an image, it is about the role that aesthetics plays in the image. The aesthetics comes about as a result of the feeling and understanding that the photographer has for his subject. It reminds me of the late Peter Dombrovskis whose photographs saved the Franklin River in Tasmania from being dammed, or Jack Dykinga, whose work was instrumental in the establishment of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, as well as Sierra Alamos National Park in Mexico. Their work had impact, because they had a feeling for their subject. The one thing that is lacking from the work of people like Shore.

You might want to get a copy of Landscape Within: Insights and Inspirations for Photographers by David Ward (Author), Joe Cornish (Foreword)

"I love landscape but I loved the land first, not just those bits that fit neatly into the camera's frame..."

It is a great book about the philosophy behind landscape photography.

As David Ward recently wrote in his blog

"I make positive images and I refuse to apologise for that. The natural world makes me feel positive and that emotion is one of the prime reasons for me making images. I am convinced that positive emotions are much more likely to effect change than negative ones. Seeing something as beautiful is much more likely to motivate somebody to fight to protect that thing than seeing something as having already been despoiled is. It's simple human nature that negative images cause negative reactions."

 

[roteague]

What about the urban landscape or the social landscape?

LANDscape. I can't make it any plainer.

Urban and Social are bastardizations of the term landscape photography, as surely as "digital" darkroom is.

 

[VoidoidRamone]

LANDscape. I can't make it any plainer.

Urban and Social are bastardizations of the term landscape photography, as surely as "digital" darkroom is.

I think bastardization is kind of a harsh term considering that Joel Sternfeld, Stephen Shore, William Eggleston, etc. etc. were photographing the social landscape of the 1970s and 80s. I don't think they were doing a disservice to landscape photography. While not all of their images are landscapes, many are- even the ones with buildings. I think the main difference being argued is the relationship one has to the landscape. In your case it is a close, sentimental one. In the case of the three photographers stated they are photographing the landscape "without sentimental representation." (New Topographics)

And also, to nitpick a little, you bolded "land" in the word landscape. By definition "land" is "part of the earth's surface that is not covered by water." Many of your photos and ones that you have pointed to as examples of "real masters of color landscape photography" are of seascapes- and show just as much actual land as there is in many Stephen Shore photographs.

-Grant

 

[PhotoHistorian]

Landscape photography isn't about the location of an image, it is about the role that aesthetics plays in the image. The aesthetics comes about as a result of the feeling and understanding that the photographer has for his subject. It reminds me of the late Peter Dombrovskis whose photographs saved the Franklin River in Tasmania from being dammed, or Jack Dykinga, whose work was instrumental in the establishment of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, as well as Sierra Alamos National Park in Mexico. Their work had impact, because they had a feeling for their subject. The one thing that is lacking from the work of people like Shore.

You might want to get a copy of Landscape Within: Insights and Inspirations for Photographers by David Ward (Author), Joe Cornish (Foreword)



It is a great book about the philosophy behind landscape photography.

As David Ward recently wrote in his blog

"I make positive images and I refuse to apologise for that. The natural world makes me feel positive and that emotion is one of the prime reasons for me making images. I am convinced that positive emotions are much more likely to effect change than negative ones. Seeing something as beautiful is much more likely to motivate somebody to fight to protect that thing than seeing something as having already been despoiled is. It's simple human nature that negative images cause negative reactions."

Robert,
I agree with you that landcapes are not about location. That is why I believe the urban areas of the world have as much to do about landscape work as does the natural environment.
And I also agree one's feeling and understanding of his subject is what makes the aesthetics of an image come alive. But again, I believe a landscape can be in either the urban world or the natural world. Take the builds and urban world off Manhattan Island and what do you have? Do the buildings and the world that exists there make it "not a landscape"? Not in my view.
As for Peter Dombrovskis or Jack Dykinga's, work having impact, because they had a feeling for their subject. That may be so. But by the same token, how do you know Shore and others don't have the same feeling for their subjects in urban spaces?
Thanks for the offer, but I have read Ward's book. Making positive images is fine. That is a personal thing. But I respectfully disagree with his hypothesis that only positive images motivate people to fight to protect the spaces of the world. I have seen negative images create positive results. It is all in the way they are presented.
I photograph what some might call the ugliness of the urban environment. I find a loving feeling in that ugliness that has resulted in images I find beautiful whether others do or not. And that is what photography is, one's personal response to the world.
Robert, I know you and I will never agree on some of these points. And that is fine. Neither of us is totally right nor totally wrong. There are photographs we love and photographs we hate. Photographers we love and photgraphers we hate. And that is what makes photography so very interesting. There are as many approaches to the world as there are photographer. Shoot your Hawaiian Sunsets and be happy. And I'll keep looking at my Graffiti landcapes and I'll be happy too.
Just keep shooting.

