Choosing the best fine art landscape photographers takes research. Perhaps the best means for judging a photographer's skill is your own personal appreciation for landscape and fine art photography, but if you're having trouble deciding what you like, or can't seem to find any objective criteria for judging photographers, you can look to the history of photography for help. Books about photography are excellent resources to find out about world-renowned photographers.
Browsing the Internet is a great way to learn about landscape photography quickly. Another good place to gather information is the art history department of your local college or university. If you are only interested in fine art landscape photographers who have the best reputation, a great way to compare individual merits is to research who has won various fine art photography prizes. A lot depends on your reason for seeking out photographers.
Well-known fine art landscape photographers include Ansel Adams, Michael Frye, Elizabeth Carmel, Jennifer Wu, Sebastiao Salgado, Kenneth Parker, and many others. Some online directories include extensive lists of both traditional and contemporary landscape photographers, allowing you to click on names and find out more. If you're looking to buy art, you can sometimes go through photographer's websites, or find out who represents them. Many print and poster outlets offer affordable reproductions.
When attempting to choose an aesthetic that you like, consider the many varieties of subject matter and printing style. No two fine art landscape photographers are alike, but you might be able to narrow down your taste according to favored geographical locations, types of perspectives and lenses, lighting, and color choice. You might decide you like vistas more than close ups, color more than back and white images, or experimental photography more than traditional photography.
Other things to consider when evaluating fine art landscape photographers is the amount of landscape you would prefer to see versus other subject matter. A great deal of modern landscape photography includes other elements and sometimes blurs together genres. Some viewers might want a pure landscape with no evidence of humanity in it, while others might appreciate elements of portraiture, industrial photography, or documentary photography in their landscapes.
Photography categorized under nature, wildlife, and travel can all have elements of landscape in them, so it's useful to search broadly when seeking out landscape photographers you might not know about. Some fine art landscape photographers also do interesting urban, conceptual, and night photography that you might find appealing. Keep your options open, and keep searching widely, and you're sure to find many more great photographers each year.
