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There are two impossible questions I like to ask myself as landscape photographer. Although they’ll never have perfect answers, the closer I try to get, the more I see my photos improve. They are: “What makes a good landscape?” and “What makes a good landscape photo?”
I’ve already written many articles trying to answer these questions at a broad level at Photography Life. (For example, here’s an article on how to find beautiful landscapes, and another on what makes a good photo.) Today, though, I want to focus on a much smaller component of the answer instead – something I call “fractal beauty.”
Fractal beauty is the idea of beauty on many different levels. Like a branching tree or the crystals of a snowflake, fractally beautiful photos are interesting whether you look at the microscopic level or at the full picture.
To me, there are two ways to interpret the idea of fractal beauty. One relates to the landscape itself, which may have a multitude of interesting subjects both large and small; the other relates to the photo, which benefits from having interesting elements in every aspect of the composition.
Fractally Beautiful Landscapes
Let me return to the first unanswerable question: “What makes a good landscape?”
The closest thing I have to an answer could be summed up by the word variety. As a landscape photographer, I’m not really looking for places where there’s only one good photo to be taken – an obvious shot, even a beautiful one – if the rest of the landscape is uninspiring.
Sometimes, I’ll visit a popular, over-photographed location and feel like it’s a bit of a letdown in person. It’s not a letdown just because it’s famous or overcrowded (although that doesn’t help). Instead, the bigger problem is if there isn’t anything interesting beyond the one photo you always see. I greatly prefer a landscape which offers inspiration both big and small, in all directions. Fractal beauty.
Not all famous spots are letdowns. I will always love Yosemite National Park for landscape photography. Yes, it’s overcrowded, and the icons have been photographed millions of times from every conceivable angle. But what about the high country along Tioga Pass? Colorful trees reflected in the Merced River? Small details in the frost-covered grass in the morning? For me, Yosemite is the epitome of “fractal beauty” because it isn’t just about the big, iconic landscapes. Those are still beautiful, but so is every other level of the park.
I took all the photos above in Yosemite, and you can see how much inspiration it offers beyond the classic photos. That’s why the best places for landscape photography, at least as I see them, all have a component of fractal beauty. You could throw me in Yosemite with the assignment to only take abstract photos, and I doubt I would ever run out of inspiration. The same would be true if you told me to capture just towering mountains, just trees, just intimate landscapes, just waterfalls…
Not only does fractal beauty result in a greater variety of photos, but it also allows you to take photos that match your inspiration at a particular moment. For example, on my most recent trip to photograph Colorado’s fall color season, I felt inclined to focus on details and intimate landscapes much more than I had in the past, when the bigger landscapes had taken center stage. And the fractal beauty of the location made it possible.
How do you find landscapes that are beautiful at so many different levels? If you don’t already have a place in mind, I recommend starting with regional or national parks. Even – or especially – in the less “iconic” areas of a park, there are often beautiful pockets for landscape photography. Whether it’s a coincidence, or a law of nature beyond my understanding, beautiful places very often do have a fractal quality as well.
Another way to find these sorts of locations is simply to keep your eyes peeled. Don’t just pay attention to the biggest, most obvious landmarks around you – instead, look around. Quite often, just a little bit off the beaten path from the obvious subject, you’ll find a continuing thread of beauty around you. If you’re there to notice it, you can get some wonderful photographs.
Fractally Beautiful Photos
The other component of fractal beauty in landscape photography involves the photo itself. It goes back to that other question, “What makes a good landscape photo?”
I don’t have a perfect answer for you here, either, but one possible element is: The photo is interesting in every part of the composition! Nothing feels like it takes away from the image. Instead, every part of the photo contributes to your story, or to your emotional message.
This isn’t to say that the entire photo needs to be full of different subjects – there absolutely can be empty areas or places that draw less attention. It’s simply that those areas are still interesting and contribute to the photo in some way, rather than taking away from it.
That said, fractally beautiful photos often do have interesting elements in many different areas of the frame, and they reward viewers for looking at them for longer. I’m always trying to take landscape photos that can be cropped any possible way and still show something worth looking at. Not that I ever succeed exactly, but it’s a goal to chase after, and my favorite images usually accomplish it to some small degree.
Conclusion
Landscape photographers often try to chase after beauty, from the places they visit to the photos they take. I think you can take this approach further by thinking of the idea of fractal beauty. Search for locations with inspiring subjects of all different types, not just the obvious, grand view. And when you compose your photos, don’t just think in terms of the main subject – instead, pay attention to every part of the composition and ask yourself if it contributes to the whole.