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Landscape Photography Composition Tips • Landscape Photography
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BY SPENCER COX | 10 COMMENTS
LAST UPDATED ON AUGUST 2, 2023 • Portraiture
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How is it that two photographers can visit the same landscape at the same time,
but one of them manages to take a better photo? It’s not about equipment, or
camera settings, or sharpness. Instead, it’s all about composition. Composition is LEVEL
how you arrange the elements of your photograph to guide a viewer’s eye. How
do you pick a good composition for your landscape photos? There are two
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elements that matter more than anything else: simplicity and visual weight. In this
article, I’ll share some tips for using them correctly.

1) Simplicity
A good landscape photo says what you want it to say, and nothing more. Every
single element of the photograph adds to your message. It forms a strong,
cohesive whole.

Simple — but how do you make it happen?

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The first step is to have the right mindset. Always start by thinking about
simplicity. Which items can you leave out of your photo to make it
stronger? Don’t get rid of everything in your photo, of course. That’s not
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simplicity — that’s boring. An empty photograph of the sky might be simple, but
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it doesn’t say anything in the first place or have a reason to exist.
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Instead, just clarify your message. When you’re at an amazing landscape, try to
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capture the character of the scene as clearly as possible. Your viewers should
look at the photo and feel the same emotions as you. PHOTOGRAPHY TUTORIALS

Let’s put it into practice. Say that you want to photograph an enormous, epic
mountain. You could start by standing back and making any people in the scene
as tiny as possible. Then, compose your photo to eliminate large objects that are
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nearby, or you might end up with a tree in the foreground that looks bigger than BASICS PHOTOGRAPHY

the mountain. Finally, use a longer focal length so that the mountain takes up as
much of the photo as possible, giving it the greatest possible scale.

This tip — refining your message — has let me capture some of my favorite
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landscape photos. All you need to do is form a goal, then eliminate everything
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from the photo that distracts from your goal. That’s the best way to capture a
strong photo.

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Use simplicity to refine a scene to its essence.

Also, check out this comparison between a chaotic and a simplified composition:

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Not a good photo. Too many distractions, with an unclear message.

NIKON D800E + 20mm f/1.8 @ 20mm, ISO 100, 1/25, f/11.0

A more refined, simpler composition, where everything exists for a reason.

2) Visual weight
What’s the first thing you notice when you look at a landscape photo? It depends
upon the photo, of course — and that’s the key.

Sometimes, you’ll notice the setting sun before anything else. Other times, you’ll
pay attention to an interesting foreground, or a mountain in the distance. It all
depends upon the interest levels of each element in the image. And that’s visual
weight: the amount of attention that a particular part of the photo demands.

Take a look at the photo below. Which items have the highest visual weight?

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The first thing you notice here is probably the horse or the sun. Maybe a few
people will look at the fence or the distant hill before anything else.

You know what you didn’t look at first? The bottom-right corner. Why not? It’s
dark and empty. Until I mentioned it, there was no reason to look there at all. In
other words, it doesn’t attract attention, since it has almost zero visual weight.

There’s no mystery or secret about which items have high visual weight. The
same elements that catch our attention in real life do exactly the same in
photography: high contrast, vivid colors, bright objects, people, animals, eyes,
and so on. Visual weight is important because it pulls your viewer’s eye across a
photo. That’s critical. You control the path people take through your images.
Even though you can’t know the exact path a viewer will take through the frame,
you can form a very good idea of the most likely places, and then use that
knowledge to your advantage.

This isn’t just relevant in photography. Magicians and stage performers often
wave their hands dramatically to draw attention away from something else — and
this trick usually succeeds even when you know it’s happening.

This also holds true for landscape photography. When you want to emphasize (or
de-emphasize) a particular subject, there are several options at your disposal.
For one, you can wait for the light to start shining in a different spot. Or, you can
adjust your composition. Post-processing also falls under this umbrella, since it’s
all about picking which elements you want to emphasize.

The key is that you can get your viewer to pay attention to the good elements of
an image, and you can minimize the importance of anything that takes away from
your message. Perhaps your photo has distracting highlights near one of the
edges, for example. By altering your composition and post-processing, you have
the power to improve that area and re-shape how a viewer sees the image.

