NZPhotographer Issue 46, August 2021

capturing the most beautiful rendition of a muchphotographed
scene. Finding this intent is no new
challenge in landscape photography (and one of the
reasons it has long struggled to be accepted as art)
but it is a challenge that has only been compounded
by the likes of Instagram. Sure, that sweeping vista
captured as an HDR, long-exposure panorama will
get people’s attention. But for how long? What really
makes it stand out from the last image posted of the
same location? Has landscape photography just
become one big competition, played out across
an online platform judged by the “likes” of unknown
users, who are in turn equally addicted to the splitsecond
engagement of each image?
While it’s true that New Zealand is producing lots
of stunning landscape photography, I feel there
is considerably less original work being produced
here compared to, say, the UK, despite the range
of landscapes being arguably less diverse in the UK
than those found in New Zealand. The UK has some
beautiful wild places, but the scale cannot compare
to the volume of untouched wilderness that still lies
within NZ national parks. Perhaps the greater volume
of original work is partly due to greater population size:
with 68 million people in the UK compared to our 5
million, there are obviously a lot more photographers
in the UK, so if even 1% of these were to produce
something truly original, that would be a large body
of original work. But this also works in the opposite
way; with so many people shooting, it can be hard to
produce something unique.
I think one thing that has happened here in NZ (along
with other popular landscape photography locations,
such as Iceland) is that production of original work
has been sidelined by the race to capture the iconic
locations that so many are visiting. The draw to
capture them has become central to our approach
to the landscape, and even if the captures are
exceptional, they show scenes that have been seen
so many times before. The abundance of similar
images makes me question whether I still wish to
capture the “iconic locations” of NZ anymore. Much
74 August 2021 NZPhotographer