Part 7 Lesson 4: Composition for landscape photography

No more snapshots

We have looked at light, exposure and hyperfocal distance. But however perfect your light and your settings, you won't create a breathtaking image unless you deliberately place every element in the scene in front of you.

This is true for any photograph, but it is a hundred times harder with landscape photography because you can't move anything in the image - all you can do is patiently try out different viewpoints until the world aligns just how you want it.

The eye’s journey through the frame

For each image you take, you need to have thought about each of these steps:

1. Where does the eye go to first?

2. Where does it travel?

3. If I move, can I improve the shot?

Where does the eye go first?

Sometimes the eye jumps straight to the focal point, and that's fine. But you can also use the technique of having an exaggerated foreground as a kind of stepping stone into the image, encouraging the eye to start at the front of the frame before moving through the image to the focal point:

Where does the eye travel next?

Can you give the eye some stepping stones (figurative or literal) to help it through the image to the focal point? In the image above, the eye follows the stones round the circle until it arrives at the focal point, then it carries on back round to the stone at the front.

In the following image the eye takes in the Llandudno pier, comes round to look at the rocks but then is swept back round to the beginning of the pier again. Without the rocks in the foreground, the eye would be left hanging at the end of the pier and the image would be much more static:

If I move, can I improve anything?

If you move your camera only a centimetre, it can mean something that was overlapping is now standing by itself. You can hide distractions and place things exactly where you want them in the frame. Sometimes you need to move more drastically to get the viewpoint you want. The image above was taken from the road above the pier; the one that follows was taken from the shoreline:

THIS WEEK'S PROJECT: Practise epic composition

Pick somewhere that you can include foreground, middle ground, and the background, all the way to the horizon. (If you are housebound, you can do this exercise indoors on a smaller scale - exactly the same principles apply.)

Take your first image, with a good enough composition. Don't worry too much about the light or settings for this exercise - work with whatever you have.

Review the image on your LCD and be as objective as you can. Where does your eye jump to straight away? Where does it go next? Any distractions? What's at the edge of the frame?

Next decide on one improvement you can make. It might be a different foreground, or something in the background that needs to disappear. Move until you have achieved the improvement. Review the image again.

Keep going with incremental changes until you are so cold you have to go in, have overworked the image so you cannot tell if it is any good, or you have reached nirvana.

Your last image might not be the one you prefer. Review them all when you get home - did you manage an epic composition?

Beginner’s Landscape Photography

I cover composition and alignment in much more detail in the landscape book.