Today I'd like to address a statement that you often read online and that I occasionally come across online: "It's photographed to death". Maybe one of those german things 😅 In nature photography, this statement usually refers to spots, places or entire countries, but also to animal and plant species. Photographers among you will be familiar with this statement.
I always find this statement astonishing and would like to share a basic, neutral and sensitive thought about it: What the fuck?
I can't express how pointless I find this statement.
This article is not a weighing up of pros and cons with a "neutral" claim, but simply a clear personal rebuttal with some thoughts on this and a somewhat provocative analysis of the causes.
The context
Let me start with the statement itself and shed some light on it: You read and hear these statements from time to time, both in wildlife photography (example photography of kingfishers), as well as in plant photography (example bush bindweed), macro photography (e.g. bluebells) or landscape photography (pretty much any better known place).
In landscape photography, this is also often mentioned in the context of an increasingly developed infrastructure or (at peak times) spots that are too full.
Just one example
Let's take a closer look: And so that I don't have it easy, I'll now take a classic that is often mentioned in the context of "photographed to death": Iceland, because there really is a lot of photography here 😁
I can still remember well how a photographer in Portugal - taking photos at Praia da Marinha - once explained to me that Iceland was never an option for him because it was far too crowded and the motifs had all been photographed many times.
About the sensibility
First of all, it's a bit absurd to do this at Praia da Marinha. It's a bit like saying, standing next to the Eiffel Tower, that people in France generally like to live in seclusion. However, to apply this statement to an entire country that offers pretty much every type of landscape in Europe and a huge amount of fauna is of course nonsense; but it may well be that he wasn't even aware of the diversity of the landscape and the size of the country, as he had never been there.
But I'll stick with this example, as you often come across this statement about Iceland online.
There are so many spots and areas there that are incredibly diverse and offer practically endless perspectives and motifs. For example, the whole area around the Vatnajökull glacier, the coasts of Snaefellsnes, the cliffs and rocky landscapes around Dyrholaey, the Westfjords, Pingvellir National Park, the highlands, etc etc.
In the middle of the bubble
I would also like to mention one thing that is relevant to all further thoughts in this article: the question of whether things are really photographed to death only arises from an internal perspective anyway, i.e. within the small community of photographers, when you compare your own works with those of other photographers. Nobody outside this bubble is interested in this at all and not everyone inside this bubble by a long shot.
And as a reminder, these ‘people outside’ are slightly outnumbered by 99.9% 😅 For example, if I were to ask 100 people in my extended family circle about the exact location of this scene taken at one of THE classic spots, exactly no one would know.
For the rest of the article, however, I'll focus on this interior view.
Let's make it more concrete
I'm going to make it even more difficult for myself and use a very touristy hotspot to illustrate why almost nothing is "photographed to death" for me: let's go to the famous Jökulsarlon glacier lagoon, where several hundred people land at the main parking lot every day at the wrong times.
For me as a nature photographer, it is possible to realize perhaps 0.1% of the image ideas as well as 0.1% of the weather conditions that are possible here in a spectacular way on every multi-day visit to this versatile spot.
I've done the count: With a radius of perhaps 20 minutes' drive from Diamond Beach, I know of at least 14 areas (each about 400m long) in the Glacier Lagoon area, each with very different motifs and perspectives that can be photographed there. And they look completely different depending on the time of year, storm and weather conditions, the position of the moon and the Northern Lights.
I have certainly been there at least 50 days in the last 10 years and have been able to realize maybe 5% of the pictures that go through my head there, with new ideas being added all the time. I have often shared the idea that I would like to spend several months photographing only at this spot, for example. Seriously, even 200 days in a row, from February to late summer, I wouldn't get bored.
What else is of interest to someone who has already been there > 50 days?
For example, I haven't yet managed…
- to generate various landscape shots at open aperture, where I produce blur circles with the sand or the ice structures in the backlight
- to realise "half-half-underwater shots" in the lagoon side
- to devote myself to the common loons and red-throated divers that breed not far from the glacier lagoon (great habitats!)
