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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?
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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.
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Fill the frame.
Avoid
meaningless and empty foreground – move closer or use a
telephoto lens.
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Lighting.
Lighting conveys mood and tone in a photograph. Watch the
landscape scene throughout the day to determine when the
light is best.
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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.
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Weather.
Interesting weather conditions often make spectacular
landscape photos. Lightning, fog, snow – the weather itself
is the subject.
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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.
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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.
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Snow.
Sunlight is required to give definition to snow shots. Use
shadows for drama.
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Forest.
Avoid using wide-angle lens for forest photos. Move in
closer and single out a few trees for the shot.
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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.
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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.
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Try different lenses.
A
wide-angle lens is good for creating a sense of spaciousness
or extreme depth-of-field. .
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Try different distances.
Explore
the perspective that different distance from the subject
gives.
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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.
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Try adding scale.
To give
perspective to a distance shot, add a car, a person, or some
identifiable object that a sense of perspective.
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Vertical or panoramic.
These
two views give very different renderings of the same scene.
