What makes a Landscape image good?
People tend to know a good photograph when they see one, sometimes there’s creative licence or interpretation and sometimes there’s an appreciation for a niche that will increase it’s nature. But when there’s a picture that’s executed with everything that makes an image noteworthy there’s an overwhelming consensus of gravitas from its consumer.
I’m curious in having an understanding of what elements goes into creating a noteworthy image. Currently there is no working definition for a ‘good image’ as photography is a subjective discipline. Working with a camera naturally exposes you to criticism so understanding what’s useful to you will help us filter out criticism from envy, as we all assist deciphering self assessment from critical doubt.
Not to fumble a definition out of nowhere, however I’d offer the starting starting of;
A good image is the sum total of all photography principles matched with the requisite technical dexterity.
To qualify this we’d need to understand the principles. Composition is the obvious one; having a functioning understanding over rule-of-thirds, patterns, leading lines etc will improve your images immensely. They’ll start to force you to consider your composition more intentionally. There’s enough grit there its worth it’s own blog post.
Learning lighting is also an essential skill for any photographer, for landscapes lighting often makes or breaks an image. Understanding the different kinds of lighting and what looks best when, will give you the inside edge. Chasing golden hour is the classic landscape trope we all fall into, but there are landscapes that suit overcast days, midday sun or even midnight darkness rather than sunrise or sunset. Sometimes geography will mean you’ll have to do some upfront work to find the best time of day or even time of year. This will feed your decision making to create a compelling image.
Understanding Lighting will mean you’ll inevitably research and plan your shot. Going to a location knowing your going to improvise is never the ideal starting point. The sun won’t wait for you to adjust anything and in certain countries you’ll have a window of a few minutes to capture something compelling; have you done the legwork beforehand? Planning a shoot sometimes means coming back to a place you’ve shot already, it can mean getting inspired by an image online and wanting to create a version of that for yourself. The likelihood you’ll succeed in creating something unique is greatly improved by planning your shoot. Planning ahead has resulted in some of my best images.
Having a technical prowess with a camera to understand how to capture the image you imagine will be the foundation to your development. Shooting sunrise is different from sunset is different from astrophotography is different to waterfalls. Having the dexterity to understand and appreciate how each image is technically unique and needs to be treated as such will separate you from everyone else. This can means the technical settings (Aperture, ISO, Shutter Speed), but also lens choice, tripod, orientation, white balance, editing and post-processing. These elements will coalesce to create something unqiue.
Even after all this, there’s still an X-factor, a subtlety that creates an elaborate distinction between the haves and the have-nots. I think it permeates through everything we’ve discussed, but I think it’s something simple that's illusive but becomes obvious once it’s pointed out. I believe a quality landscape image will be evenly exposed along both the x and y axes.
Our cameras naturally will expose for the average brightness in it’s view (this will depend on how you choose to focus) which will inevitably force you to choose between your highlights and shadows. Or you’ll have a compromise where you’ll have some of both but not enough of either. The challenge becomes: how do we evenly expose our images? Sometimes the lighting is just right that we won’t need to adjust our approach. But more often than not, in landscapes the x-axis is evenly exposed, creating a discordance with the y-axis, so this is where we must focus our attention.
Some people choose to go with an HDR image; exposing three to five images of different exposures to then edit together to get the best of all three. Rarely have I found this strategy to produce professional looking imagery, but it’s certainly not impossible. My preferred method is to filter the scene on location with graduated filters, creating a scene that allows for longer exposures without sacrificing highlight details and producing enough detail in the shadows to work with in post. Sometimes I’ll need to stack the filters, sometimes I’ll need to invert their orientation depending on the view. At all times the intention is consistently to darken the brightest elements in an image to create an even exposure.
It’s an underwhelming and simple tactic, and often it feels like it needs to be more complex than that, but it was a game changer the first time I tried. I’ve not gone on location without my filters since.
What do you think makes a Landscape Photograph High Quality?
