Landscape photography is often about achieving maximum depth of field, fantastic sharpness, and gathering as much quality into one image as possible. Or is it? This photographer shoots everything wide open and has an excellent reason for it.

Adrian Vila has established a reputation for his ethereal black and white images featuring natural and urban landscapes. Unlike the majority of landscape photographers, his work is not about megapixels and lens sharpness. Instead, it’s about conveying his personal sense of a place through his images, rather than trying to replicate more scientifically what he finds in front of his lens.

Vila and I have a similar approach, and I wish I’d also developed the same creative, almost poetic understanding of why it works. I wrote a few months ago about why much of my woodland photography is done with a cheap, Chinese, faux-vintage 35mm lens that opens all the way up to f/1.4. Like Vila, my interest isn’t in image quality but creating an impression of the light and the forest as I experience them when walking the dog each morning.

Do you shoot wide open for the same reasons? Let us know in the comments below.