I’ve been giving a lot of thought recently to what goes in to making a great landscape photograph. It turns out there are four things, four pillars if you will.  Four, that’s a good number.  There are the four legs of a table or the four wheels of a car.  And not to forget the four sacred directions of the Native Americans.

In landscape photography the four pillars are evenly divided between the aesthetics and the technical.  So what are they?  The two aesthetic pillars are Fantastic Light and Strong Composition.  No surprise there.  The two technical pillars are Appropriate Sharpness and Optimum Exposure.  No surprise there either.  If just one of those pillars is missing, well, the table collapses, the image suffers.

Let’s look at them one by one….

Joshua Tree Spring Sunrise (2011)

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Photography is all about light.  In nature photography we study the weather, time of day and time of year to learn all we can about light.  And the more diligently we study light the more it pays off.

One of my favorite types of light is alpenglow.  There is a bit of confusion about what it is.  Many people think it’s the sunlight shining on the mountain peaks during sunset, after the valleys below are in shadow.  And while this is beautiful, that’s not it.

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One of the things that we landscape photographers pay a lot of attention to is light.  In fact, it is my belief that the study of landscape photography is a never ending study of light.  And that’s a good thing because there’s so much to learn.

Now, I must confess – my analytical mind needs to break things down to help my creative mind better recognize and capitalize on great light.  So get ready ‘cause here come a series of blog posts on light.

What Color Is a Cloud?

The first thing I want to look at is Color.  Now, we’re all pretty familiar with red, green and blue, even cyan, magenta and yellow.  I don’t want to talk about color in that way.  We could discuss the color wheel and that would be informative but, well, not all that exciting.  I’d like to kick this off by asking a simple question…

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If you sell fine art photography you hear this a lot, “I don’t need to buy your photographs.  I’ll go there myself and take my own pictures.”

Sure, why not?  We all have digital cameras these days that do a great job of producing really fine pictures – some of the time.  I would never argue with a person with this attitude but even if you’re a great photographer there are good reasons for purchasing other photographer’s works.

I don’t think anyone would argue that it would be a wonder to own an Edward Weston original platinum print.  But let’s look at some factors that are more down to earth.

Let’s start with capturing the best light.  A landscape photograph is nothing without great light.  Usually that’s early in the morning or late in the afternoon although good light can occur any time of day.  Is our intrepid photographer going to be on site a half hour or more before sunrise?  I know from lots of personal experience that you pretty much have a location to yourself before sunrise.  It’s funny to see people just starting to show up, cameras and tripods in hand, after we’ve shot through the best light and now that it’s gone we’re ready for breakfast.

How about subject selection and composition?  We all have our own personal ways of seeing and interacting with the world around us.  How we choose to select a subject, isolate it and place it along with other components into a composition is a very individual process.  The end result says as much about the photographer as it does about the subject, maybe more.  So each work is a unique expression of an individual with his or her own very personal viewpoint.  You see this very clearly at workshops when the participants gather around to share their work.  The diversity is enlightening.

Then we come to post processing.  This is where the photographer’s personality comes forth even more strongly and loudly.  There are many decisions that come between uploading the RAW file and producing the final print.  I’m plagued with false starts in which I have to go back to the RAW file and begin again from square one.  There is a large variation in the techniques different photographers will apply in post processing and hence a large variation in the results.

So, why would a photographer want to by other photographers’ works?  Because there is so much to learn from the photographers you admire and one good way to learn it is to have their works around you every day.