Landscape vs Travel Photography

Landscape vs Travel Photography, and How My Tours Have Changed

For years I have described my trips as landscape photography tours. It made sense. We go to places like Lofoten, Lapland, Iceland, Ireland, the Faroe Islands. Big scenery. Big skies. Big drama.

But somewhere along the way, without really planning it, the tours changed. Or maybe it was me that changed.

When I look back through my own images, and through the work my guests go home with, most of it is not classic landscape photography at all. It is travel photography. It is about place, not just scenery.

I have also realised something else over the years, which is that most people do not actually only love landscape photography.

They think they do. They book a landscape photography tour. They talk about mountains and coastlines and big dramatic views.

But what they really respond to, and what they end up photographing the most, is everything else that makes up a place.

The roads.
The buildings.
The details.
The small human traces in the landscape.
The quiet moments in between the famous viewpoints.

In other words, what they love is travel photography.

You will always get the purists who only want to shoot landscapes, and that is totally fine!

But for most people, once they start paying attention, they realise they are actually drawn to the full story of a place, not just the big, dramatic bits.

What I Mean by Landscape vs Travel Photography

Landscape photography, at least in the traditional sense, is about the land itself. Mountains, coastlines, valleys, light, weather. The goal is often to simplify the frame, strip out distractions, and let the natural environment be the hero.

Travel photography is messier. In a good way.

It is not just the mountain. It is the red cabin sitting at the edge of the ocean with that mountain rising behind it.
It is the winding road that leads you there.
It is the café you warm up in afterwards.
It is the fishing boats coming into harbour at dusk.
It is the way the rain softens a village street, or how sea mist creeps through a valley and swallows half the scene.

Travel photography captures not just scenery, but the experience and story of a place. Its people. Its culture. Its everyday life. It is about making images that help someone else feel what it was like to be there.

They Overlap More Than People Think

The more I have thought about it, the more I have realised this is not a hard line between two separate things.

Landscape photography and travel photography overlap a lot. They are not enemies. They are more like two ends of the same spectrum.

Landscape photography emphasises place, light, and formal composition. It is about waiting for the right conditions, simplifying a scene, and letting the natural environment do most of the talking.

Travel photography prioritises narrative and context. It is about showing how a place feels to move through. It is more people focused, more detail focused, and more about the story than the single perfect frame.

In reality, most of the images I care about now sit somewhere in the middle of those two ideas.

Different Mindsets, Different Habits

They also ask slightly different things of you as a photographer.

With classic landscape photography, you are often planning hard in advance. You are tracking weather, tides, seasons, and sun angles. You are returning to the same viewpoint again and again, waiting for that one moment when everything lines up.

Travel photography is more reactive. You are staying light on your feet. You are responding to what is happening in front of you. You are noticing small scenes, human moments, odd details, and bits of visual friction that would never show up on a location list.

Technically, the choices can be different too.

Landscapes tend to lean towards wider lenses, tripods, filters, and slower, more deliberate shooting.

Travel photography leans towards hand held work, smaller lenses, quicker decisions, and being comfortable with imperfection.

What Has Not Changed: The Planning

One thing that has not changed at all is how deliberately I still plan each day.

I still sit down the night before and choose our locations based on the best conditions. I am looking at weather, cloud cover, wind, tides, snow, light direction, and how everything is likely to evolve over the next twenty four hours.

The goal is still the same as it has always been. Put people in the right place, at the right time, with the best possible chance of good light and good atmosphere.

That part of the job has not changed.

What has changed is what happens around that.

We might plan to be at a big viewpoint for sunrise, but we will also pay attention to the harbour we pass through on the way. The café we stop in afterwards. The roadside scenes we find when the light goes flat and the plan needs to change.

The structure is still there.
The intention is still there.
It is just no longer only about the single hero shot of the day.

Guidance, Not Just Locations

A big part of my role on these trips is not just choosing locations and timing.

It is being there with you while you are actually making the photographs.

We will regularly stop to look at what people are shooting on location. I will talk you through compositions, small tweaks, different focal lengths, alternative angles, and simple changes that can make a big difference to how an image feels.

