With few exceptions, If you do an internet search on famous photographs or photographers, more than likely it will return images that are gruesome, tragic and not very pleasant to look at. They tell stories and solicit guttural responses. You probably wouldn’t want to hang them on your wall and in many cases wouldn’t want your kids to see them. Lastly, they often lack polish and focus. In general, I think almost anyone could take better photos with their smart phones.

The reason is that “famous” doesn’t equate to good, pleasant or desirable. In the case of photography famous means “does it tell a story and to what degree does it generate a visceral response."

I don’t want to diminish the newsworthy, lesson learning importance of these photographs. They do have a purpose. The stories they tell are important. However, photography is much much more. They can take you to a safe place and lure you into daydreams. They can provide hope, and refuge from the ugly of the world. Lastly, they can make you smile when nothing else can.

Take a look a the site Best Landscape Photographers To Inspire in 2022.   The way they have captured the world is just that. Try not to smile when exploring their worlds. 

Below I profiled five photographers from my favorites. Following these profiles, in the section titled, "For Your Education" I highlight some of the folks through history which have influenced the industry/art.

Please be aware that the profiles are a direct copy from Wikipedia and the images I just pulled off the web. Please do not copy or try to purchase as I own none of it. Art isn't free so if you want to purchase one of these prints I'd suggest going to the original photographer and pay homage where it's appropriate.

Drop me an email at Rob@RobinsonsCloud.com and share your favorites and let me know if I have missed any one important from my profiles.

First and foremost is Anna-Lou Leibovitz.  Annie is an American portrait photographer best known for her engaging portraits, particularly of celebrities, which often feature subjects in intimate settings and poses. Leibovitz's Polaroid photo of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, taken five hours before Lennon's murder, is considered one of Rolling Stone magazine's most famous cover photographs. The Library of Congress declared her a Living Legend, and she is the first woman to have a feature exhibition at Washington's National Portrait Gallery.

Ansel Easton Adams would probably come second. Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advocating "pure" photography which favored sharp focus and the use of the full tonal range of a photograph. 

Steve McCurry (born April 23, 1950) is an American photographer, freelancer, and photojournalist. His photo Afghan Girl, of a girl with piercing green eyes, has appeared on the cover of National Geographic several times. McCurry has photographed many assignments for National Geographic and has been a member of Magnum Photos since 1986. McCurry is the recipient of numerous awards, including Magazine Photographer of the Year, awarded by the National Press Photographers Association; the Royal Photographic Society's Centenary Medal; and two first-place prizes in the World Press Photo contest (1985 and 1992).

Francesco Scavullo (January 16, 1921 – January 6, 2004) was an American fashion photographer best known for his work on the covers of Cosmopolitan and his celebrity portraits.

Tom Styrkowicz, Is a local Kansas guy. He has an amazing talent for getting people to tell their stores via his photographs. In addition, his Community Portrait events, and Never Obsolete Company Photo concepts are innovative and original. Check out his site at 53Tom

A list of some of the more profound influencers in photography over the years.  (With your suggestions and contributions I hope to continue to grow the list)

Anne Elizabeth Geddes MNZM (born 1956) is an Australian-born, New York City-based portrait photographer known primarily for her elaborately-staged photographs of infants. Geddes's books have been published in 83 countries. According to Amazon.com, she has sold more than 18 million books and 13 million calendars. In 1997, Cedco Publishing sold more than 1.8 million calendars and date books bearing Geddes' photography. Her 1996 debut book Down in the Garden, was featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show and made it to the New York Times bestseller list. Her books have been translated into 23 languages.

Frans Lanting (born 13 July 1951) is a Dutch National Geographic photographer, author and speaker.  Lanting is considered one of the greatest photographers of the natural world in the contemporary times. His work is featured in exhibitions, magazines, and books worldwide. For more than twenty years, he has photographically documented flora and fauna, as well as the relationship between humans and nature in settings from Antarctica to Amazon. Lantings has been presented with several awards as a conservationist and a photographer.

Dorothea Lange (born Dorothea Margaretta Nutzhorn; May 26, 1895 – October 11, 1965) was an American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Lange's photographs influenced the development of documentary photography and humanized the consequences of the Great Depression.

