5 Common Mistakes in Landscape Photography and How to Avoid Them

Just like any other genre, landscape photography comes with its own set of potential pitfalls and common mistakes that can derail your images. This fantastic video discusses five common mistakes in landscape photography and what you can do to avoid them and create better photos. 

Coming to you from Photo Tom, this excellent video details five common landscape photography mistakes and how you can avoid them in your own work. Of them, I think one of the most common is trying to fit everything into the frame. Most of the time, we default to using wide angle lenses for landscape work, but the pitfall to that is potentially fitting too much into the picture and creating an overly busy composition that lacks a clear direction. Once I have an initial framing, I like to take a minute to carefully look throughout the frame and ask if there is anything that can be left out. Often, thinking from a more subtractive standpoint leads to cleaner and stronger compositions that are more compelling to the viewer. Check out the video above for more. 

And if you really want to dive into landscape photography, check out "Photographing The World 1: Landscape Photography and Post-Processing with Elia Locardi." 

Alex Cooke's picture

Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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6 Comments

Isn't this topic repeated too many times already?

"5 Bad Choices That Landscape Photographers Often Regret" (14th Nov)
"8 Common Beginner Landscape Photography Mistakes" (12th Nov)
"Seven Myths in Landscape Photography" (4th Nov)

And then some about do's and do not's ...
That often relate to these "mistakes"

Indeed. The subject is becoming rather tiresome.

This is a very “tired” and over done subject. Scottish photographer and teacher Alistair Benn has eloquently handled this topic right here on Fstoppers https://fstoppers.com/education/probably-three-most-important-things-you...... His approach throws out the typical right/wrong approach and deals with expressive techniques as the foundation of landscape photography.

How about mistake number 6: Raising the center column of the tripod. The author demonstrated that mistake for us. Raising the center column converts a stable tripod into a monopod. An inch or two might not matter much. Beyond that, vibrations will be introduced.

This is an extremely valuable tip. Steve, I've had a look at some of your photography and I have to tell you it's extremely thrilling work. You make incredible art, sir.

Alex you would really be doing those starting out in photography a favour if you were to stop promoting as excellent videos that reduce photography into a limited number of mistakes or steps to perfection. This can all too easily result in demoralisation.

Do you really believe that the 10,000 hours suggested to be necessary to master a craft can be captured in 5 steps? Sure the these videos may contain some useful points but do we really need the clickbait titles?