9 Helpful Composition Tips for Landscape Photography

Composition in landscape photography can be a really subtle and tricky thing. If it is something you struggle with, this excellent video tutorial will give you nine guidelines that can help you improve the compositions of your landscape images. 

Coming to you from Photo Tom, this great video tutorial will give you lots of helpful tips and guidelines for better landscape photo compositions. Composition can be a difficult, intricate thing, but with practice, you can create stronger, more compelling images. Personally, the thing that helped me the most was learning to simplify my shots. In the past, I tried to cram as much as I could of a scene into an image, as I simply did not want to leave anything out. One way to create more minimal compositions is to embrace using longer focal lengths more. It is easy to default to using wide angle lenses in landscape work, but a longer focal length can help you pick out interesting details or more abstract compositions that can give a unique and personal perspective. 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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2 Comments

Hm, interesting...I have always understood mr, Weston's quote as that you should compose instinctively, show what you see and what you 'feel' (if that makes sense)..like walking that cannot be learned from books and rules for composition. Because if it's learned and not practised, photography becomes an excercise in applying rules of composition instead of capturing your own unique view of the subject and the moment. And that's the root of photographs becoming very very alike. There are no rules, you can do whatever you want as long if that makes sense/works visualy. Disrupt the composition and confuse the viewer, or make it super symmetric and smooth to let the eye just glide peacefully...it's up to you and decisions like these are what evoke emotions, not applying rules of composition.

P.S.: in the shot with vignettes from filter, I consider the small tree what makes the photograph - the mood of weather is anything but calm and symmetric which gets aplified by disruption in the symmetry of composition by that small tree.

Good one...