Beautiful Wales

Today was like many days. It was sunny, and it rained, and it was sunny and it rained, and I went out for a hike with my camera and fellow a photographer. The sky is so dramatic here, and the land is so green, even with all the leaves being swept off the trees late autumn. There was no particular goal to meet today, however I find myself thinking of my photographic practice constantly. Specifically, I find myself uncomfortable with my relationship to landscape photography.

It is obvious that I enjoy photographing the natural world, but I find that even if a photographer creates beautiful landscape images, they are often met with the opinion that such work is old hat. The exception to this situation which I do find takes place if the images are backed by some contemporary social justice concept. I wonder if other landscape photographers share this experience, and more importantly how this affects my image production. It has in the past led me to add models to an environment in order to personify it, and even digitally manipulate images of the environment with abstractions, such as the work in my series A Hypothetical Story. Regardless, it is interesting to me that the public seems enamoured with imagery that is romantic or pictorial in nature, where as the art world in enamoured with imagery that carries social or political meaning.