Landscape photography is a genre intended to show different spaces within the world, sometimes vast and unending, but other times microscopic. While many landscape photographers show little or no human activity in their photos, striving to attain 'pure' unsullied landscapes that... [more]

Landscape photography is a genre intended to show different spaces within the world, sometimes vast and unending, but other times microscopic. While many landscape photographers show little or no human activity in their photos, striving to attain 'pure' unsullied landscapes that are normally devoid of human influence, using instead subjects such as strongly defined landforms, weather, and ambient light. Despite this, there is no pure or absolute definition of what makes a landscape in photography, as such it has become a very broad term, encompassing urban, industrial , macro and Nature photography. A beach full of parasols and sunbathers can be a landscape photo, but so can the view through an electron microscope, which shows a different type of landscape. Waterfalls, and mountains are especially popular in classic landscape photography, often calling for Large Format cameras and neutral density or polarizing filters. Though many photographs are inspired by traditional landscape painting, the term in photography is very broad, most places and things can be photographed as a landscape, a kitchen, a lamp, a wall, or even the human body can be turned into a rolling vista by a skilled photographer. Landscapes are often created with such tools as a pinhole camera, or a large format camera and tripod, usually with a wide angle lenses (24 mm and 35 mm are especially popular). A narrow aperture (Normaly f/11 to f/22, but can be higher than f/64[4]) is used to maximize the depth of field and overall sharpness of the image. Many photographers use medium or large format systems to record as much detail as possible, which is very important in black & white photography, although the vast majority of landscapes shot today are from digital SLRs and compact cameras. [show less]