How to shoot succesful landscapes

It's a lot harder to do than you would think. Many landscape photographic compositions by an amateur end up looking lost and aimless, often lacking a real focal point or something to tie it all together. I am not going to lie to you; landscape shots are not my strong point in photography. I do, however, love a great wide angle perspective and have managed to come up with a few that I was happy with over the years.

What's your subject

That's obvious... it's the scene before you right? What happens when you just set up your camera and shoot that scene? It ends up in the distance, on the horizon, hardly noticed at all. Why? That's the funny thing about the human brain. We extrapolate the key points of interest and blur the rest out. In real life, this is often the background behind us, the horizon, the scene in the distance. So what we need to do is trick the brain to find the background interesting. So yes, the scene is your subject, but you need to present another point of interest closer to us that helps lead the viewer into that great sprawling landscape.

This is often done with contrasting elements or juxtapositions, like the foreground subject of a delicate flower against a backdrop of rugged, sun soaked mountains. Or you can draw the viewer into the scene with converging lines like a road trailing off until lost in the rolling hills of harvest time wheat. In each case it's the greater scene that is the subject, but something in the foreground takes you there.

It's all about focus

One of the trickiest aspects of marrying a foreground point of interest with a landscape subject is focus or maximum depth of field (read this article for more on this). There is no point in including both the foreground and background as key points of interest if they can't both be in perfect crystal clear focus.

This means stopping down your aperture as much as the surrounding light and wind conditions will allow you. If your fortunate to be shooting on a windless day, a long exposure time is of no concern, but if the wind is a factor, consider shooting static objects not prone to swaying. AND ALWAYS USE A TRIPOD!

The overall picture

It's hard to tell a story in a landscape shot. You'll find many viewers asking, "What's the point of this?" Keep in mind that the viewer wasn't there at the scene when you shot it so they didn't see the 360º panoramic that your eyes witnessed before taking a slice of that home with you in your camera. What does and doesn't get included in your compostition says as much about the picture as the scene itself.

If it's going to be a busy compostion, make sure that each element in the frame helps support the purpose or theme of the shot. If it's going to be sparse, ensure your lines compliment the absence of detail.

This way or that

Many people automaticall assume that landscape photography has to be photographed... well... in a landscape orientation. This isn't true. Typically a wide angle lens is used to convey an exagerated sense of scale which means if you want to illustrate how tall something is, you need to shoot in portrait. If you want to show far a road stretches into the distance, it might show better in portrait. The bottom line is, fill your frame in the orientation that seems to compliment the scene best.

To recap

So the key to succesful landscapes are:

• Subject - include foreground objects that will draw the viewer into the greater, overall sceen
• Focus - get the greatest depth of field possible given your particular circumstances, it is vital to have everything in focus
• Composition - be sure the elements that you include in your image deserve to be there. Make sure to only include objects that help tell the story.
• Layout - determine which layout, landscape or portrait, shows your subject matter best. Lanscapes are often about scale, so choose the layout that conveys the scale of your scene.

Tags: landscape, wide angle, composition, photography