I think that your question is a reasonable one. The answer does not address the quality of the work, just how we categorize it. (I often enjoy and impressed by good astro-photography.)
In my view such a photograph is not landscape photography. Landscape photography itself grows out of the tradition of landscape painting, which has been broadly accepted to be work that focuses on… the landscape: mountains, oceans, forests, fields, rivers, meadows, and the elements of the more or less natural environment of the earth. It also traditionally embodies a perspective on the relationship between humans and the landscape — either by the inclusion of human elements or by their exclusion. (Traditionally, neither people nor other evidence of humans, such as buildings were NOT excluded from landscape art, in fact it used to be expected that the human presence was included for scale or other reasons.)
Astrophotography is not this. In fact, it is “from” the earth, not “of” or “about” the earth and its landscape.
There are always edge cases where the lines are less clear, but that doesn’t change the underlying ways of categorizing things. For example, one could certainly make an environmental portrait of a person in the landscape and then wonder whether it was more of a landscape or more of a portrait. Or produce a stunning photograph of a downhill ski racer against a monumental alpine landscape and suggest that it was something of both. But we are still able to distinguish between portrait, sports, and landscape photography as genres.
There is an analogous situation with astrophotography in the form of landscapes that include the night sky. So a long exposure night photograph o fthe landscape in which star trails are allowed to form would seem to remain a landscape photograph. Or a similar photograph made with a high ISO camera that freezes the stars’ motion against the natural landscape would also seem to be a landscape.
But a photograph that is purely of the heavens seems to be not landscape photography, but astrophotography.
This question may only be such here, where there is not obvious FM forum for astrophotography. If there was an astrophotography forum, I don’t think that the question would even arise.
HInt. ;-)
Feb 09, 2026 at 11:00 AM
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