Building a great landscape photo.

Naba Zabih, a wedding photographer who often works with dramatic landscapes, says that landscape photography is “like a game of shapes.” She explains, “You can kind of create a balance — if a mountain is creating a triangle shape, perhaps you can balance it out with a circular shape on the side. It doesn’t matter how beautiful a landscape is if you can’t look at it mathematically and break it down.“

And there’s no need to rush. Jeff Carlson, a veteran landscape photographer, advises, “In one sense, landscape can be easy because not much is going to change — your trees aren’t going to go running off your mountains. So you can be a little bit more purposeful in framing and composition.” His tips: take note of the big shapes, the strong lines, and choose your point of focus. Zabih reminds aspiring landscape photographers that “even though it’s a landscape, there’s still a subject in there that you should be focused on. If you’re photographing a mountain, your focus shouldn’t be on some random patch of grass to the left, because that’s where the eye is going to go.”

One quick landscape photography tip is to consider including some layers in the foreground to create that point of focus, and to keep your shot from going flat. Samuel Nute, a photographer based in the Pacific Northwest, coaches that “if you’re photographing a mountain range, you’ll want several layers of different colors and contrast, allowing the picture to have more depth, more life to it than just a flat image of the mountains.” Kilen Murphy, a wedding and landscape photographer, frequently asks himself, “Is this the best that I can do within this frame, or is there maybe some sort of element that I can add to it to give it more depth?” And when you’re shooting on a digital camera, there’s no reason not to stop and check your shots as you go.

There are lots of ways to pull those layers in. Carlson suggests, “Maybe there’s a little puddle left over from rain the night before. If you get really low and close to that puddle, it will give you a nice reflection of those mountains. There are lots of different opportunities for putting your camera lower to the ground, getting up higher, and figuring out how to catch a different angle even though the scene is relatively unchanged.”

“Try out a few variations, and explore your options.”

Likewise, take advantage of any available leading lines to emphasize both depth and focus in your shots: Nute recommends using things such as fences, treelines, or rivers to draw the viewer’s eye to your image’s focal point. Find those lines by taking a walk around your viewpoint. See if you can find a higher vantage or a low angle, for instance, that lets you capture more of the drama you’re experiencing. You can also use the Rule of Thirds to create a sense of balance in your frame.

Light: the real moving target.

The thing that does move when you’re taking landscape pictures is light. Between the weather and the changing angle of the sun, you’ll want to think carefully about the time of day you’re working in and what you’re prepared to capture. There are all sorts of useful apps that can help you with the planning, but once you’re out, you’ll need to be able to work with whatever the atmosphere is handing you.

Carlson says, “The biggest, best advice — which is sometimes the hardest to do — is if you want to do landscape photography, you have to be there when the light is good. It sounds totally obvious, but that might mean you’re getting up at four o’clock in the morning, driving to your destination, setting up in the dark, and waiting for sunrise to happen, because sunrise and sunset are when you typically get the most dramatic, most interesting light.”

“When you’re shooting landscapes,” Carlson suggests, “you’re looking for more than just ‘here are some mountains.’ To get a great shot, you’re looking for what the weather is going to do, what the sunlight is going to do. They call those early hours and those dusk hours the golden hour, because all the light is coming at an angle rather than coming straight down. If you have high clouds, those are illuminated from below, and you get a lot of those great colors like purples and oranges and red streaks. That makes a landscape photo really pop. You can absolutely get a perfectly nice shot in the middle of the day, but when you’re shooting a great landscape, you’re really going for that more epic look.”