STORYTELLING is BS in Landscape Photography  

We need more videos lke this, photographers who cause other photographers to think deeper about their work and what they are trying to acheive. Thank you Jonas

Wow, how liberating this thought is! I have struggled with my own photography trying to fit a story into a natural scene and coming up short believing that I somehow missed the mark. I did feel emotional, but there was no story. Awesome content to make one really think about what it is we are doing. Thank you for taking a position here that challenges the status quo…. Please keep thinking and snapping!

Hi Jonas. For as long as I've been selling my work, I learned people connect with images either through a memory from visiting the featured location or because it makes them feel a certain way. For example, a dentist bought 6 pieces of mine showcasing the Utah desert. He says it's a place that is calming to him, and the images make him feel calm. When I look at those same images, they make me think of the story of when I was there making them.

Just recently, up in the Eastern Sierras, I took a photograph with some beautiful blooming wildflowers in the foreground, some withered trees in the mid ground, and some barren hills blue with haze in the background. No animals, structures, or humans in the shot, yet my mind had put it together based on its perception of the contrast of those differing states of life and the story they told. Similarly, several years ago I had taken a photo of a tree blossom in my back yard with an out-of-focus setting sun in the background, the implication being to me that while the flower was gone in a week and the sun had billions of years left to it, both were equally impermanent. Now, you could say that my mind in both cases was simply imposing order via a narrative on those two situations, as minds tend to do; but what is the difference between that and the scenarios your mind concocted for that herd of wildebeests? It seems to me that some great landscape photos imply a story, and others don’t. Which I guess means that I don’t entirely agree with your thesis, as well-expressed and interesting as I thought it was.

Thank you Jonas, very thought provoking. Generally, I agree with you. As I reflect on landscape photographs that have provoked a story in my head (rather than just an emotion), invariably they have some additional context around them (a title, some explanatory text, etc). So my question for you - can a series of landscape photos, even without any accompanying text, tell a story?

I have not seen your channel before. Found this video to be very interesting, and I am in agreement with what you say. Photos of nature alone tend to impart feelings in me, but photos with people, or animals, or buildings and such ten to create questions in my mind about what is going on, who the people are, and so forth. Though I think sometimes there can be photos of created objects, cityscapes, say, that operate almost like landscapes for me. In these images the built objects tend to be more abstract, and so seem to be almost like mountains or trees. Anyway, this is quite an interesting and thought-provoking presentation. Thanks for posting it.

You raise a very interesting idea. While a landscape photo may not "tell" a story, it invites us, as viewers, to ask questions. I love the cold & snow, so I wondered how far the photographer had to walk to find the scene. Were they alone in the majesty & quiet, or sharing it with friends. The fallen tree made me wonder if animals would use it as a bridge. It is raining hard right now outside my window. If I were to take a photo, it would make me wonder if the river in the small town I grew up in will flood again. I guess one could argue those would be emotional responses? Greetings from the soggy midwest, USA

I have always taken the story telling as helping the photographer immerse themselves in the moment, not about photo journalism. It's basically a composition technique. It's just another way of asking, 'why am I taking this photo?'. How the scene makes you feel is another very important factor of course.

Thanks, this has always bugged me. Regarding landscape photography, I've noted that it is usually the photographer that tells the story, not the photograph. [I'm all for the 'backstory']. I recently watched a Simon d'Entremont video where it is suggested don't take photos of 'things', and commented (indicated) that 'storytelling' is the last thing I think about, 'if it looks right, I take it' (more to it than that). Of course, Simon is a wildlife photographer, and I'm a landscape photographer. This is the critical point that you have raised, but the 'storytelling' often gets pushed regardless.

Vilken bra video, gillar verkligen hur du resonerar!

Very thoughtful, provoking, and inspirational! However, I think every image tells a story, whether it contains people, animals, or objects. I think it's easier for us to realize the story when we are in it. We perceive the world with humans at the center of everything; I'm no exception. I feel a connection to nature nonetheless. But the landscape always tells a story about the weather, the vastness, the emptiness, life, and time. It may be my perception because I'm at the center of the landscape. Nonetheless, you make some excellent points. Perhaps some of this is simply semantics, but it's thought-provoking, and I love how we each perceive art uniquely. Thanks for sharing this excellent video.

Fascinating and it makes me think about my Dad's landscape photography, he is no longer with us but he was able to pursue his dream. I am just starting out with photography and a few of the photos I have taken were ones I felt pulled to take once I saw them, like an internal oh wow! So this topic is intriguing to me . I love being outside in nature so that is where I go for photos.

I agree with you !00% , land scape photography for the most part is about the awe and amazement of the natural beauty , this is what we get attracted to and its what we want to show , there is no story , except perhaps if u had a stormy whether or u place a human or wild life for perspective appreciation , so story telling while its a valid concept it really is genre specific and not ubiquitous, as such the ongoing fad of story telling in ones images is just that a fad, the genre of photography defines the purpose of the image either to evoke emotions of awe of the beauty or the lining up of certain elements like light , shadows, and patterns , or it could be story telling in other genre , consider macro photography , or food photography or abstract photography non of this has stories , so i think people should stop propagating this fad as its a must in every situation.

