How does a representation of the landscape differ from our experience of it?

I always see beautiful images of landscapes and I am amazed at the skill of the artist but I can’t help but wonder about what was happening around the photographer as they took it. What were they thinking? How were they feeling? What was behind the camera?

I live in a beautiful town and I’ve travelled to beautiful places. I love capturing the mystery of these places and the beauty of the unknowable history written in everything you can see. But in my experience, photographing landscapes can be a stressful yet rewarding process. Sometimes you’ll go on lovely summer walks with your friends, taking pictures surrounded by life and nature of the earth. Other times you’ll have to walk around your town alone at night because your friends no longer live in town and you have a project due the next day. However, photographs don’t easily catch these nuances. They don’t capture the fact that you were being absolutely swarmed by mosquitoes, or how absolutely frozen your fingers were as you clicked the shutter button. The goal is an interesting photo and you sometimes have to suffer a little to get them.