Yes, or millennia or eons. And not just of land, but fauna can have a natural effect of our perception of age, like trees, vines or prehistoric huge flowers vs, modern day flowers, or tropical fauna vs city fauna for example. There is also the aspect that what is a desert now could have been a thriving metropolis or tropical climate if you leave enough clues.
Yes. Especially from RHAD's gallery with the examples of waterfalls, trails and tiny human elements that form a sort of focal point. Like a wagon trail or game trail, vs a modern two lane road that's well maintained which we take for granted.
Water and weather and time of day will have a lot of the effect of mood, as it will affect the lighting you are portraying. Most of that is subconscious for the viewer. We will never have to spell it out to them. There's that magical feeling that sunset and its contrasting hot and cold colors that overwhelm us with beauty of color and makes it all magical, thus, "The magic hour." I feel like
So some examples of what I was talking about I'll have to think for a second and do some digging. But our very own @JesperFriis and his stuff is amazing. Its some of the coolest landscapes I've seen since Thomas Schoels. But I do have some stories of my own that are very fresh, that might illustrate how much information that I can actually derive from the landscape around me if I pay attention.
Story Time.
Just yesterday I was out in the country at my grandparents house clearing some branches from a trail that my grandmother walks. A circle trail, surrounded by low trees of all kinds around a man made pond, now barely holding a foot of water. It held catfish that were introduced by my grandparents in the recent past. Now it only hosts frogs in the years that it rains and floods. It has a dried up old crooked dock standing 9 feet out of the ground, no where near water. It sits next to an old rusted windmill that my grandfather built which creeks when the wind blows it. No more than a buzzard perch nowadays since it has rusted into a stillness. But my memories of being 6 years old and fishing for catfish on that little dock in the magic hour in the country are still very fresh.
Its brush country of Texas so when you go off the trail its damn near impossible to walk through without climbing over fallen trees from floods, or seeing standing dead trees from lack of water and drought in the past year. You are moving thorny vines out of the way, and redirecting yourself because there are a lot of low trees and brush in Texas of many variety that will block your path.
Its impossible to go in a straight line without coming out with scratches and dead leaves and dirt all over you. You will most likely always walk into a spider web because you are staring at the ground for snakes, so I always walk with a stick upright and held out in front of me.
Its not a scenic forest but all of those examples above are like a detectives evidence of what has happened recently to the land and how it feels.
Its rough but it has its moments like when you turn around to see where you came from and see 100 tiny white butterflies that you disturbed fluttering 2 feet above the weeds and bramble that weren't active when you walked through the first time. Almost forming in the exact path you walked.
The other thing I noticed was this giant of a rock with tons of worn holes in it from thousands of years of rain dripping on it, the pools of water making almost perfect round holes and ruts from where it would fall off in certain directions. It was cool shades of grey with bright orange lichen forming on it. Beautiful and strange how this ancient thing was supporting a minor form of life. There were even wind holes, where the dust would blow in the wind and slowly through the eons eat perfect little sideways holes in the rock.
It also was not near the creek where most of the rocks were naturally gravitating towards and was actually near the house. I hadn't seen any other rocks like it above ground so when I asked my grandmother about it she confirmed that she and my grandpa moved it from a different area of Texas to be a "landscape piece."
So there was story behind that rock, ancient and natural. And modern! Where an old couple who moved out to the country took their favorite gigantic rock 6ft wide in either direction and 2 feet tall from their land in the city to compliment their brush country home. I can imagine my grandfather having to build a pulley system or fire up his 60's era bulldozer to un-earth that rock from its ancient home, load it into a 50's style ford dump truck, second hand, that barely ran at all, and haul it with various other bits and supplies out to the land 40 miles east and dropping it there where it sits today.
Just then my grandfather came over to my grandmother and I standing over said rock, and was asked to confirm that the rock had indeed been moved, he couldn't even remember it.
Crazy right.
Describing how it feels to walk through it as a human in what I've written is the best way I can relate how the land feels. But in that example, the story of the land and its time is much more subtle than a giant landscape that has mountains and waterfalls jumping out of it and huge sweeping rain clouds going up and up for miles.
But depending on how you want to set up mood for a piece, start with a mood. What makes it sad, devistasting, safe, fun, cheery, magical or epic?
A meadow between sweeping mountains always looks awesome right? Like you want to live there?
Scientists think that its because naturally when early humans were developing, they could see predators because there were few trees, know that there were mountains that supplied water from snow to a lake or creek. Perhaps it was the mouth of a river. Game came to the water to drink so it was easy to hunt good protein. Thousands of years of fauna dying there formed soil which grew healthy fruits or vegetables or berries and wheat or something. So we have this natural inclination to enjoy many of those pictures that we see because we know its safe and possibly plentiful.
The opposite of that would be what nomads in the desert find beautiful about their landscape and its simplicity and harshness.
But I feel like I need to go back to your main question
Then you have to focus on the subject matter, and light. Look at all these haystacks that Monet practiced during different times of the day. How does each one feel to you the viewer? What's your favorite? What does that say about your enjoyment of a high key, low key, or contrasting piece? Vs a low contrasting piece of the same subject? You're the only one that can answer that. And what you see and feel as a human is your job to share with the viewers the story YOU want to tell.
Good luck.