My advice- Know the rules, know the nomenclature, familiarize yourself with the terms and slang that photographers use to communicate with each other but DON'T GET HUNG UP ON ANY OF IT! Sometimes the etymology gets too thick.

There is concept in photography called SELECTIVE FOCUS- that means you, as the photgraher get to select what is in focus and what is not. If you are out shooting "landscapes" and decide you want to do a photographic study of a single blade of grass or a pebble- that is your prerogative. Focus is one of tools you can use to isolate a subject or bring an entire vista into razor sharp accutance. OK- if you enter that pebble shot in a landscape contest, you may run into a snag or a panoramic landscape in a macro competition- well- you get it!

Also, while I am at it- there are so many misconceptions about aperture and depth of field especially when it comes to large format film photography of yore! True enough, some of the old view camera lenses were kinda slow- some of the famous ones were f/9.5 maximum aperture. So, their sweet spot kicked in on around f/16, however f/64 in many formulas was refraction hell. Introducing Captain Theodore Scheimpflug and his principle where by tilting the front standard of a view camera thereby altering the plane of focus the photographer can maxamize depth of field at more moderate apertures. A similar method could minimize D.O.F. even at smaller apertures. Image and perspective management is a big deal in large format work.

So..the most effective and impactful photographs usually make a clear statement. Again, you are the author and get to make whatever statement you would like to express. If you statement is very succinct and to the point, viewers may more easily understand its meaning. If it is abstract, more complex, chaotic, tense or unclear-well let the chips fall where the may. It's up to you- as an artist-you da bozz!

For me, as a commercial photographer it's different-SOMETIMES! Oftentimes I have to visually interpret someone else's statement. The client, the art director or the account executive becomes the arbiter of the image and I just sit back and become the technician. This is where categorization and specifics come into play. Someone else then decides what's in or out of focus, what needs to be emphasized, whether it is a close up detail shot or a wide view etc. It's more fun, for me, when the just throw the job at me and leave me to my own devices. Sometimes team efforts are enjoyably as well. Preconceived ideas can be a technical challenge but that's OK too.


Scene- Landscape?- no big difference to me. It's just when I am at Thanksgiving dinner and one of my obtuse relatives tee-me off, my wife doesn't say "don't make a landscape" she says "calm down and "don't make a scene!

Iconic photgraher Helmet Newton called some of his nude studies "landscapes"! So there you go!

Landscape photography is a subject based term. I have never seen a definition that uses percent in focus as a definition nor do I think it would be helpful in any real sense to break it up. Further I have seen the term "scenic" used in connection to other forms of photography including street and architectural.

No - not percent in focus. That was never a definition. I was referring to area, with a large area defined more appropriately as "landscape" and a relatively smaller area defined as "scene", which, as you say, could also be suitable for street and architecture. The point - Does my pic (page 2 item 3) cover a large enough area to be termed "landscape"?
I have viewed double page spreads in NG covering perhaps 50 square miles with everything in sharp focus, whereas my intention was to defocus foreground, immediately concentrating the eye on the intended subject - bull rushes in varying stages of development.

There is a school of thought that prefers a Landscape to be sharp from the nearest blade of grass in the foreground to the furthest distant hills in the background. I probably agree - but I find that more often lately my shots are not true Landscape but more Scene, with the subject likely to be middle ground. In such circumstance I find sharp foreground, and sometimes sharp background, can easily distract, and wish I could create a sort of “foreground boket” - but I put up with shortening the DOF which takes the eye straight to middle ground without looking for leading lines. This gives me the choice of sharp middle and background, or just sharp middle.
Not for dedicated pixel peepers rejoicing in sharpest detail, perhaps overlooking artistic intention?