Walker

 

[mark]

CITYscape
URBANscape
SOCIAL photography
LANDscape.

Clearly there are differing purposes behind each thus their different categories. It is a lot like people calling photographs of flowers portraits. They are not portraits. I don't care what type of lighting was used.

 

[c6h6o3]

Absolutely, 100% agreed. See my earlier post in this thread. Singh was a master, and taken away from us too soon. I think Steve McCurry and Singh are at the very pinnacle of what they do with color.

To my eye Singh far transcends McCurry. But it's really no a fair comparison in the first place because they're such different photographers.

 

[Neanderman]

Landscape photography isn't about the location of an image, it is about the role that aesthetics plays in the image. The aesthetics comes about as a result of the feeling and understanding that the photographer has for his subject. <snip> The one thing that is lacking from the work of people like Shore.

I couldn't disagree more.

Ed

 

[SeamusARyan]

I didn't really want to join this discussion because my suggestion would have been Simon Norfolk and seeing how others are being shouted down for things that are a little (or sometimes a lot) off the beaten track (pun intended) I felt my suggestion would be treated the same way but here it is anyway. Treat how you must.

But the following quote is what really got me here.

It is a lot like people calling photographs of flowers portraits. They are not portraits. I don't care what type of lighting was used.

When did the type of lighting dictate that an image was a portrait. And I do consider a lot of the floral images I do a form of portrait.

Be well and enjoy

Seamus
www.seamusryan.com

 

[mark]

When did the type of lighting dictate that an image was a portrait. And I do consider a lot of the floral images I do a form of portrait.

Be well and enjoy

Seamus
www.seamusryan.com

So, what makes them portraits?

 

[SeamusARyan]

please clarify

I'm not trying to be clever but I've included the definition of portrait from Roget's Thesaurus just to clear up what the word means, what I was trying to get at was what you meant by

I don't care what type of lighting was used.

it seems to imply that there is a way of lighting a portrait, admittedly there is a style known as Hollywood portrait, Karsh had a style, Avedon had a style, Leibovitz has a style, Penn has a style, but to say a type of lighting makes something a portrait is .... well I don't know what it is

anyway, I'm not trying to be smart or antagonistic I just want you to clarify what you meant

as always, be well and enjoy

Seamus
www.seamusryan.com

Main Entry: portrait
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: representation
Synonyms: depiction, description, figure, image, likeness, model, painting, photograph, picture, portraiture, portrayal, ..., sketch, snapshot,
Source: Roget's New Millennium™ Thesaurus, First Edition (v 1.3.1)
Copyright © 2007 by Lexico Publishing Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

 

[mark]

SO based on the definition (Which is indeed vague because it comes from a thesaurus) every photograph ever made is a portrait. Or is there something else that sets a Landscape photograph apart from a portrait apart from a still life? there are eight sources listed for Portrait on www.dictionary.com. None of them mention vegetation.

I have met several "Flower portraitists" (you see them at a lot of art fairs in southern Colorado). Each used a three point lighting set up in the same way some people portraitists do. They talk about petal lights (hair light) main and catch lighting.

Sorry if the lighting comment bugged you. Get rid of it and you still cannot say an intimate photograph of a flower or piece of vegetation is a portrait. It is a still life. Just like a photograph of an urban cityscape is not a landscape

I am still curious why you say your images might be portraits?

 

[VoidoidRamone]

Just like a photograph of an urban cityscape is not a landscape

What separates an "urban cityscape" (which sounds repetitive to me) from a landscape? Is there a "naturescape?" I think cityscapes, urban landscapes, "regular landscapes," social landscapes, etc. are all types of landscapes. I think the term landscape, or portrait, is a very broad and general term that doesn't necessarily only mean pictures of beautiful, untouched land or pictures of people. I'm just confused why there seems to be the need for such a fine boundary between what a landscape is and what isn't.

-Grant

 

[roteague]

I think the term landscape, or portrait, is a very broad and general term that doesn't necessarily only mean pictures of beautiful, untouched land or pictures of people.

I'll say it again "LANDscape". Pretty obvious what it means, and that is what it has meant for the 30+ years I have been doing it.

 

[mark]

Hell, lets call everything portraits and be done with it. Roget says so, it must be so.

 

[Bill Mitchell]

I believe that Ernst Haas' "The Creation" is still in print.

 

[Christopher Walrath]

I would have to mention Galen Rowell's North America the Beautiful.

 

[John McCallum]

Three currently that appeal.

Improbable Eden - The Dry Valleys of Antactica ... Craig Potton
Superb.

New Zealand Photographs ... Scott Freeman
One of the finest colour landscape books I've seen. Let alone on New Zealand, which generally seem to have a disproportionately high number of images of sheep in fields, bungy jumpers in action or maori doing the tourist dance.

Rakiura: The Wilderness of Stewart Island … Rob Brown
Good wilderness photos.