It's a bit anthropocentric to say stories have to be about humans. There's geological, topological, biological, etc stories. There's also the obvious environmental stories but that only a small part and often used as a crutch. The problem is also in thinking that stories are 'word' based. Stories can be abstract and felt without being just single emotions. And then there is metaphor that can be used - there are so many different ways an image can act as a metaphor for something that it's pointless coming up with examples. Pareidolia also triggers ideas and thoughts that can become stories. The problem with landscape photography and stories isn't to do with landscape photography, it's to do with our limited definition of "story"

Terrific video. Gave me much to think about.

Great video! I like your approach to photography and how you talk about the emotions and thoughts when looking at an image. I'm still really new to photography and I mostly shoot architecture, but I also sometimes try to sometimes try to shoot more "abstract" architectural compositions of man-made objects. In these photo's I don't intend to tell a story, instead I want to invoke emptions by creating an artistic composition. That's where your conclusion and advice really stuck with me, I need to recognize myself when taking a photograph to what degree the human elements in frame creates and therefore demands the incorporation of a story. It really makes me think about how I take photo's!

An interesting point, Jonas. I usually find landscapes make me ask questions, and can contain atmosphere which leads to emotion. I felt there was something missing in that first photograph. It just didn’t sit with me properly, and when you included the bottom area, it made sense, the little settlement against the enormity and remoteness of the landscape. Perspectives. Many thanks for this thought provoking subject.

More than anything else an image tell a story about the intentions of the photographer rather than the content of the image itself. All our encounters with the world will be an interpretation rather than a simple registration of it. It doesn’t matter if we produce an interpretation by means of paint and brush or with a camera in hand. It still is just an interpretation nevertheless. And emotions is at the heart of it! Even conceptual or journalistic work are intentional interpretations with a backdrop of emotions attached to it. A landscape that lack any form of story still produces emotion, albeit not very pleasurable emotions maybe. I think a normal intention for many landscape and nature photographers is to evoke an experience of a world devoid of human inclusion. If someone wants to call that a “story”, we’ll that’s up to them. For me intention is always present even though we may not see or feel it.

Excellent video, thought provoking

You make a good point about “telling a story” not being a good general guideline. There are indeed configurations where storytelling can be irrelevant. But I tend to disagree with you about what those configurations are. I don’t think it depends on the subject matter - like you described when talking about landscape photography with or without humans and human-made objects - but rather that it depends on authorial intent. Do you intend to tell a specific story with this photograph or series, or do you not? Both are fine, and will produce different work. The way that you categorized subjects in this video doesn’t work as a general rule. It’s an interesting exploration, and using subtraction (cutting some elements from images) is a great way to explore how we relate to those different subjects. But it’s just not generally true that any specific subject matter, like “a natural landscape without visible human intervention”, is inherently devoid of stories. What might be true is that you relate to those subject matters with those categories and associations in mind, and that can guide your own photographic work. Whether we tell ourselves a story when viewing a photograph depends on our own culture, knowledge and personality. Someone who likes geology may see many stories in a mountain never touched by the human hand. A shot of an empty parking lot may be devoid of stories for some, and full of stories for others. This multiplicity and partial randomness in the reception of the work raises new objections to the “you should tell a story” guideline: faced with this multiplicity, isn’t storytelling hopeless? If you intend to tell a story, should your storytelling captured be in the photograph, expressed around the photograph, or a combination of both? If you intend to tell no story, how are you accounting for the stories that will be generated by viewers anyway? And so on.

Interesting, but I think towards the end you start equating images that raise questions with images that "tell stories". Raising questions might lead to extrapolating into hypothetical projections, but not stories. A story is a narrative, a sequence of events. I do not much agree that a still image, any still image, can contain a narrative. It's not what still images are for.

I thought...yes! at last someone telling us that still photographs do not tell a story.....but you only limit the view that photographs don't telli a story to landscapes. For me, photographs do not tell stories...period. Books tell stories, films tell stories and even video from a camera will tell a story....but a snapshot in time of whatever subject you choose does not tell a story. The images you showed that supposedly told a story where famous images where people already knew what the story was from other input. Show me any photo that you or anyone else has taken and is not a well known image and I'll tell you that nobody knows what the story is because it is just a snapshot in time. We can speculate. or ask questions or guess at what is going on - but nobody knows just from an image what a story is. Photography is about creating images from compositions of whatever genre is your thing. This "telling a story" is a new fad that everyone seems to be jumping on to without being able to explain HOW the image tells a story or what indeed that story is.....there isn't one - it's just a snapshot in time. Enjoyed the vidow though!! I like the way you articulate your points