Photography – Essentials of a Good Landscape Photo
By Richard Schneider

Landscape photography has the ability to take your viewers into another place without actually being there. Anybody can pick up a camera and take a photo of an interesting place, but it takes a careful and mindful photographer to take a landscape photo that is truly compelling. Most of the really impressive landscape photos that you will see have a few common elements. They have some type of foreground element, some type of framing element, and they all comply with the rule of thirds in some way.

Foreground Elements

In order to show the depth of a landscape it is very important to include some type of foreground element. Without something in the foreground, the viewer has no way to distinguish distances or sizes; everything looks more flat and closer to the camera. A foreground element adds a substantial amount of improvement to what would be a drab amateur photo. But when using foreground elements in landscape photos make sure you use a very narrow aperture (high f/stop) so the whole scene will be in focus.

Just about anything can be used as a foreground element but of course some things work better than others. For example, when I am taking landscape photos in the Napa Valley I always include some grape vines close to the camera leading off into the distance. That way, the viewer’s eye is drawn into the photo more effectively because the grape vines lead the viewer’s eyes deeper into the photo. The vines also perform the function of providing the viewer with some idea of the size of the Napa Valley because the vines in my photos go from being large when they are close to the camera to being tiny as they lead off into the distance.