William Eugene Smith (December 30, 1918 – October 15, 1978) was an American photojournalist. He has been described as "perhaps the single most important American photographer in the development of the editorial photo essay."  His major photo essays include World War II photographs, the visual stories of an American country doctor and a nurse midwife, the clinic of Albert Schweitzer in French Equatorial Africa, the city of Pittsburgh, and the pollution which damaged the health of the residents of Minamata in Japan.  His 1948 series, Country Doctor, photographed for Life, is now recognized as "the first extended editorial photo story". 

Mathew B. Brady (c. 1822–1824 – January 15, 1896) was one of the earliest photographers in American history. Best known for his scenes of the Civil War, he studied under inventor Samuel Morse, who pioneered the daguerreotype technique in America. Brady opened his own studio in New York City in 1844, and photographed Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and Abraham Lincoln, among other public figures. When the Civil War started, his use of a mobile studio and darkroom enabled vivid battlefield photographs that brought home the reality of war to the public. Thousands of war scenes were captured, as well as portraits of generals and politicians on both sides of the conflict, though most of these were taken by his assistants, rather than by Brady himself. After the war, these pictures went out of fashion, and the government did not purchase the master-copies as he had anticipated. Brady's fortunes declined sharply, and he died in debt.

David LaChapelle (born March 11, 1963) is an American photographer, music video director and film director. He is best known for his work in fashion, photography, which often references art history and sometimes conveys social messages. His photographic style has been described as "hyper-real and slyly subversive" and as "kitsch pop surrealism". Once called the Fellini of photography, LaChapelle has worked for international publications and has had his work exhibited in commercial galleries and institutions around the world.

Robert Doisneau (French: [ʁɔbɛʁ dwano]; 14 April 1912 – 1 April 1994) was a French photographer. From the 1930s, he photographed the streets of Paris. He was a champion of humanist photography and with Henri Cartier-Bresson a pioneer of photojournalism. Doisneau is known for his 1950 image Le baiser de l'hôtel de ville (The Kiss by the City Hall), a photograph of a couple kissing on a busy Parisian street. He was appointed a Chevalier (Knight) of the Legion of Honour in 1984 by then French president, François Mitterrand.

Sebastião Ribeiro Salgado Júnior (born February 8, 1944) is a Brazilian social documentary photographer and photojournalist. He has traveled in over 120 countries for his photographic projects. Most of these have appeared in numerous press publications and books. Touring exhibitions of his work have been presented throughout the world. Salgado is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. He was awarded the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund Grant in 1982, Foreign Honorary Membership of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992 and the Royal Photographic Society's Centenary Medal and Honorary Fellowship (HonFRPS) in 1993. He has been a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts at the Institut de France since April 2016.

Robert Capa (born Endre Ernő Friedmann; October 22, 1913 – May 25, 1954) was a Hungarian-American war photographer and photojournalist as well as the companion and professional partner of photographer Gerda Taro. He is considered by some to be the greatest combat and adventure photographer in history. Capa had fled political repression in Hungary when he was a teenager, moving to Berlin, where he enrolled in college. He witnessed the rise of Hitler, which led him to move to Paris, where he met and began to work with Gerta Pohorylle. Together they worked under the alias Robert Capa and became photojournalists. Though she contributed to much of the early work, she quickly created her own alias 'Gerda Taro' and they began to publish their work separately. He subsequently covered five wars: the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, World War II across Europe, the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and the First Indochina War, with his photos published in major magazines and newspapers. He was killed when he stepped on a landmine in Vietnam. During his career he risked his life numerous times, most dramatically as the only civilian photographer landing on Omaha Beach on D-Day. He documented the course of World War II in London, North Africa, Italy, and the liberation of Paris. His friends and colleagues included Ernest Hemingway, Irwin Shaw, John Steinbeck and director John Huston. In 1947, for his work recording World War II in pictures, U.S. general Dwight D. Eisenhower awarded Capa the Medal of Freedom. That same year, Capa co-founded Magnum Photos in Paris. The organization was the first cooperative agency for worldwide freelance photographers. Hungary has issued a stamp and a gold coin in his honor.

