Recently, I have been looking for photographers that do landscape photography that is more on the darker side or eerie. I have been testing out this type of eerie landscape photography for the past two weeks and I think I’m going to continue on that path. So in order for me to bring my landscape photographs to the next level, I knew I had to do some homework and look at other photographers.

I found a few landscape photographers that fit what I was looking for, but the one that stood out to me was Mikko Lagerstedt. A lot of his photographs are taken at night or just after the sun goes down. Some of them are also taken when there is some sort of fog or mist. I think that these things give the effect that is needed for the photographs to feel eerie. To me, photographs can’t just look like something, but they have to feel like something too in order to have a personal connection.

A lot of Lagerstedt’s photographs have stars in them which gives it less of an eerie feel, but I believe that how dark he makes the foreground compared to the stars is what keeps that feeling of eeriness alive. There are also some photographs where he plays with the elements of the weather. One of his photographs involves the snow and is only lit by the street lamps. This helps the eerie feeling making it look like a scene from a horror movie.

As I continue my landscape project for this semester, I think that I’m going to try some of Lagerstedt’s techniques and see how effective they are with my photographs. Those techniques may turn out to be wrong for some of my photographs, but that’s why I’m going to test these techniques, to see if they work with my photographs or not.

All images http://www.mikkolagerstedt.com/