Visual weight is the foundation of many other elements of composition: balance,

structure, positive space, and more. Learn it. Figure out what attracts the most
attention, and then compose your photo with that knowledge in mind. Don’t let
your viewer wander aimlessly through a photo. Instead, use your knowledge of
the landscape’s visual weight to give your photos a solid, intentional structure.

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3) Conclusion
I think composition is the most personal part of landscape photography. It’s
certainly among the most important.

A good composition gives your photo structure. It’s the envelope that contains
your message, whatever that message may be. How do you compose a good
photo? It starts with simplicity and visual weight. Figure out the most attention-
grabbing parts of the image, and compose them thoughtfully to convey your
message as clearly as possible. In the best photos, nothing exists by accident,
and every part of the image is highly intentional.

Composition has been described as the strongest way of seeing. In my opinion,

that’s a fine way to frame it.

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FILED UNDER: COMPOSITION AND ART

TAGGED WITH: COMPOSITION, CREATIVITY, LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY, PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS

About Spencer Cox

I'm Spencer Cox, a landscape photographer based in Colorado. I
started writing for Photography Life a decade ago, and now I run
the website in collaboration with Nasim. I've used nearly every digital camera
system under the sun, but for my personal work, I love the slow-paced
nature of large format film. You can see more at my personal website and my
not-exactly-active Instagram page.

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10 COMMENTS Newest

XxBranxX
April 14, 2018 12:15 am

Hello, all your advice helped me a lot …

A question you know what is the name of the site of images 2 and 3, it would help me a lot.

Thanks :)

0 Reply

Spencer Cox Author

Reply to XxBranxX April 16, 2018 5:48 pm

I took those photos on the trail to Hidden Lake in Glacier National Park (although the
pond in the photo isn’t Hidden Lake itself)!

0 Reply

Tim Smith
December 8, 2017 8:06 pm

First. Thanks for this informative article. We’ll written with lots of great point. I have a
question more so than a comment. The b&w waterfall scene looks so familiar to me. Would
you mind telling me where this location is? It reminds me of one of the “zillions” of falls in our
North Carolina mountains.

Oh, btw. Really love the snow scene with the two tiny hikers. Great composition and scale….I
guess I had a comment after all :-) Tim Smith, Wilmington, NC

0 Reply

Spencer Cox Author

Reply to Tim Smith December 11, 2017 3:19 pm

Thank you, Tim! That’s Greeter Falls in Tennessee. I’ve been there more than a dozen
times for photography — a really beautiful location, and lots of opportunities walking up
and down the river.

0 Reply

Bill C White
Reply to Spencer Cox December 28, 2017 10:23 pm

I knew I recognized that waterfall. Been there MANY times, hauling in all sorts of
cameras from 35mm to large format 4×5. Nice work done here!
www.flickr.com/photo…4213238272

0 Reply

Dee Dee
December 8, 2017 10:33 am

I really appreciate seeing photos that work and those that don’t of the same scene. I wish
there were more in this article. In so many tips and how to articles, authors show their most
beautiful photos. They seem more like a showcase of the author’s images rather than truly
trying to communicate something. I learn so much more when I also see what doesn’t work.

3 Reply

Spencer Cox Author

Reply to Dee Dee December 8, 2017 12:31 pm

Dee Dee, that is an excellent suggestion. I am going to write an article doing exactly
what you describe — showing the photos that don’t work, leading up to the successful
images. Because the truth is that unsuccessful photos outnumber the good ones several
times over :)

3 Reply

Julie Klein
Reply to Spencer Cox January 28, 2018 12:34 pm

I would be interested in that as well. I think it would also be useful to see what a
crop might look like of the unsuccessful photos especially something like the
landscape above you describe as unsuccessful with too many elements.

2 Reply

Janis Olsen
December 8, 2017 7:29 am

Great advice, I’ve always wondered if I was capturing enough to tell the viewer what I was
seeing. It is an individual’s viewpoint. Always wondered if, why n how someone else would
see my pictures. It’s just up to the viewer if they like what they / I see.

0 Reply

Spencer Cox Author

Reply to Janis Olsen December 8, 2017 12:29 pm

Janis, thank you, glad you enjoyed it! You’re right, a lot of this is definitely up to the
viewer — though, you can help them along by composing photos with as much thought
and intention as possible.

0 Reply

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