>>3456909Like any popular thing it suffers from laziness and impatience. There's so much potential and so much missed opportunity among landscapes, even if you don't count new topographics/man altered landscape photography. People don't really pay that much attention to the quality of the light, where the sun is, where the shadows fall or even nuances like the exact shape of the clouds and how it affects the composition. Instead they backpack to a location with their $3000 body, $2000 16-35 lens and $800 GITZO tripod (cause all the pros rock expensive shit, obviously), slam the lens onto 16mm, lock on f8, get a shot during the golden hour or afterglow on a beach or of some mountains, saturate the fuck out of it in post. Cause ya know, photos are only good during muh golden hour or some shit.
My biggest issue with landscape photos is so much of it gets lost when you're viewing images on a tiny phone screen. They're supposed to be looked at and admired in print. Apparently this generation didn't learn much from Ansel since printing was such a massive part of his workflow.
I see plenty of very strong landscape images even today, it's just that for any of those, you get countless more nice but somewhat generic shots, or straight up kitsch PNW "IG bangerz" as Old Yeller puts it.
