-
Subject selection. The first and most important consideration is your subject. What is it that you want to convey in the photograph? What is your subject? What is the mood?
-
Off-center subject. Do not put your subject directly in the center of the photograph as this gives the eye nowhere to travel. A good landscape photograph invites the viewer to explore the landscape.
-
Fill the frame. Avoid meaningless and empty foreground – move closer or use a telephoto lens.
-
Lighting. Lighting conveys mood and tone in a photograph. Watch the landscape scene throughout the day to determine when the light is best.
-
Time of day. Many photographers use the slanted light of early morning or late afternoon for landscape photos. Angled light will help to create dimension in your photograph.
-
Weather. Interesting weather conditions often make spectacular landscape photos. Lightning, fog, snow – the weather itself is the subject.
-
Clouds and Sky. Work quickly with cloud shots as they change quickly. Underexpose cloud shots for slightly darker images. Include a horizon in sky photos.
-
Sunsets. Try sunset shots over a body of water. Underexpose these shots and photograph rapidly as the sun dips quickly into the horizon. Try focusing on a subject in front of the sun and keeping the sun out of focus for different results.
-
Snow. Sunlight is required to give definition to snow shots. Use shadows for drama.
-
Forest. Avoid using wide-angle lens for forest photos. Move in closer and single out a few trees for the shot.
-
Waterfalls. Move in close and capture the water moving. Try using a slower shutter speed to capture the sense of movement by blurring the water.
-
Shorelines. Keep camera parallel to horizon to avoid sense of water flowing downhill. Move in close to capture waves and wave spray in mid-air.
-
Try different lenses. A wide-angle lens is good for creating a sense of spaciousness or extreme depth-of-field. .
-
Try different distances. Explore the perspective that different distance from the subject gives.
-
Try different angles. Instead of shooting the scene head-on, move around and look at the difference that a different angle can make to the photo.
-
Try adding scale. To give perspective to a distance shot, add a car, a person, or some identifiable object that a sense of perspective.
-
Vertical or panoramic. These two views give very different renderings of the same scene.
