Walking around the Captiola Art and Wine Festival where I was exhibiting my own photography I noticed something: there are a lot of photographers these days. There were probably 10-15 landscape photographers exhibiting there as well. And at the close of the show on Saturday I realized something else: not a single one of them was a woman (at least that I saw). And reflecting upon my experiences with photo-sharing sites like flickr and 500px I noticed the same pattern: an overwhelming majority of landscape and nature photographers are guys. Of course there are women nature photographers out there, and some extremely talented and successful ones at that, but they are still a tiny minority.

The question I have is why? The way I see it, you have to have three things in order to want to become a landscape and nature photographer: 1) Access to the technology. 2) A desire to make art. And 3) A love of the outdoors. Yet none of these seems to be a valid reason for the small number of women photographers. After all, the explosion of digital technology has made photography accessible to everyone, and we are seeing DSLRs everywhere these days. And I know first hand how many women are involved in art; stroll the aisles at any art show and you will see women painters, women sculptors, women jewelers, and women printmakers. As far as the outdoorsy thing, I think I know just as many girls as guys who like to camp, hike, travel, and adventure. So why hasn’t the digital revolution produced more women landscape photographers?

I don’t have any answers to this question. It’s just something I’ve been pondering and I’d love to hear from the ladies out there: why aren’t more of you involved in nature photography? Let’s get a discussion going. Use the comment section to chime in.

Cheers!

Josh