Gregory Crewdson (born September 26, 1962) is an American photographer. He photographs tableaux of American homes and neighborhoods.  He is best known for staging cinematic scenes of suburbia to dramatic effect. His surreal images are often melancholic, offering ambiguous narrative suggestions and blurring the boundaries between fiction and reality. Working with large production teams to scout and shoot his images, his photographs have become increasingly complex as if it were for a motion picture production, including its painstaking preparation of elaborate sets, lighting, and cast, as seen in his seminal series Beneath the Roses (2003–2008) and Twilight (1998–2001). “My pictures are about a search for a moment—a perfect moment,” Crewdson has explained. Born on September 26, 1962 in Brooklyn, NY, the artist went to the State University of New York at Purchase College where he studied with Jan Groover and Laurie Simmons. In 1988, he graduated from Yale University with an MFA in photography, and since 1993 has served on its faculty, currently as the director of its graduate studies in photography. He has cited Steven Spielberg, Diane Arbus, and Edward Hopper as influences to his practice. In 2012, Ben Shapiro’s documentary Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival, charting Crewdon’s harrowing photographic process from beginning to end. His works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, among others. The artist lives and works in New York, NY.

ivian Dorothy Maier (February 1, 1926 – April 21, 2009) was an American street photographer whose work was discovered and recognized after her death. She worked for about 40 years as a nanny, mostly in Chicago's North Shore, while pursuing photography. She took more than 150,000 photographs during her lifetime, primarily of the people and architecture of Chicago, New York City, and Los Angeles, although she also traveled and photographed worldwide. During her lifetime, Maier's photographs were unknown and unpublished; many of her negatives were never developed. A Chicago collector, John Maloof, acquired some of Maier's photos in 2007, while two other Chicago-based collectors, Ron Slattery and Randy Prow, also found some of Maier's prints and negatives in her boxes and suitcases around the same time. Maier's photographs were first published on the Internet in July 2008, by Slattery, but the work received little response. In October 2009, Maloof linked his blog to a selection of Maier's photographs on the image-sharing website Flickr, and the results went viral, with thousands of people expressing interest. Maier's work subsequently attracted critical acclaim, and since then, Maier's photographs have been exhibited around the world. Her life and work have been the subject of books and documentary films, including the film Finding Vivian Maier (2013), which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 87th Academy Awards.

Peter Lik (born 1959) is an Australian photographer best known for his nature and panoramic landscape images. He hosted From the Edge with Peter Lik, which aired for one season on The Weather Channel.  In 2014, Peter shattered all world records by selling the most expensive photograph in history. Phantom, his black & white masterwork depicting a ghostlike image at Antelope Canyon, was acquired for an astounding $6.5 million.

Philippe Halsman (Latvian: Filips Halsmans, German: Philipp Halsmann; 2 May 1906 – 25 June 1979) was an American portrait photographer. He was born in Riga in the part of the Russian Empire which later became Latvia, and died in New York City.  Halsman's bold, spontaneous style won him many admirers. His portraits of actors and authors appeared on book jackets and in magazines; he worked with fashion (especially hat designs), and filled commissions for private clients. By 1936, Halsman was known as one of the best portrait photographers in France.

Mihaela Noroc (born May 18, 1985) is a Romanian photographer. She traveled from her homeland, Romania, to capture a wide variety of female faces in the world, and she covered around fifty countries, and the collection of images from these countries was published as "Atlas of Beauty".   Noroc is a world-renowned whose work is shown primarily through her social media projects on Facebook, Instagram, and most recently, her publication "The Atlas of Beauty." She has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Oprah, CNN, and the BBC.

Margaret Bourke-White (/ˈbɜːrk/; June 14, 1904 – August 27, 1971), an American photographer and documentary photographer, became arguably best known as the first foreign photographer permitted to take pictures of Soviet industry under the Soviets' five-year plan, as the first American female war photojournalist, and for taking the photograph (of the construction of Fort Peck Dam) that became the cover of the first issue of Life magazine.[dubious – discuss] She died of Parkinson's disease at age 67, about eighteen years after developing symptoms.

Henri Cartier-Bresson (French: [kaʁtje bʁɛsɔ̃]; 22 August 1908 – 3 August 2004) was a French humanist photographer considered a master of candid photography, and an early user of 35mm film. He pioneered the genre of street photography, and viewed photography as capturing a decisive moment. Cartier-Bresson was one of the founding members of Magnum Photos in 1947. In the 1970s, he took up drawing—he had studied painting in the 1920s.