In a world where mountains can be summoned with a prompt and sunsets sculpted by code, the once-revered art of landscape photography is being quietly devalued. No longer must one hike through storms, wait in silence for the perfect glow, or master the delicate interplay of light and lens — now, a few keystrokes and an algorithm can conjure an image that mimics the sublime. But while the results may look similar on a screen, they carry none of the sweat, patience, or soul of the real thing. As generative AI floods our visual spaces, we must ask: What is the worth of a photograph if its maker never stood before the view?

Embers of the Horizon

The Weight Behind the Work

True landscape photography is demanding. It’s waking up at 4 a.m., chasing fleeting light, and braving unpredictable weather. It’s hours of scouting, lugging gear across sand and stone, and waiting for the precise second when atmosphere, light, and terrain align. It’s also thousands of frames — many of them discarded — and years of learning exposure, composition, color theory, and editing with intention. The resulting image is more than a pretty picture; it’s a document of experience, a meditation in visual form.

Now, that effort is being quietly flattened.

Yamacraw Beach Sunrise

Enter AI: Infinite Scenes, Zero Story

AI image generators can now produce convincing landscapes in seconds. Misty mountains, glowing auroras, rolling clouds over turquoise seas — no passport, no camera, no knowledge of nature required. You can even tell it to copy Ansel Adams or Montez Kerr. It will. The problem isn’t just that AI can mimic style. It’s that in doing so, it blurs the value of authentic creation. Viewers — and even buyers — are increasingly indifferent to whether an image was captured or constructed. Likes, shares, and sales flow to what’s visually pleasing, not what’s honest.

What Gets Lost

When skill and effort are devalued, so too are the principles that made landscape photography matter in the first place:

   1. Presence: Being there is the soul of the art — feeling the wind, waiting out the storm, chasing that fleeting light.

  2.  Trust: Real photos are moments of truth. AI composites are plausible fiction.

  3. Legacy: A body of work built on real moments stands as a historical and emotional archive. AI images, by contrast, are weightless — they reference nothing.

Starry Night Reflections

Reclaiming the Value of the Real

As artists, we can’t stop AI, nor should we pretend it doesn’t have creative uses. But we can double down on what makes our work irreplaceable:

1.Tell the story behind the shot — the weather, the hike, the hours.

2.Share the process — people love seeing behind the curtain.

3.Educate your audience — help them understand what goes into each frame.

4.Disclose your truth — when your image is real, say so proudly.

Art collectors, curators, and serious buyers will continue to value skill, experience, and provenance — but only if we make sure they understand what they’re looking at.

Droplets of Sunshine

Landscape photography isn’t just about images — it’s about earned moments. Its about the skill and vision of the photographer to create something meaningful and special.. Its about  capturing that  fleeting beauty, and the respect for nature that comes from standing in it — these are things AI can never replicate. These moments cannot be recreated by AI, they at best can be mimicked 

We are more than keystroke jockeys. We are visual storytellers, environmental interpreters, and documentarians of time and place. 

MontezKerr, a Bahamian, is a visual artist armed with a camera and a lens. His work has been collected locally and internationally.