[etra0]

I guess if you take it literally, yeah.

But I've seen plenty of boring pics of lakes and none were on top posts, contrary to these cases.

It is of course subjective what makes a good photo or not, but sometimes it is pretty clear why a picture reached top posts.

[WalterBright]

My dad was an amateur photographer for a while, and even got one of his photos published in the newspaper.

He said nothing improves a landscape picture more than having a person in the picture. I didn't believe him.

Later, I went on a trip to Hawaii, and took maybe 300 landscape pictures of its beauty. Upon looking at them at home, I realized he was right. The ones with people in them, even random strangers, were always more interesting.

[dpark]

Amazing photographers can shoot landscapes that are deeply compelling in their own right. Good photographers really can’t. There aren’t a lot of Ansel Adamses out there.

[WalterBright]

Weeelll, I don't find Ansel Adams's work very interesting. I have several coffee table art books, some of which have old west landscape pictures, and it's the people in them that make it work.

Something I do with my friends is look at Annie Liebovitz portraits and try to recreate the ones we like.

[dpark]

That’s totally fair if Adams’s doesn’t do much for you. Regardless, I’m in agreement with you that most landscapes are not actually that interesting without people in them. Humans are naturally drawn to images of other humans.

[foobarchu]

I would amend the idea to include artifacts that suggest people activity and wildlife that can easily be personified

[dpark]

It’s like throwing bacon into an otherwise average recipe. Is it a cheap way to make it good? Yeah. But is it good? Probably. And very plausibly it tastes better than the more difficult recipe that lacks the bacon.