I have spent years participating in discussions about landscape photography, landscape photographers are some of the brightest people in the photography firmament, and that's what makes it so enjoyable. But, despite this, it never ceases to amaze me how much time and effort some photographers will put into telling others how to take photographs. Therefore I thought I would propose the following five laws for discussing landscape photography so that we may treat each other with respect, but above that learn from each other even if they don't do as you do.
- All approaches and techniques and cameras are valid.
- We should welcome diversity of approach as it stimulates creativity in all of us.
- We will always have some photographers that value veracity uppermost and others that value interpretation uppermost. It is a debate we carry around in all of us and is one of the great defining elements of photography that separates it from other art forms. So lets celebrate it!
- The most important thing is your vision. Cameras are a means to an end in representing that, nothing more.
- Make up your own mind, but don’t reject what is ‘other’. Study it and learn from it as if it was your own.
