What is Landscape photography? Do people really know anymore? Does anyone know anything in the age of AI? For years, I thought I knew what it was because men far older than me would teach it to me. But after a long time, I realized that their idea wasn’t really true anymore. So in 2025, what is landscape photography?
In Pursuit of Authenticity
For several years, I remember the Editor in Chief of Outdoor Photography telling me exactly what landscape photography is. In his outlook, it was nature without any sign of people or any sort of human interference in the land. To him, that meant no buildings, no canals, no roads, etc. It was around 2019 when I last spoke with that Editor — and for years I’ve been pondering on that defition.
In certain places throughout the world, it’s easier to find places like this — or at least that seem that way. But the honest truth is that it’s a fantasy more than a reality. Humans have touched every single part of the earth on land at this point. And even into the deepest parts of the ocean, we’ve had some sort of effect. Considering what’s happening now with Global Warming, we’re even getting to meet things like organisms that have been frozen solid in ice for many years now.
Don’t believe me? Look at Mount Everest and check out images of the people who’ve perished, the garbage they leave behind, etc.
Over the years, the Phoblographer has featured tons of landscape photographers. You can click on one of my favorite roundups here. In some of the images, the photographers capture small towns surrounded by mountains and other things. These folks are accomplished and acclaimed landscape photographers.
Over the years, as I looked at places of authenticity like 500px and Flickr, I started to see more and more interference by humans. After a while, it truly just started to feel like landscape photographers were just a group of older men who didn’t want younger people from cities being part of what they did. I’d then imagine if I treated them the same way about cityscapes or anything else.
And I realized after a while that I wasn’t the only one — and that more importantly, that landscape photography in and of itself was having a reckoning.
A Myriad of Sub-Genres
I remember when Astrophotography was having a moment and how landscape photography would combine itself with the astro genre. But ultimately, the images just felt like photoshop composites more than anything else. Fast forward to 2024, and AI can do the same thing.
So what makes landscape photography exactly what it is?
I’m not the defining, end-all-be-all guru here — but landscape photography, like street photography, has been having a reckoning for many years now. And further, there is no defining body of people who dictate what is acceptable as landscape photography and what isn’t.
Photographers like Lizzy Gaad have been combining landscape photography and portraiture. You can call it surrealist work if you’d like.
And at this point, it’s getting so confusing — and you are probably wondering why all this is important.
Why Do Labels Matter?
A part of me thinks that one would be pretty foolish to wonder why labels matter in 2025. Vanity Fair, in March of this year, penned an article about how photography these days is untethered to the camera. According to them, this happened the moment that digital photography became the norm. That’s because so much information is automatically thrown out.
So with that said, can artificial intelligence make a photograph? If making photographs is essentially painting with light, then I’d say that the answer is no. Instead, AI is making composites.
A photograph has to come from a camera, and the photograph has to be 80% of the way there to the end. The last 20% or so can involve editing of some sort. If you’re cutting and pasting and doing lots of composites to very important and significant parts of the photos, then you’re making a composite, and I wouldn’t really consider it to be a photograph anymore. In that case, you’re doing the same thing that an AI will eventually be able to do if it can’t do it already. But if you’re making the image in-camera and only doing something like cloning out a small area of the image, then that’s acceptable.
Considering that this entire section was just on what’s AI vs what’s a photograph, there’s big reason why labels matter.
And it has to do with authenticity.
Landscape photography in 2025 is anything that involves nature being at least 80% of the image. At this point and time, everything on land has been touched by man in some way or another. If a small part of the frame has architecture, roads, signs, etc., it’s fair to consider it landscape photography.
