People in the landscape - Pro or Con?

[Jim Dockery]

One thing I've noticed on this site, and this forum in particular, is a lack of people in the landscape. If that is your preference, why? I go both ways...

I often hike with my wife and ask her to wear bright clothes that will show up so that I can use her as an interesting element in my compositions, and to show scale.

Angels Landing Trail

Same with my climbing and skiing friends. Many of my favorite shots involve a person in action, which is why I'm there.

Larrison-Ridge-Sunset_Panorama

• Jim Dockery
• Apr 11, 2018

I have a print of this hanging next to my desk from one of my best days of back-country skiing

But... when I go do my serious photography I prefer to hike alone so I can stop where I want, take as much time as I like, and let myself become one with the landscape in a photo/meditation thing (often for sunrise while my wife is still sleeping). When I'm trying for a portrait of a mountain or a quiet wilderness scene it feels more pure without a person. I wonder how much of an influence the classic photos I love and aspire to of Ansel Adams, Ed Cooper, and Bradford Washburn (although many of his include tiny human figures) influence me.

Icefields Parkway

Please add your thoughts and experiences. Do people add or detract from a landscape photo? I'd be especially interested in examples where you feel a human figure enhanced the shot.

 

[AlanLichty]

I can only speak for my own tastes but here goes: I sometimes take images that do have people in the image but I consider such images snapshots I take for memories rather than serious landscape photography. In this case I am defining serious landscape photos as something I might want to have a large print of on my wall. On occasions where I can't get the shot without people in the frame I will typically clone them out unless there is some aesthetic their presence adds to the scene.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Alan sums up my thoughts well. I have lots of landscapes with people, but in those cases, its basically a people catagory rather than landscape catagory. I also try to exclude man made objects with a few exceptions, old barns, bridges and buildings.

I also consider farm fields to be agriculture rather than landscape.

 

[Kyle Jones]

I generally avoid including people in my landscapes, I think because it is the nature that draws me. I do have a few shots with people in them where I feel they really add - usually for scale and sometimes just because it is special to me. As a couple of examples, the first image below is my daughter at Oneonta Falls. I like that she adds scale to the scene, but I love my memories of that day with her as a child in the Columbia Gorge. I believe that the second image at Johnston Canyon would be less impressive without the scale provided by the climbers. I do grow weary of the trendy "person in floppy hat staring off into the scene while holding a coffee cup" photos.

 

[Jim Dockery]

Thanks for the replies. Those are some great shots Kyle, esp. the one of your daughter - that would be a print on my wall if it were mine.

I also work hard to eliminate human influences from my pure landscapes like you Ben, also cloning out people who don't fit my composition. But unlike you Alan I find that most of the prints in my man-cave office are of my friends climbing and skiing, while upstairs they are all nature (no people or mountains) or cities at night.

 

[Jameel Hyder]

I am with Alan on this topic. Unless it is pictures of friends/family in a scenic setting, I go to lengths to either avoid or clone out in PP.

 

[JimFox]

Hey Jim,

It does seem for most of us the human element distracts from an image rather then adding to it. Most of us are out shooting in nature in locations where the symphony of the land would be broken if there was a person in the shot. Immediately a person in the shot feels out of place, they don't feel natural in the nature.

But for some reason in mountain top photos, people do add a sense of scale. Perhaps innately we know the difficulty of climbing a mountain, standing on a peak, so in those rare situations we can relate to that person in the image. Look at Galen Rowell, most often when there is a person in his images it's while climbing.

In the forum here, you are the only one climbing and skiing these incredible peaks that for even the most adventuress of us, is something out of the scope of what we do. So it's only you that will have those types of photos.

I think in terms of the photos with your wife, you are fortunate to have a wife who is out with you and enjoys modeling for you. For most of us if a spouse is with us, they are next to us with their own cameras photographing and do not want to stop taking photos to model in a photo. On top of that, not everyone is comfortable with modeling, so even if we had a spouse with us and they weren't too busy taking photos themselves, there is a good chance they just aren't comfortable being a part of a photo.

So you have 2 things going for you that many of the rest of us don't have in regards to getting the human element into a photograph.

One last thought, I am sure it's not your intent but using the term "pure landscape" feels like you are trying to separate it from "landscape" photography, like perhaps its an oddity. Landscape photography is landscape photography, it's a simple as that for me. It's not pure landscape photography, it's landscape photography.

This is an interesting subject you brought up, especially in today's world where because of social media like Instagram, it seems like there is a huge wave of people whose idea of landscape photography has to include a person in their photo. For them, it's the oddity and almost wrong if they are shooting a landscape photo and there isn't a person in it drawing attention to themselves. It's a strange time that we live in...

 

[Douglas Sherman]

When I first started doing photography on a serious level I joined a nature photography club and they prohibited anything with the hand of man in the image. The hand of man was also verboten in any of the calendars to which I submitted my photographs for publication, such as Sierra Club, Audubon, and Arizona Highways. That got imbedded in my head and I can't get it out although I do take images of my family in beautiful places I just don't put them up on sites like this.

All of that said, I enjoy seeing your images with people in them, Jim. So don't stop doing it.

 

[JimFox]

When I first started doing photography on a serious level I joined a nature photography club and they prohibited anything with the hand of man in the image. The hand of man was also verboten in any of the calendars to which I submitted my photographs for publication, such as Sierra Club, Audubon, and Arizona Highways. That got imbedded in my head and I can't get it out although I do take images of my family in beautiful places I just don't put them up on sites like this.

All of that said, I enjoy seeing your images with people in them, Jim. So don't stop doing it.

