Attractive Landscape Photos: How To Take Picturesque Images
Picturesque scene of ducks paddling around on Lake Hayes, New Zealand.
I love making beautiful landscape photos and I have no hesitation in seeking out locations that lend themselves to the creation of picturesque images. Here’s what I’ve learned about making attractive landscape photos along the way.
The making of attractive landscape photos is, in itself, an act of creation. The most beautiful landscape photos feature picturesque locations and showcase the photographer’s technique, refined composition skills, and use of subject matter and light to evoke an emotive response from their audience.
Landscape Photos And Why It's Important To Celebrate Beauty In Our World
Beauty is not an abstract concept. To deny beauty is to deny life itself.
That’s one of the reasons why I love making landscape photos.
It’s true to say that the more attractive the location I photograph the more positive my experience of that location will be. As a result, better photos are produced.
Sometimes you’re lucky and photos just seem to fall out of your camera. Moments like that depend, for the most part, upon three critical factors:
The location in question
The specific subject matter within your photo composition
The quality, color and direction of the light under which you’re making your photo
Your frame of mind, the level of enthusiasm and, when it matters, the physicality with which you approach the making of the photo in question
While the above photo of ducks paddling around on Lake Hayes, just out of Arrowtown on the South Island of New Zealand, is about as cheesy a picture as I'm likely to make, it really was a joyous and most beautiful moment to behold.
The scene was bathed in soft, winter sunshine and I remember how excited I was to record it. This idyllic scene was as picturesque as it appears and, I kid you not, the ducks headed straight for me once the camera came out.
I wonder what's duck for cheese?
About To Travel?
Landscape Photos: Postcards Have Gone The Way Of the Dodo
Once upon a time I was a postcard photographer. While that's over stating things somewhat, there was a time when the production and sale of postcards and greeting cards were a part of my business as a photographer.
But I retreated from that side of the business, partly because of the arrival of Instagram, but also because the sale of postcards was too much of a nickel-and-dime venture.
Frankly, it just wasn't worth it. While the cards sold very well, it was a very competitive and low-profit end of the market for quality landscape photos.
For all the effort that went into producing postcards at scale, not to mention selling and displaying them in the right kind of retail outlets, there just wasn't enough money in it.
And don’t start me on how difficult it was to manufacture a range of free standing and countertop postcard stands. That was an absolute nightmare.
Nonetheless, the whole venture was worthwhile in that it was a necessary part of my business education.
With the proliferation of digital cameras, mobile phones and associated apps with which to post process and share photos, the postcard business has largely gone the way of the dodo.
From time to time I see the ubiquitous postcard stand, though the prices postcards sell for these days are really low.
Sadly, it’s just not a business for creative photographers who are serious about the quality of the images they create.
Not only is it near impossible to make any money out of it, but the size and quality of the paper your images are printed on really diminish the value of your landscape photos.
What’s left of the postcard business is, for the most part, in the hands of large publishing companies who source, print and sell images at the lowest possible cost.
Those businesses really aren’t motivated by beauty or by the quality of the products they distribute. It’s strictly a low cost, low margin game that relies on selling a lot of products to make a buck.
There’s potentially much higher profit in greeting cards, particularly those that appear to be hand crafted and packaged. But few photographers seem to sell a lot of them these days.
No matter how good a photographer you are, marketing and selling products into the low end of the market is simply not for anyone motivated by beauty and the reproduction of high quality landscape photos.
River flowing through a lush, rocky gorge along the Taieri Gorge Railway.
Landscape Photos: How to Weather Changing Industry Fashions
Take a look at this beautiful, tranquil scene of a river flowing through a lush, rocky landscape along the Taieri Gorge Railway near Dunedin in New Zealand.
The arboresque curve of the river, as it makes its way through the landscape, together with the bright greens and the splashes of yellow foliage make this highly detailed scene a really picturesque landscape image.
Back in the day I studied fine part photography, culminating in a MA (Masters) in Fine Art Photography at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia.
I studied from the mid 1980's through to the mid 1990's. Post Modernism was rampant and, despite mostly reasonable and sympathetic tutors, the flavor of the month was anything but sympathetic to the creation of beautiful landscape photos.
That's not to say that interesting and, on occasions, high quality photographs weren't produced. But it was the time, at least in Australian art institutions, when notions of traditional beauty were under attack.
Personally, I found the whole debate tiresome.
I understand how trends and fashions might move away from, for example, the softly defined and subtle colors of pictorialism towards Modernism with its emphasis on highly detailed, razor sharp images.
But Post Modernism seemed to mostly be concerned with killing off the major art movements that had preceded it. And part of that whole process involved a relentless attack on traditional notions of beauty which, I’d argue, had a deleterious effect on the value of creating beautiful landscape photos among many fine art practicioners.
Anyway, you fight your battles; take on the bullies (student, tutor and bureaucrat alike), particularly when they're picking on your more defenseless peers; and, for the most part, keep your head down and just get on with it.
Rather than being pushed into whatever style or approach to landscape photography was fashionable at any given period of time, I’ve always stayed true to myself by making the images I most want to make.
This approach is at the heart of what it is to be an authentic visual artist.
I’ve always held the belief that, by concentrating your efforts on what it is you believe in and the kind of subject matter you’re most attracted to, you’re more likely to enjoy what you do, now and into the future.
When it comes to crafting picturesque images you’ll find that by taking an authentic approach to making landscape photos you’ll find the motivation and energy required to enthusiastically pursue your craft throughout your lifetime.
Personally I’ve never worried all that much about what’s fashionable in landscape photography, at any given period of time.
I got into HDR photography, not because of the various influencers who were doing it, but because it was a good way to overcome the kind of dynamic range (i.e., contrast) issues that were the bane of landscape photographers in days gone by.
It’s true to say that the higher dynamic range of modern day sensors, together with the ability to better manage contrast in applications like Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, have reduced the need for a HDR workflow in the process of creating beautiful landscape photos.
Nonetheless, on occasions, I still make use of a HDR workflow in my own landscape photography workflow, but only when the situation requires it.
Eventually the wheel will turn and you’ll find yourself in the kind of circles where your work will be far better appreciated. That’s the thing about being a, so called, overnight success. It often takes years, even decades to get there.
Lovely lupins backlit by warm, afternoon light at Lake Tekapo, New Zealand.
Making Attractive Landscape Photos Sure Beats Hardship And Suffering
I can tell you, from personal experience, that being out in nature making attractive landscape photos sure beats hardship and suffering.
My upbringing and travels have alerted me to the hardships suffered by the less fortunate throughout our world. But there's more to the human condition than hardship and despair.
Life is a two sided coin and we live, very much, in a world of duality.
You can't know happiness without first experiencing sadness. Likewise, how can you possibly appreciate joy without also knowing suffering.
“To heal the world, you must first heal yourself”
Outside of genuine love, there is no better place to find healing and rejuvenation than in the natural landscape.
That knowledge should provide more than enough motivation for celebrating attractive landscape photos and working hard to develop the techniques and skills required to take really beautiful, picturesque images.
New Zealand is one of my favorite places and I think I'd be very happy living there. It’s certainly one of my favorite places for making picturesque landscape photos.
I can’t wait to return again to New Zealand to create more attractive landscape photos. It’s always a wonderful adventure. Maybe I’II see you there on my quest to share the beauty of our world with an ever wider audience.
