A Guide to Minimalist Landscape Photography

No doubt, a lot of landscape photography is about complex compositions full of vibrant colors and ornate features. But at the other end of the spectrum is minimalist work, which can be just as compelling. This great video will give you some helpful tips and a guided example of minimalist landscape photography. 

Coming to you from The School of Photography, this excellent video will give you some tips and guidance for minimalist landscape photography. Minimalist landscape photography can be a fantastic way to really draw attention to a specific subject or to create compositions built around ideas of geometry and symmetry. Of course, with landscape photography, you are not given the choice of what inhabits your frame, so creating minimalist images can be rather difficult. One fantastic tool for this is an ND filter. Using a sufficiently strong ND filter can allow you to turn turbulent, complex water into a uniform mass or wispy clouds into smooth streaks, giving you a lot more creative control over how any given scene is rendered. Check out the video above for the full rundown.

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

Yet another person who thinks that slapping a 10-stop ND filter on your lens and taking a 60 second exposure is being "creative."

What on earth did I just watch? The video shared no useful information, and taught absolutely nothing at all related to minimalist landscape photography, or the creative use of neutral density filters.

What was its purpose?
Did it have one?