A Little Humanity in the Wild

When we think of landscape and nature photography, we tend to think of those pristine wilderness views, untrammeled and void of people. Because people just ain't natural. Right?

I would beg to differ. People in nature are perfectly natural and should be included for several reasons.

First, including people in your landscape images helps to tell the story. Let's face it. You bring a camera along on your excursions so you can later share the experiences with friends and family. Probably the same people you're out having fun with. You can gather around over wine or beer and laugh, discuss and enjoy the excursion all over again. Having your friends and family in the images rounds out the goofy and the serious experiences.

A person or people in a scene, gives the viewer a sense of scale. You're high on a hillside and want to take an image of the view with the valley below. But it just doesn't seem as grand, does it? get a friend in the photo and if you don't have a friend, put your camera on something steady (a tripod if you have one) and pose yourself. Immediately we see the scale of the view. We all know the average size of a human. Add them to the scene and all of a sudden we know how big that hill you're on really is.

You can add context to your image by including people. Along these same lines is that people in nature photos help to add a little context to the scene. In the image above, the viewer can deduce that there was a hike to the top of the hill in the winter - it must have been a strenuous hike (look how far down the river is) and the hiker decided try her hand with some yoga poses to stretch out her muscles.

Looking for a point of interest or focus to your image, people help to do that. People in your images can add a balancing point to an expanse either by being the subject of the image with an amazing or repetitious background or by helping point the viewer to the subject. The above image would have been ok with the view of the river, but adding the hiker, she now becomes the subject against a hazy background.

In the end, adding people to your nature scenes helps make that scene relatable to the viewer. We all love to look at beautiful images of fantastical places, but add people there and we can all of a sudden see ourselves in those places too - without ever being there or even really needing to be there.

So next time you head out with your camera for some fun with your friends and family, make sure you snag a couple of images with them to help tell the story, add perspective and contest, and really just because they are great people and deserve to be your subject.