Storytelling in Landscape Photography

I’ve been researching locations for photo safaris we are running next year and last week’s trip to the Gorafe desert set me thinking about the ways that our favourite focal lengths can trap us and actually get in the way of the story. Storytelling in Landscape Photography is an art form in itself, by definition most landscape pghotographs are ‘of’ rather than ‘about’ the landscape.

The problem we face is twofold.

Fear of failure is the thing that keeps us firmly in our comfort zone. In my experience, a new lens with an extraordinary focal length, be it macro, wide angle or telephoto takes time to get used to. In the case of extreme wide angles, we almost have to reinvent our compositions again or at least revisit the habits on which we base our compositions.

Our experience inevitably leads us towards favourite focal lengths. A quick search in Lightroom will tell you what your most used focal length is – try it, you may be surprised. The process is essentially this – we take a decent photograph and think to ourselves “Hmm I must try this again..” Within a few months we find we’re taking the same set of photographs over and again.

We get conflicting messages too, that add to the problem. We’re told we have to cultivate a personal and recognisable style. Naturally we. want our best photographs to influence that style and so we get locked in to an often imaginary world where we use one lens to the exclusion of all others. believing that to be representative of our best work.

I say this with fifty years of photography under my belt. Resist these siren calls at all costs. Personal style is in the eye of the beholder, we don’t have to try. I have no idea what my personal style is, but other people do and that’s as far as I’m interested enough to go. If I want to shoot macro tomorrow I will. The only consistent theme in my work I think is that I’m more interested in form and structure than I am people. Both landscapes and Cities have form and structure in abundance and I enjoy shooting both types of photography.

So to landscape photography and the storytelling element. I don’t tell stories with single images. I think stories in landscape photography as a genre, barely scratch the surface. One thing I have developed though is a growing realisation that stories can be told better with collections of images. And using different focal lengths is a way of ensuring that we have the components of a story to tell.

Simplistically, this can mean macro -> mid range -> telephoto. Or Detail, Scene, Vista. On a trip to the Tabernas Desert recently I found myself taking photos of fossils, or more accurately fossilised portions of an ancient seabed. I very quickly realised that this could be an ingredient of a narrative. The pictures represented a snapshot of something that happened thousands of years ago. The set was completed with wide angle shots of water smoothed stones in a dry riverbed and wider shots of the entire landscape. Together they tell a story about the desert much better than any single shot could do.

This leads me to wonder how to publish these little narratives. Exhibitions are expensive as are books, self publishing is the only way to go these days and it’s possible I could promote a book and sell it via this website but I can’t see sales being. vast. Perhaps a calendar with a hero image supported by three or more detail photos. That would be interesting and may well be a direction I’ll explore in the future.

So, musings on the theme of storytelling! I’m thinking aloud really, but I discuss the same point in a video published 8/4/25 “DON’T Fall Victim to This Common Landscape Photography Mistake!”

Check out the video!