An important follow-up note: I know this list is not complete. I added many names after initially publishing this post but after receiving more than 200 additional emails with suggestions, I simply cannot keep up. Thus, I will not be making any more additions to this post. If you would like to suggest yourself or someone for inclusion, please add their name and website in the comments below so future readers can learn about them. Thanks for understanding!
Just want to get to the list? Scroll past the text for the compilation of 200+ women landscape and nature photographers with diverse styles and inspiring portfolios. If you happen to be a publisher, photography event planner, podcast host, blogger, or someone with the ability to share excellent photography with others, please use this list to help broaden the circle of the photographers you feature.
Why a compilation like this?
I will start out by saying that I am generally not a fan of women-only lists because I want my photography to stand on its own. I don’t want to be known as a woman landscape photographer, just a landscape photographer who happens to be a woman. So, why am I writing this post? For the two reasons described below.
Since I started in landscape photography, this field has noticeably diversified in terms of both race and gender. Significantly more women are pursuing landscape photography (or at least are more visible) and many have developed compelling, top-tier portfolios of work. More women are teaching workshops, running photo tours, writing, showing in galleries, selling prints, and providing leadership within landscape photography. Yet, we continue to be woefully underrepresented at the top levels of this field as evidenced by the overwhelming absence of women in publications, conference/summit/symposia rosters, podcast interviews, portfolio features, brand ambassador line-ups, and other symbols of achievement and relevance in landscape photography. And, when a woman is included, it sometimes feels like little more than a token gesture.
This dynamic seems to be increasingly frustrating to women photographers and I see more people speaking out about this lack of representation more regularly. Some women are responding with women-only workshops, publications, and collaborative groups to offer alternatives to the "business as usual" spaces in this field where few women are represented. And, photographers concerned about this under-representation are being more vocal in calling it out.
One recent dust-up, for example, focused on a newly launched landscape photography summit with a 5-day program, 13 instructors, and not a single woman included in the summit schedule as a session leader or instructor. In some online discussions about this summit, a few people made the comment that the organizers probably just do not know where to find women instructors to participate and that such oversights are completely unintentional. While this might be the case, the organizers may not have even stopped to consider how well their line-up of speakers would represent landscape photography as it looks today and how the line-up would resonate with a good portion of their potential participants (i.e. women!). Regardless of the reason, it is demoralizing to see this kind of thing happen over and over again.
Second, I inadvertently found myself on the wrong side of the exact situation I often feel disappointed about. An editor for a popular photography website asked if I had some recommendations of photographers who do not get as much attention as they should on the site. I spent about ten minutes pulling together a list of some favorite photographers who came to mind first, not knowing (or asking) specifically how the site planned to use the information I shared. I did not include any women in my suggestions, primarily because of my perception that the first few who came to mind already have a strong presence on the site. A few days later they presented my suggestions as a public list and I immediately felt a pit in my stomach since I had an inadvertent role in promoting the same lack of representation that I find distressing. Had I known that my suggestions were going to be presented as a curated list, I would have made it my top priority to have women well represented. This compilation is offered as a small atonement for that mistake.
While it might have been true that few women were practicing at the highest levels of landscape photography even just a few years ago, that assessment is simply incorrect now, especially if women are being viewed on the quality of their work and not simply on other old-school metrics of success like awards won, publishing credits, or being deemed “masters of photography” by some third party (or themselves). While the internet has broken down many barriers in this field, some self-perpetuating cycles are keeping women from being better represented beyond self-publication, often due to the practice of only featuring and including those that already-prominent photographers keep in their immediate circle of contacts.
Since it seems like some publications, conferences, podcast hosts, bloggers, and sponsoring brands have a hard time finding women to feature, I decided to pull together a list of women landscape and nature photographers to serve as a resource – something that might pop up in Google for the event planners and publishers who want to be more representative and inclusive of the increasingly diverse field of landscape and nature photography. This is not a “best of” or “favorites” list. Instead, it is a diverse compilation of women who pursue landscape and nature photography in a serious, committed manner and have interesting photography in many different styles to share. Many are also teachers and writers, likely available to be included in conferences, publications, and interviews if only they would be asked to participate.
The basic criteria I used for this compilation includes:
Women photographers whose primary focus is landscape and nature photography,
Photographers who are advanced hobbyists or working professionals, demonstrating excellence, depth, and consistency in their portfolio, and
An online presence with a portfolio that can be linked here.
200+ Inspiring Women Landscape & Nature Photographers
A notable portion of this list comes from Landscapes by Women. Be sure to visit their site to learn more about their contributors and efforts to advance women in landscape photography. You may also be interested in visiting the Female Nature Photography website if this topic is of interest to you.
*The women with an asterisk by their names have passed away but have portfolios that deserve to be seen and appreciated, so I have included them here.
And in case you did not see this note at the top:
An important follow-up note: I know this list is not complete. I added many names after initially publishing this post but after receiving more than 200 additional emails with suggestions, I simply cannot keep up. Thus, I will not be making any more additions to this post. If you would like to suggest yourself or someone for inclusion, please add their name and website in the comments below so future readers can learn about them. Thanks for understanding!