I will second Doug's conclusion, don't stop shooting like that Jim. One of us here has to be different.

 

[Douglas Sherman]

Just to show you what I am talking about, here is one of my wife out in Antelope Valley away from the Poppy Reserve.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Just to show you what I am talking about, here is one of my wife out in Antelope Valley away from the Poppy Reserve.

View attachment 7772

You have a lovely wife, and the poppies aren't bad either

 

[Jim Dockery]

Great shot Douglas, I like getting to know you guys and meeting your wife through a photo like this is part of that.

Jim, thanks for mentioning the selfie generation and the new types of photography being practiced with cell phones. That is another discussion that plays into this. Most of it I find boring after a few examples, and rather narcissistic, but to each their own. I'm pretty sure many of these youngsters would find our landscapes pretty dull.

I am very lucky that my wife agrees to work with me on some hiking shots, but she definently has her limits and lets me know when it's time to just hike.

When I used "pure" in regards to a landscape photo I just meant to differentiate it from one with a human element, not better or worse. As I said I go both ways, tending more lately to the "pure" side.

I came at photography as a way to document climbing. There is a long tradition of story telling slide shows in climbing clubs, so I aspired to share the adventure that way. Most of my shots included my partners, but we all also took a few "pure" landscapes (mostly mountain portraits or nice sunsets). Back when I was a poor student though I severely limited those types of shots due to the cost of film and processing. As the years have gone by, and I don't climb as much or anywhere near the level I used to, photography is half the reason I hike/climb, sometimes to the consternation of my partners when they have to wait for me

 

[AlanLichty]

Be happy your wife is even willing to go with you when you take out your camera gear. My wife used to come along on road trips that included my gear but she got tired of hanging around while I shot and decided she would be perfectly happy if I went out to shoot on my own and left her at home. That was 10 years ago and things haven't changed in the slightest through the years.

 

[Darcy Grizzle]

Be happy your wife is even willing to go with you when you take out your camera gear. My wife used to come along on road trips that included my gear but she got tired of hanging around while I shot and decided she would be perfectly happy if I went out to shoot on my own and left her at home. That was 10 years ago and things haven't changed in the slightest through the years.

So how my Hubby is, he could care less about me shooting & gets bored. When we go I usually don't get the shots I would normally do with myself or with a photographer buddy!

 

[Kyle Jones]

So how my Hubby is, he could care less about me shooting & gets bored. When we go I usually don't get the shots I would normally do with myself or with a photographer buddy!

I'm in the same boat. Non-photographers generally have little patience for "waiting for the light". I don't blame them.

 

[MonikaC]

I'm generally solo on my photo trips (except for my dog, who used to make her displeasure at my stopping to shoot, but has evolved into wanting to be the subject in certain circumstances). My husband used to hate posing, coming from a child/adolescent-hood of his mother wanting him to pose, so he generally posed with a bad attitude. A few years ago he complained that he had no pictures of himself soloing rock climbs. Well, if you're climbing solo & not taking selfies, dear, then how are you going to get photos of yourself? So I photographed him in the Winds a few years ago (from the base of the climb & from a pinnacle I scrambled up to get a bit higher to avoid the dreaded butt shots). Those are more in the category of Climbing shots than Landscape or Portraits/People. When we climbed together, it was in my pre-photography days. When I climbed with a friend who was a pro photographer, he kept his camera in the bag during the climb, taking summit shots or me digging out his car stuck in the sand on the way to Taylor Canyon shots conveniently wearing a Patagonia jacket he had brought along for just such an opportunity, etc. On my first trip to the White Pocket, I felt that the starkness needed some warmth & softness (it was March, 27 degrees, with snow on the ground, but the same conditions felt much warmer than Iceland, where I had just returned from), and nobody else was there, so recruited myself.

Here, I got my husband to pose in Round Valley Draw (Cottonwood Canyon Road) -- bad attitude & all

And his favorite solo climbing in the Winds shot (not what I would classify as a Landscape shot)

And the attempt to add a contrasting element to the White Pocket in winter

So, while not including people in my photos for the majority of the time (they're mostly other photographers, if anybody else is even around), there are times when I feel strongly enough that they could add to the composition that I have somebody pose. I don't like the headlamp pointing up into the sky or finger pointed at something in the distance as those feel completely artificial. But that's just my preference (those shots may be more marketable if that's what the purpose is).

 

[ckcarr]

To me, I have no interest in having any people in my landscape photography. I attempt to capture the way it was, or still is. People, as someone stated above are fine for snapshots, or documentation of an adventure, but in my world view they ruin what I'm trying to present. Then again, I'm also anti-social and will drive on by a parking area if there's even a car there.

 

[Zeph]

If anything, I choose to exclude people in order to maintain why it is that I love photography, the natural world. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a hermit, if there are people in my shots then it will be friends and family, otherwise I will content-aware your ass right on out-of-there.
I have a memory of my mother, in her very old age, who could care-less of landscape images, she was a hobby photographer earlier in life. In the end, she only wanted to remember who it was that is in the shot.

 

[MonikaC]

To me, I have no interest in having any people in my landscape photography. I attempt to capture the way it was, or still is. People, as someone stated above are fine for snapshots, or documentation of an adventure, but in my world view they ruin what I'm trying to present. Then again, I'm also anti-social and will drive on by a parking area if there's even a car there.

Too bad you pass up the parking areas, since once you're more than 1/4 mile from a trail, you'll probably have it all to yourself.

 

[Douglas Sherman]

I must say that this has evolved into quite an interesting thread. Thanks for starting it , Jim.