Emerson loved the old ways of country life, but they were disappearing so he decided to preserve them in photographs. He invented a new type of art photography, called ‘naturalism', which used soft focus to show things as natural eyesight sees them. He used the best printing technology available. He used original photographs called platinum prints for his first book and, when that proved too expensive, the new mechanical printing process of photogravure. He believed, and proved, that photography could be art.

The original photographs stuck in were individual prints produced chemically in a darkroom with platinum salts, known as platinum prints. This process was very slow and expensive. Photogravure is not a chemically produced original print but an image produced photo mechanically using printer's ink. This process was new and the latest technology in printing photographs on paper. It was still relatively expensive, but it was much quicker and cheaper than pasting in original photographs.

Emerson took all the photographs but his artist friend T. F. Goodall sometimes helped choose subjects. Emerson called this an ‘ideal partnership'. He gave Goodall credit for named images in Life and Landscape, though not in their other joint work, Wild Life on a Tidal Water.