Seven Helpful Landscape Photography Composition Tips

Good composition is one of the subtler and trickier aspects of landscape photography, and it goes far beyond just memorizing a few heuristic guides such as the rule of thirds. This excellent video will give you seven advanced composition tips to improve your landscape photos.

Coming to you from Photo Tom, this excellent video discusses seven tips to improve the compositions of your landscape photos. Composition is often the trickiest part to master, as it's a bit nebulous and can't really be pinned down in readily quantifiable terms like other aspects of technique can. Nonetheless, a photo can have all the technical aptitude in the world, but it won't be successful without a compelling composition that draws the viewer in and tells a story. Of the tips, my personal favorite is using the composition to reflect the mood. By considering the mood you want to convey and being more deliberate in showing it, you'll often be led to the ideal composition. It's a great way to approach shots. 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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9 Comments

Not sure I like this trend of people just taking someone elses video and writting a short blurb on it. You dont really do anything, and then make money off of someone elses video. Perhaps create your own video, then write a blurb about it. Or if nothing else, donate all the money you make to the person that actually did some work.

It’s not a new trend. We embed the videos so the creators get the views and monetary earnings they deserve.

I didnt say it was a new trend, I said it was a trend. And I still dont like it. Majority of your articles are just articles saying hey go watch this other guys stuff. Thats like opening the NY Times and seeing an article that says "Read the LA Times, they have a great article on something you would like..."

Who would buy the NY times? No offense, but when I scroll through the articles you wrote recently, almost all of them are just "check out this other video from someone else"

Are you saying you dont make any money from these articles?

The articles on Fstoppers are two types: originals and reposts. Originals are of course content developed in-house and exclusively for our audience; we generally release 4-5 a day, all of which you can find here: https://fstoppers.com/#originals

On the other hand, reposts are worthwhile content we’ve found elsewhere that we feel would be beneficial to our audience. Part of our job as a major photography education hub is finding the best content and presenting it to our viewers. This is where people like me come in. I look through approximately 200 bookmarks a day and carefully choose the very best content to be featured. This serves a two-fold purpose, because most people don’t have the time to spend painstakingly searching the Internet and because beginners may not know what content to trust and not, so they defer to our expertise when we give something the stamp of approval. It’s also a great thing for the creators, as they get more views and a larger audience, which helps them grow their subscriber counts and earn more ad revenue if they’ve monetized their videos. And meanwhile, our readers get an easy-to-digest aggregated list of all the best, fresh content in the world of photography and videography education.

I've also written around 15 original articles this month.

It is fine to want to share content that is pertinent to the article. Instead of basically just becoming a yellow pages for youtube though, you could write an article about the subject of the video. Compare multiple videos from different makers. Do some research, find several worth watching. Show your opinions on the different videos, what you like and what you dont. Show how your experience on the subject forms those opinions. Show what your experience is with the subject. Perhaps mention some things that the video makers left out that you learned from working in that field.

Basically, just write a researched article. These articles are posted so Fstoppers can make more money. You dance around that comment, but it is the truth, and nothing wrong with it. Fstoppers needs to make money and that is its purpose. However, you should earn it, and not just make money off the backs of other content creators. It is cheap to just write a quick blurb and direct people to another source for learning. Make it actual original content and people would actually enjoy reading it much more.

Some will no doubt find both orig or repost articles worthwhile but vast majority find it to be a barrage of mums and just excess verbiage.
They seem written just to fulfill a quota of publishing and contribute little if any meaningful.
I m sure manufacturers love reading how their gear will enhance (their sales) and gearheads.
Welcome to the USA .. the United Scam of America!!

Could not agree more. I open the article, I see that is a video and I close it....and the article, not the video, is always from the same author. I wish I could filter somehow what I see on my newsfeed from fstoppers. Sorry, I understand what is the reason of this, but I too, just don't care.

But how else would you ever know that Peter McKinnon has put out a new video?

Indeed. If only there was a way for the hundreds of thousands of subscribers to know when he put one out