- using the macro lens to "process" the ice structures of Diamond Beach with the last colour of the sky
- exploring the area by boat and finally photographing a seal on an iceberg
- exploring the larger deep blue ice caves on the glacier
- to observe the arctic foxes that have dens there at an already identified location
- to generate landscape shots through ice holes under a colourful sky
- to capture really beautiful auroras at Diamond Beach (green reflections)
- to create a series on the mating snow buntings and golden plovers in the western lagoon area
- to capture the interesting landscape perspectives of the northern side of the lagoon and create neat 180° panoramas there
- to realise a special long exposure backlight shot that has been floating around in my head for 1 year (at a huge tern colony just "around the corner")
I would probably have to be 547 years old to be able to say that I have "photographed it to death" in this area.
But then why does this word exist? My (somewhat provocative) hypotheses
I think it should be clear from this first example that the statement doesn't really make sense from a photographic point of view. For reasons of subject matter alone.
And I haven't even touched on the subject of how you can always find new perspectives with creativity. Nor have I reached the point that there are times of year or day when I find "hotspots" completely empty, etc.
But why is this comment still made from time to time? I would like to formulate my hypotheses just as clearly as the word "photographed to death" is formulated. According to my observations, one of these reasons usually plays a role:
1. regardless of the reality, this is exactly how you would like to see it. For example, because for various reasons you never get to the places in question or can only visit a very small proportion of such places. In wildlife photography, for example, there is also the fact that not everyone has access to interesting animal species (wildlife)
2. the quality standards are low - of course, if I don't have too high demands on the light, the exact cloud structure, the foreground composition, the bokeh, etc., I naturally graze an area or motif much faster (terrible term, which doesn't correspond to my type of photography anyway)
3. you are almost dogmatically stuck in a genre, and even within a genre you are severely limited - e.g. in landscape photography to certain weather conditions, focal lengths or image compositions etc. The narrower the "blinkers", the quicker I have naturally "photographed a subject or a place to death" for myself
4. A lack of creativity or the ability to put my own signature on a much-photographed subject or to produce an image that stands out from the crowd and is memorable
5. Ignorance of the actual conditions of a location or the behavior and habitat of animal and plant species
My conclusion
Finally, I would like to build a small bridge: of course I realize that it is now challenging to generate an image that will be remembered as unique in a few specific and much-photographed locations.
However, the term "photographed to death" does not really offer any scope for a differentiated view, but excludes things from the outset. Therefore, in my opinion, the term is usually more of a thoughtless or ignorant statement, but sometimes also subconscious wishful thinking to reduce FOMO.
From time to time, I also observe an almost dogmatic urge on the part of some to avoid more well-known places - in my eyes, this happens when you are very much caught up in the "bubble", looking strongly to the right and left and always having to go higher, further and faster. In fact, in most places (not all!) where this term is used, not even 1% of the photographic possibilities have been exhausted - so the term is far too short-sighted for me.
In the end, there are simply good reasons to keep trying out new things and just as good reasons to keep working on familiar motifs or areas.
Anything else would be strange. Otherwise, as an Icelandic photographer, for example, you would be at a disadvantage and living in the wrong place. But the exact opposite is the case.
With skill, creativity and passion, I can still create images anywhere in the world that evoke a "wow!", even in the "bubble" of photographers (outside of it anyway).
You can also see the principle when you look at the animal world: in Germany, for example, the most photographed animals are deer, foxes, hares and certain species of birds, butterflies and dragonflies.
How sad would it be if you could only take good photos of exotic rarities? For my part, I am very happy that new and beautiful pictures of these great native animals are appearing every day and that the solution is not to "flee" to increasingly exotic locations for rare motifs with huge travel expenses.
I would always prefer a really great deer picture in the backlight from the neighborhood to a mediocre polar bear picture in hard light, here the supposedly "dead photographed" species brings no disadvantages in my eyes in a comparison. I feel exactly the same way about landscape photography and every other genre.
So those are my thoughts on the subject and I would like to leave it at that for today - and thank you for your interest👋
Best regards,
Thomas
