There is a lot that goes into photography beyond pressing a button. Working backwards from the final image, there is printmaking, post processing, the settings used in camera at capture, etc… Before any of these things can occur there is one crucial step every great photographer has mastered. The art of composing a purposeful image with the right elements at the critical moment in order to tell a story.
Composition is made up of a series of decisions made by the photographer to include and exclude parts of a scene. Assuming that the photographer is not physically manipulating the landscape itself, does the act of composing a scene make landscape photography a creative or documentarian exercise?
Purpose
It is easy to get caught up in the world of photography chasing images for reasons that don’t matter to us personally. There is Instagram likes, peer approval, being renowned/revered, and money. Photography can quickly turn from being a creative outlet into a scientific method of extracting value from the click of a shutter.
When our motivation is to get images that will bring home a paycheck or gain the approval of a specific audience we gravitate to what is proven. Taking creative risks are more difficult to justify in these circumstances. Making sure what we capture is identifiable and relatable is more important than compelling an emotion. A spectacular sunrise/sunset at an iconic location is a better bet than an abstract image of ice!
While composition and applying certain creative aspects of photography is important, when we limit ourselves to showing ‘moments in time at the right time’ there isn’t much personality showing through there in artistic vision. Having an identifiable vision through being driven by a creative purpose for ourselves is vital in being able to expand artistic horizons.
Moral Obligations
Landscape photography has become extremely popular in recent years. Everybody wants to capture those beautiful locations in great light even though it has already been done hundreds if not thousands of times before. Uniqueness isn’t important anymore! In chasing this objective, our actions have caused us to regress to the mean of variety of imagery and slowly destroy those very locations we enjoy capturing.
We need to be conscious of the environment we are in. Fences and trails are usually where they are for a reason. Crossing a barrier or leaving the trail to capture an image violates Leave No Trace principals as well as puts you and the landscape photography community in a bad light. Applying creativity, we should be able to work a composition from the trail or it wasn’t meant to be!
Post Processing
Photography goes well beyond the initial image capture. The way that we process the tonality, color, details, etc… of an image can partly define us as photographers. It also demonstrates a vision that comes from one of a variety of schools of thought. Whether you want the scene bright, dark, soft, contrasty, or any combination of looks makes the image conform to what you want to see.
As landscape photographers, we can be lighter with processing in a program like Adobe Lightroom. Adjusting the sliders just enough to make the image fit in the histogram and be ascetically pleasing. I would call this a purist approach to post processing that keeps things more natural and true to reality. On the other end of the spectrum there is the freedom to warp and transform an image in every way imaginable through tools in Photoshop.
There is, I believe, a risk of going too far in post production, and I definitely lean towards the more conservative end of the spectrum. So long as you are honest with what you did to achieve your vision everything is fair game. Remember to disclose if you cloned out a building/fence/road/etc. as photography that lies to the audience about a location can be made to look silly!