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Find a Point of Interest

Try to find a point of interest that tells something about the place. This can be a cottage, a person, a tree or a flower. Without a point of interest, the eyes of the viewers will wander aimlessly in the picture.The thing you placed in foreground not only forms a point of interest but also gives the sense of scale to the viewers.

Guiding Lines

Look for guiding lines in the place to take viewers into the picture. A stream, a road or fence line will be good instruments to pull the eyes into the frame.

Character of the Land

Like every forest, river, ocean, sea and other subjects of landscape photography, plains have their own personality. Finding and reflecting the personality of the land will help you compose successful photographs. So walk around until you find the composition and angle to reflect it. Ask yourself what is the most important feature of this place, what is beautiful about it, what separates this scene from others?

Sky

Sky is an important element in landscape photography, so it is also important in shooting plains. Different skies fit better to some places than others and help you reflect the character of the land better. One place can look better under shiny blue sky and the other may look better under a cloudy – stormy weather. Also decide how much space you want to leave for sky in your picture. If you think the sky is important in this particular picture than place the horizon lower third portion of the picture, if it’s not than place it upper third portion of the frame. Remember the Rule of Thirds? No? Than i suggest you to read my related articles linked below;

Photography; Composition; Horizon

Photography; Composition

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Crop: A good crop can change the look of the picture and make it an impressive photo. You can crop the scene in front of you before pressing the shutter button or in your pc with a image editing software after taking the picture. Interesting crops is a good way to get extra-ordinary pictures.

Angle: Your pictures shows the world from your eyes. And people like the pictures that showing the world around them the way that they never saw before. So taking pictures with different angles can even turn the most simple thing into an interesting picture.

Rule of Thirds: The oldest composition rule, but it still works. To learn about rule of thirds in detail; read my writing about “Composition”

Get Close: To create impressive and different pictures, get close to your subject. Fill the frame with it. Sometimes even get closer, take macro pictures if your lens is able to do that.

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As you see, i like filling the frame with sky. Not always but sometimes trying something different is good.

See also Part 1

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In landscape photography horizon should be horizontal. There are some items that shows if your camera is completely straight and parallel to the ground; such as the spirit levels on a tripod or spirit levels that you can mount on your camera. If you had none, you can use the dots that you see when you are looking through the visor of the camera. Place all the dots in the horizontal line on the horizon then take the shot. Of course these dots are in the middle of the frame, and adjusting the horizon according to these dots will make the horizon centered in your picture. But mostly placing the horizon in the center of the picture doesn’t give nice results. So after adjusting the horizon line parallel to the sides of the picture, shift your camera up or down in order to change the position of the horizon.

In my earlier post i wrote about composition, so if you don’t remember take a look to the rule of thirds. To have more impressive landscape pictures do not place the horizon right in the middle, place it slightly above or below. If you want to show the beautiful sky then let the sky fills 2/3 of the frame and land or ground fills the rest which is 1/3. And reverse, if you want show something on the ground and eliminate the boring gray sky, let the land fills the 2/3 of the picture and sky fills 1/3. And the horizon line is the line that separates 2/3 from 1/3 so place it to divide the frame leaving 1/3 of picture below or above the horizon line. And make sure it is parallel to the edges of the picture.

There’s one more thing that you can do. You can divide the picture 1/2 to 1/2 by placing horizon diagonal from one corner to another in the frame. As shown in the example;

But before creating your style, you should have knowledge about some commonly agreed composition rules. Of course they are not law and you can and will knowingly break these rules sometimes But first learn the rules, work on them and than break them if you want;

Rule of Thirds

This rule is used by artists for centuries and it is one of the most important composition techniques. Picture that there are two horizontal lines that divide the frame three horizontal parts and two vertical lines that divide the frame three vertical parts. Rule of Thirds says the intersection points of these vertical and horizontal lines are the most attention-drawing points, so they are the best spots for placing your important objects or important parts of your picture. Instead of putting your object in the middle of your frame , place it one of these crossing points.

Leave Some Space

If you are photographing a moving thing, leave some space towards the direction of movement. If you are shooting people or models leave the space towards the direction of look unless they are looking directly to camera.

Simple is Good

Focus on your subjects and avoid anything that can possibly distract viewers attention. You can zoom in and clear the background by avoiding any unnecessary parts of the scene or you can try different angles to clear the scene.

Balance

Try to catch oppositions or similarities in scenes; as an example when you see a new good looking car parked on the same line with an old unwashed, rusty car, place them two sides of your frame and take the picture. Create a balance by placing the objects with same or different appearances (size, color etc.)on either side of your frame’s center.

Framing

In order to draw more attention to your subject you can frame it by using, trees, bushes, architectural structures or a window, you can use an arch or a part of aqueduct to frame an ancient city or you can frame a chalet with tree brunches with flowers on them.

Leading Lines

Leading lines, such as rivers, roads, stairs or fences are very useful for directing the look to the main object in the picture they also help drawing the look deeper into the picture.