OpenTube

What Great Photographs Are Really About.

Tatiana Hopper

26,536 views

What makes a place worth photographing? We often think the answer lies in what we can see, the subject, the light, the landscape in front of us. But some of the most interesting photographs begin when we look beyond the surface.

In this video, we explore how many photographers have challenged traditional ideas of landscape photography, turning their attention towards ordinary places, human intervention, memory and the histories hidden within the environments around us.

Featuring the work of Robert Adams, Richard Misrach, Edward Burtynsky, Mitch Epstein, Joel Sternfeld and many others.

Read The Landscape We Made
This video is based on my new original photography essay, *The Landscape We Made*, A photography essay on the natural world, humans and the role of photography.

The full essay expands on the ideas explored in this video, tracing how our understanding of landscape has changed throughout the history of photography and asking what it might mean to photograph the world around us today.

Available here https://tatianahopper.io/the-landscap...

1:1 Photography Mentorship Sessions
Book a private session with me for portfolio feedback, creative direction, project development or help taking your photography further:
https://tatianahopper.io/11-mentorshi...

Timestamps
00:00 Intro
01:41 Why Landscape Photography Had to Change
03:23 When Photographers Started Looking Differently
05:24 The Places Photography Used to Ignore
09:09 What a Landscape Doesn't Show You
11:36 The Landscape We Made — Continue Reading
13:42 Outro

Check out related videos on the mentioned photographers
Ansel Adams Why Ansel Adams changed photography.
Robert Adams How Silence Can Change Your Photography.
Stephen Shore The Photographer Who Made Colour Photograp...
Joel Sternfeld This photographer will teach you how to cr...
Mitch Epstein Mitch Epstein: The Photographer Who Refuse...
Richard Misrach How to Create a Hauntingly Beautiful Photo...

Socials
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Disclaimer
The content of this video is for educational and informational purposes. All materials in this video fall within the fair use provision of Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education, and research. Therefore, no infringement is intended. This content celebrates and promotes the featured artists whose work has contributed immensely to the art of photography and filmmaking.

#photography #landscapephotography #photographytips

20 Comments

@TatianaHopper Creator 1 month ago Pinned

This video “grew out” of a much larger piece of writing I've been working on called The Landscape We Made it's an original photography essay exploring how our relationship with landscape and the way photographers have represented it has changed over time. So if you'd like to go deeper into the ideas explored in the video, you can read the full digital essay here: https://tatianahopper.io/the-landscape-we-made

Thank you, as always, for supporting the work I make here. 🤍

@lensman5762 1 month ago

For nearly three years my focus has been to photograph my local town of Altrincham in the suburbs of Manchester!!! I must have photographed every little alley, or feature to the UK xtent that I tell myself that I had exhausted the possibilities, but I do back and look and try harder and I find new angles, different lighting, different seasons film sh one roll of 36 exposure, and then go for a pint!!! If there was any frames left, I photograph the pint each time!!! Subjects, besides the obvious and the cliches, usually do not shout at you to photograph them, butlike a hunter's eye you have to start to see them!!!!

@michaelmozenter170 1 month ago

You consistently cause me to view photography from a different and often unexpected perspective. Thank you.

@GJSsongsmith 1 month ago

Thanks Tatiana , great video . For the last year I’ve been photographing my little Devon village in the UK . It’s been a real eye opener ( if you’ll pardon the pun ) . The different seasons , different weather conditions and lots of people passing through on holiday have provided so much inspiration and I’ve learned so much by keeping things close to home ! All the best Gary

@GuerosWorld949 3 weeks ago

Great video! Very inspiring!

@bacarandii 1 month ago

Robert Adams' "New Topographics" images probably influenced my understanding of what "landscape photography" could be before I was ever conscious of having seen a Robert Adams photograph. He incorporated the messy, unsightly evidence of human mutations in the natural landscape (construction, pollution, scarification) and made them unavoidable facts in the composition. That's something I responded to. The stuff I might have instinctively felt compelled to crop out of "beautiful landscapes" became the most interesting (and unsettling) thing about them.

@JohnWildgoosePhotography 1 month ago

This interests me. I’ve recently discovered “Edgelands”. The liminal space between different functional, social, economic or topographical boundaries where one sort of activity overlaps, often uncomfortably with another. It’s a fascinating and relates very specifically to what you’re discussing here.

@maciejlabu 1 month ago

This is going to be a glowing review: you create such excellent content—impeccably prepared in terms of both substance and visuals. You help me grow as a photographer. I wish you plenty of energy so that you can produce as many fantastic videos as you have so far.

@TimS-pg5pv 1 month ago

Tatiana this is very thought provoking on all manner of levels, and some amazing images. Even a primer for a Phd thesis if you wanted to get really academic. It would also make a good start for a long form video or film. Wonderfully done and quite poignant as we have wars in the middle east and fires in Europe right now where landscapes are being modified before our very eyes.

@Michel_Engelen 1 month ago

I don’t know why exactly but photos that require a long caption are never my cup of tea. An image should speak in emotions like music, it’s beyond words 🖤

@kentwatson678 1 month ago

Fantastic informative video. Thank you for creating and sharing. One photographer you might want to check out, who has long documented the role people have in the changing landscape, is Mark Klett. His Rephotographic Survey is shows the impact on the landscape by going back and photographing a scene that was shot years and years before by another photographer. Then presenting the two photographs side by side of each other. This shows people's use of land and land erosion over time.

@Tash1991xy 1 month ago (edited)

Great, insightful video essay— hope you cited Rebecca Solnit and others in your textual essay who made the same argument vis-a-vis the work of Misrach and others back in the 90s in the classic Aperture issue titled “Beyond Wilderness”.

@EphemeralProductions 1 month ago

This gives me a LOT to think about Tatiana! Thanks so much! This addresses directly an issue I’ve long had, being interested predominantly in making landscape images. I want to make sure my image tells a great story and I’ve always had a problem doing that and translating my ideas to an actual image or even FINDING a subject that I feel is worth a viewers interest. The camera and me still have a complicated relationship; I’m still not fully comfortable and knowledgeable in using it as an instrument to make the images I envision

@peterbear2929 1 month ago

Loving your work Tatiana!!

@InfoJobSolar 1 month ago

Hi, Tatiana.
Thank You for the time& effort. 😎👍

@arcadefanatic3060 1 month ago

This is brilliant Tatiana, as always 👍

@MikeWeiser-s9f 1 month ago

Tatiana - thank you so much for consistently providing such valuable content. With each video you both inspire and inform, and I think that combination is rare.

I had largely forgotten about Richard Misrach (sadly), you just introduced me to Joel Sternfeld and I’m reminded of Robert Adams. The landscape as “something larger than nature itself” is something I love to pursue in my own work, and that has a lot to do with the often unconscious influence of these and other photographers throughout my many years of enjoying photography.

Your YouTube channel is a photography gift that keeps giving. I truly appreciate what you do and wanted to give you huge praise and a very heartfelt thank you!! 🙏

@baxterbradford7063 1 month ago

I’d not heard of Michael Ormerod before, thanks for raising my awareness, I’ll see what books there are

@ernestthomas9406 1 month ago

This was a very good video showing the changes in our community & environment, sometimes it scares me when I look back at my own images & see the changes.