by I have just been looking at my photos from a recent trip to the Grand Canyon and I am very impressed. Why do photos of beautiful scenery never do it justice? Alex Robinson, Suffolk
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Readers respond
You can take a great landscape photo if you know how to compose the image. Most people just point the camera at what they are looking at and press the button. Painters don’t just paint what’s in front of them; they made a picture. The answer is composition. Tumuchrose
It’s probably the camera you’re capturing the scene with. I suggest you try Grand Canon. Photo fitter
Beautiful views give me (and maybe you) a great feeling of light, space, color and freedom, a feeling that life is worth living, that I’m on top of the world (especially if I’m on top of a hill), of harmony and wellness and balance, if only for a moment. And I also have a sense of movement and being in nature. That’s a lot to ask of a photograph, especially if it only manages a limited range of color and brightness, is taken near noon, and has none of the golden tones of sunrise or sunset. solar, and has a limited depth of focus. A photograph compresses space and depth and panorama into a flat rectangle. The most remarkable thing is that photos can be convincing and beautiful, given all the restrictions. But they can, just like pictures. LetsJustLookAtThis
Photography struggles greatly to capture the sheer scale of geographic features such as the Grand Canyon. The reason professional photographers still exist is when you have the skill to take great photos, especially when everyone in the world has a camera phone and believes they are a photographer! Even with a wide-angle lens on a DSLR, or the widest field of view on a phone camera, you can’t begin to fit the entire scene into the frame, so you have to decide what small part to photograph. Some photographers use large ultra-wide-angle lenses or combine multiple photos, physically or digitally, to create a Panorama of the entire scene, but unless the final prints are huge, the effect is generally disappointing.
Related: How to take great photos – tips from an award-winning photographer
Choosing a scene well in advance and a time of day with dramatic light can make a big difference. Go early in the morning or evening, when the shadows are longer and colors glow; avoid sharp midday sun. See how great photographers like Ansel Adams or artists like David Hockney went to the Grand Canyon for inspiration and food for thought. James 1000
Ansel Adams certainly did justice to landscape photography, mainly by using cameras with large or medium format sensors (film or plate tilts) and lenses with long focal lengths, often correctable for tall objects in the distance far to shorten. All these aspects are minimized in modern cameras, although they can be corrected to some extent with in-camera AI. Of course, it is also printed in black and white. Modern professional landscape photographers either use older versions of the technology, or have learned to use processing tools like Photoshop to modify their images. You have to decide what your image is for, and whether it’s worth adapting your equipment or technique… dabeaver
Photos and pictures do not do the scene justice. The smells, the sounds, the winds, the change of light and the effect of the movements of the viewer are all included in the appreciation of the scene. That said, a good landscape picture can evoke memories of a visit and recall the emotional effect on the viewer. It can also be an artistic expression in itself, expressing the visual components in a way that invokes an emotional response completely without context. RollaW
Photography is a skill and an art form. Most of us are not trained artists, as our vacations show. We wouldn’t expect the artistry of a Michelin chef or an old portrait painter, who honed his talent over years of study. Why do we expect to be able to take great photos? Random username222
I’ve done a lot of photography in the southwestern US and the Grand Canyon is particularly challenging because it’s so vast. Your eye manages – or I think manages – a sense of perspective and therefore wonder (although once you see a plane flying down the canyon and suddenly you realize that your own perspective is also overwhelmed by the size).
My three tips for taking pictures in the GC are: go for golden hour – my best pictures are taken at sunset or sunrise; there are some phenomenal light effects; make sure you get some images of specific features or sight lines, rather than the canyon as a whole (which almost never ties in with what you’re seeing); and, if you can, find something in it that gives perspective. This is also extremely difficult with the Grand Canyon, as people on the other side will be completely invisible. I also buy some postcards as a backup. Use the photos you took to remind you of the feeling, and enjoy it after seeing wonders, like Everest, that cannot be captured on film. You are there!
“Dimension means nothing to the senses, and we are left with only a troubled sense of gravity.” (Clarence Dutton on seeing the Grand Canyon.) Thomas1178
A camera, whether expensive or sophisticated, is a remarkably simple device compared to the human brain. Our eyes can take in an incredible amount of information in 3D; which allows the brain to take a complex picture that a camera with a shutter operating at, for example, 1/200th of a second cannot do. It is impossible to capture in one picture what our eyes have seen over a period of time. ChrisGC
A good scene is rarely a good photograph. I think the best art of a photographer is to find and isolate something that others miss. Pascals fire
Because all the best views are blocked by the narcissists taking selfies. ShrinkProof