Sometimes that is about improving a classic landscape shot.

Sometimes it is about turning a messy, half seen travel moment into something more deliberate and more personal.

I am not interested in just pointing you at a viewpoint, telling you that is the shot, and leaving you to it.

The goal is to help you understand why something works, how to see more clearly, and how to come home with images that feel like your own, not just copies of mine.

What I Have Noticed Guiding Tours

After guiding photography tours for years across Ireland, Norway, Finland and beyond, I have noticed something really consistent.

People do not only get excited about the epic viewpoints. They get just as excited about the smaller, quieter moments in between.

They slow down to photograph a door.
A window.
A hand painted sign.
A boat tied up in the wrong place.
A man walking his dog through sea fog.

And when I look at the images people are most proud of at the end of a trip, they are rarely the obvious postcard shots.

They are the ones that feel personal.
The ones that feel like this is what it was like to be there.

A Bit of Ethics, Whether We Like It or Not

There is also a difference in intent, and even in ethics.

With landscapes, your main responsibility is usually to the place itself. How you move through it. How you leave it. Whether you are respecting access, landowners, and fragile environments.

With travel photography, you are also responsible to the people you photograph, even when they are just small figures in the frame.

You are making choices about how you represent a place and the people who live there. What you include. What you leave out. What kind of story your images end up telling.

That stuff matters, and it is something I talk about more and more on my tours now.

What My Tours Actually Are Now

When I look at what we actually do day to day on my trips, it is already a blend of both.

We still chase the light for the big scenes.
We still stand around in the cold waiting for the sky to do something interesting.

But we also spend just as much time wandering through villages, hanging around harbours, stopping for coffee, and pulling over at completely unplanned spots because something small and strange has caught our eye.

I am not trying to turn people into travel photographers instead of landscape photographers.

I am trying to help them be more flexible photographers who can respond to the place they are in, rather than forcing every destination into the same visual box.

If your dream is still to come home with dramatic, wall worthy landscape shots, you will absolutely get those too.

Not All Tours Are the Same, and That Is the Point

One thing I should probably say out loud is that not all of my tours lean the same way.

Some trips really are much more landscape focused, and that is exactly what they are meant to be.

The Dolomites, which I will be running again in 2027, is a good example of that. Those mountains are just epic. The scale, the drama, the light, the structure of the landscape itself. That kind of place almost demands a more classic landscape photography mindset, and the tour is built around that.

Other trips, like Ireland for example, naturally drift much more towards travel photography.

Yes, you still shoot the classic locations.
Yes, you still chase the big landscapes and the dramatic light.

But all the other photographs you make along the way matter just as much.

The bog roads
The fishing huts
The turf piles
The ole 135 Massey sitting in a field.
The sheep that bring traffic to a standstill
The traditional shopfronts
The pubs that still look the same as they did thirty years ago

Those images are not filler. They are what turn a collection of landscape shots into a story of a place.

In somewhere like Ireland, the small scenes and the human details do not just add flavour. They are the point.

The landscapes and the details complement each other. You need both for the full picture.

So What Does This Mean If You Join One of My Tours

I still call what I do landscape photography tours, because that is the language people understand when they are searching for trips like this.

But if you join one of my tours, what you are really signing up for is something broader.

You will absolutely photograph mountains, coastlines and big scenery.

You will also photograph villages, roads, cabins, harbours, cafés, people, weather, and all the small details that make a place feel like a place.

You do not need to arrive with a fully formed style or a huge amount of technical knowledge.

You just need to be willing to slow down, ask questions, and experiment. I will take care of the rest.

Where I Am At With It All

I am still deeply in love with landscape photography. That is not going anywhere.

But I am even more in love with photographing places as a whole. The quiet moments. The messy moments. The human moments. The in between moments.

And that is what my tours are becoming more and more about.

Less about ticking off viewpoints.
More about slowing down, paying attention, and coming home with images that actually feel like your own experience of a place, not just a copy of something you have seen a thousand times online.

If this way of seeing and photographing places resonates with you, you will probably enjoy the kind of trips I run.