Category / On Landscape Articles

A new article has appeard in On Landscape called The Road Not Taken (borrowing from the poem by Robert Frost) about walking long distance paths and the serendipitous opportunities that such an activity provides for landscape photographs. It is illustrated by photographs taken on the Stevenson Walk (GR70) in the Cevennes and on various walks…

A new article has been published in On Landscape with the title The Landscape as Visual Haiku. The article recounts the history and characteristics of the haiku form of poem in Japan and its adoption elsewhere, including in the US and Europe. The links between minimalist photography and haiku are discussed, including the Michael Kenna…

A new article has been recently published in On Landscape Issue No. 294 called A Classification of Landscapes. The article takes as its starting point the wonderful (in the old sense of the word) classification of animals in the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge from the short story by Jorge Luis Borges called The Analytical…

Another article has appeared in On Landscape (issue 285) with the title Phenomenological Landscapes. It starts with discussing how, starting with the Greek alphabet, there has been an increasing alienation from nature. This has only got worse with more and more technological progress. It is something that has been the subject of study by the…

Inspired by seeing the black abstracts of Pierre Soulages in Montpellier last year, and the previous article on landscape photos in infrared, a new article has appeared in On Landscape with the title Black in the Landscape. The article can be found here. A comment from Alexandre Wesche suggests some landscape photographers who have made…

A new article with this title has just appeared in On Landscape here. It discusses the need for having a philosophy (or two) for your photography – even if most photographers never need to think about it. It is suggested that most of us are pragmatic realists – trying to reflect what we see in…

A new article has appeared in the on-line magazine On Landscape that deals with using panoramic images to explore small scale landscapes. The article is illustrated with images mostly from Mallerstang and Switzerland. The article may be found here

Some while ago I was invited by Charlotte Parkin of On Landscape to write about one of my favourite images for one of their End Frame Articles. I chose Full Moon over Mayo by Paul Kenny (see below), explaining in the article some of the background to the image and why Paul’s work has often…

Inspired by a couple of articles in On Landscape by Marc Hermans and Joe Cornish and a feature on the Swiss photographer André Piguet, I have written a new article about abstract landscapes with some comments particularly on Alfred Stieglitz, Aaron Siskind, and Graham Cook. The article can be found at https://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2021/12/interpreting-the-found-abstract/

Another article has been published in On Landscape Issue No. 240 with the above title. It is about the role of allowing for the uncertain, the unpredicted, the unexpected, the serendipitous in finding images in the landscape. It can be found at https://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2021/09/the-pleasure-of-the-search-for-the-unexpected/. The article is illustrated with images from Sweden and Yosemite, including the…

Another article for On Landscape has appeared in Issue Number 231 with the title Loss in the Landscape on the subject of retreating Swiss glaciers, a retreat that seems to be accelerating. There is a bit of science, including the issues of water resources and hydropower for the Swiss and a bit of the impacts…

Another article written for On Landscape has just appeared. This takes its inspiration from the Devil’s Dictionary polished (between 1867 and 1911) by the American author Ambrose Bierce, and said to be one of the greatest works of American satire (an example: DISTANCE, n. The only thing that the rich are willing for the poor to…

A new article has been published in issue 214 of On Landscape on Peter Henry Emerson and his book Naturalistic Photography that was published in 1889. Emerson was well-known for his books and images of the Norfolk and Suffolk landscape, and had some very strong views on photography as Art, including how depth of field…

A new article has been published in Issue 208 of On Landscape magazine, dealing with Landscape and the Philosophers of Photography. It was instigated by reading the book on the Philosophy of Photography by Vilem Flusser. He does not say much about Landscape Photography but introduces some interesting concepts, including the idea of redundant photographs…

Sarah Marino recently published an article in On Landscape magazine on a community initiative to reduce the impact of landscape photographers on the landscapes they photograph. While it seems a little sad that such an initiative should be necessary, it is clear that there are many people who do not think too much about the…

Another article has been published in Issue 193 On Landscape. Entitled Creation by Ducks and the Representation of Reality it contains some further discussion of the concept of equivalence in making images. It was initiated by reading articles by Jean Paul Caponigro and Guy Tal, who also by chance had an article called Beyond Equivalence…

Another article for On Landscape was published recently in Issue 186 These photos were taken on film back in 1997 using a Mamiya 6. More can be found in the Still Dynamic Monochrome Gallery. The article may be found here.

A 4th article has been published in On Landscape concerned with understanding the physics behind those bright spots called caustics that often appear in images of water (as well as something about skypools and landpools). The article is illustrated with photos from the Verzasca, Sarine, and Eden, one of which made it onto the cover…