Originally posted by AgentL Interesting, there are definitely two schools of thought with landscape photos. I personally feel that the absence of a human presence puts things too much in the camp of "seen it" landscapes, where it's been done so many times it's hard to create anything new. A human presence anchors it more in the personal expression and experience of the photographer.
Originally posted by Fdooch For me, "I saw" is much better than "I was here." And why do you give up personal expression to landscapes? As for the presence of a person, I spoke about the ratio of scales above.
IMHO both of you are right, human presence adds to certain landscapes, in that it helps to express scale, grandiose-ness and the feeling of being there. At the same time, to express scale, the human has to be present in such a way to promote the effect that was just mentioned. If the presence hinders such an effect of feeling that the presence becomes an impediment or might misrepresent the grandiose-ness of the landscape, which in this particular case, might be true (as Fdooch succinctly put). The landscape itself was clicked with a wide-angle lens and the person was near to the said lens thus the skewed perspective of mountains vs person.
That said, unfortunately the physical restrictions of the place, did not allow for more options :-/ . Thanks to both of you for the robust comments - appreciated.