11 Tips For Landscape Composition

Landscape photography is a fun and exciting genre of photography to shoot. However, it’s also a tough one to get right. You need to think carefully about where you place your subject in the frame, as well as the overall composition of the image.

In this post I will share some of my favorite landscape photography tips.

1 – Rule Of Thirds

To understand the Rule of Thirds, you must first understand the Rule of Thirds. The best places for the focal points in your image to be at the intersections of the grid’s nine rectangles, or better still the points where the grid’s two lines meet.

Instead of putting a focal point on the top left or top right intersection of thirds, I try to place the horizon’s bottom third on that line instead (unless it’s a dramatic scene). On the diagonally opposite intersection of thirds, I’d try to locate a secondary point of interest. Thus, the shot will be divided diagonally, which adds visual interest and depth.

One reason this guideline gets ignored is because it is so basic. But complexity is not always better; the ancient adage “less is more” can be helpful to keep in mind when creating a composition.

It’s a personal preference of mine to place focal points a tad nearer to the frame’s edge than the Rule of Thirds would advise. If you’re taking a picture with your camera, moving the focal points to the edge of the frame is a common misstep. Using the Rule of Thirds has helped me immensely when it comes to cropping photos for printing or magazine use since it gives me more room around the subject.

2 – Look For Leading Lines

When looking at photographs, our eyes are drawn to any lines that exist in the images in an instinctive manner. To guide a viewer’s attention across your composition, use leading lines efficiently. This will give the impression of depth and influence how they interpret a scene. The goal is to entice the spectator to look further into the image, towards a particular subject, or to give them the impression that they are traveling through your photos. You can use curved, diagonal, or even zig-zag lines for your leading lines, as long as they are coming from different angles. From left to right, from top to bottom, from one corner to the next, or in any combination thereof.
Various types of roads and pathways can be found along rivers, streams, and along the coastline. It is possible to use railroad tracks, fence posts, boulders, and waterfalls to assist create powerful leading lines. If you have a two-dimensional photo, use these filters to give it a three-dimensional look. Effective use of leading lines will compel the spectator to explore the entire image, from the foreground to the background and everything in between.

3 – Include Foreground Interest

In order to establish separation and layering between the foreground, middle ground, and backdrop of your photographs, use a prominent element in the foreground. This will again add depth and the three-dimensional impact that makes many landscape images so aesthetically attractive. If you want a strong focus point in your image, the foreground should serve that purpose. It should not detract from the image’s other layers.
Foregrounds should feature isolated subjects such as rocks, logs, branches, or even people if you think of your images in terms of layers. The foreground layer can serve as a leading line that directs the viewer’s attention to the major topics while also giving the image a feeling of size. When taking landscape photographs, don’t forget to get low and play with with the arrangement of your foreground components to achieve the depth we seek.

4 – Use Negative Space To Isolate Your Subjects

To create an area surrounding your main topic where a sense of scale can be achieved while not detracting from the main subject, apply effective negative space compositional techniques. If there’s enough empty space around the main topic, the viewer’s eyes will naturally be drawn to it, providing a dramatic effect that emphasizes the subject’s isolation, loneliness, and importance. Emptiness in an image that balances and adds weight to the main topic is the easiest method to understand negative space. Most of the time, negative space lacks any important details that may distract the viewer’s gaze, but adding “whispy” clouds or sand textures can complement the positive space that will serve as your main topic.
Positive space in landscape photography is generally utilized to produce a dramatic impact for scale and magnitude by using elements such as a plain sky, grass, sand, or water to isolate the main subject.

5 – Use A Vanishing Point

Using a vanishing point to direct the viewer’s gaze into your photos is a frequent approach to add depth to landscape photography. Vanishing points work because our eyes estimate distance differently when they are farther away from us than when they are closer to us. The more distant from the viewer, the more lines will appear to be convergent. The ideal lines to use to establish a linear perspective are those that lead from the foreground of the image to the background.
Parallel lines, railroad tracks, jetties, highways, and bridges can all be used to frame a vanishing point. The effect of convergent lines can be accentuated by moving down to the ground. However, keep in mind that these lower viewpoints can have an adverse influence on the separation of elements across the various layers of your photographs.

6 – Have A Foreground Subject

Landscape photographers often make the blunder of failing to include a foreground subject when learning the craft. This is a blunder I’ve made numerous times, as you can probably see. A foreground anchor is something your audience can relate to, therefore include it. It could be something intangible, such as a seashell or a flower. A ledge or platform edge could be what someone would use to stand on to take in the scenery you’re displaying.

Take advantage of your wide-angle lens to make the foreground topic appear larger than it actually is. Look at a flower, rock, or tree from a distance. Make a strong statement with your words.

7 – Change Your Lens Focal Length

Landscape photographers have a plethora of lens focal length options to choose from when creating new compositions. Wide-angle lenses from 10mm to 35mm are excellent for shooting vast scenes, as they allow you to get near and low to foreground objects while also framing your subject in natural features like trees. To achieve front-to-back clarity and a greater depth of field, wide-angle lenses are typically utilized with apertures ranging from f/8 to f/16.
In order to isolate distant mountains and buildings, longer focal lengths such as 70mm and 400mm are ideal. The restricted field of view is ideal for catching details in only a portion of the image, rather than the full scene as seen with the naked eye. Using telephoto lenses at apertures as wide as f/2.8 to f/8 produces a compressed perspective that appears to draw the backdrop closer to the main subject. This allows for sharpness from the front to the rear of the image.

8 – Use A Centred Composition And Look For Symmetry

Compositions with a central theme tend to be the easiest to grasp. This will make it crystal apparent what you want the viewer’s eyes to be drawn to in the first place. Distracting elements around your subjects can be removed, allowing the audience to focus just on what you want them to see. Centered compositions are a good place for beginning photographers to start because it’s natural to point the camera directly at the topic you want to capture.

In scenarios when the elements are symmetrical, using a centered arrangement is a fantastic idea as well. Both horizontal and vertical symmetry can evoke feelings of harmony and aesthetic balance through symmetry. Balance and extra visual weight can be achieved by using elements such as water reflections in a centered composition

9 – Frame Your Subject To Help Tell Your Story

By framing your topic, you can provide a strong foreground element to your compositions, increasing the visual weight. Rock arches and ice caverns are only a few examples of naturally occurring framing elements like trees and other overhanging flora. Using contrasting colors in your background and for your main topic might help your photographs stand out.
Using framing in your photographs should enhance your compositions and help you tell a stronger narrative about the subject matter you are photographing.

10 – Simplicity

A great landscape photo tells the viewer exactly what they want to know.

Each and every aspect of the shot contributes to the message you’re trying to convey. It’s a well-rounded package.

So simple, but how do you actually go about putting this plan into action?

To get started, you must have the correct frame of mind. Keeping things simple is always a good place to start. What elements of your shot can you do without to improve the overall strength of the image? As a general rule, don’t delete anything. Nothing could be further from the truth than that. A picture of the sky with nothing in it may look simple, but it says nothing and has no purpose.

Instead, focus on making your point more clear. When you’re in a breathtaking location, make an effort to capture the essence of the setting as accurately as possible. When someone views your shot, you want them to get the same emotions you do when you look at it.

Come on, let’s put it to use. Let’s say you wish to take pictures of a massive mountain range. To begin, take a step back and reduce the size of everybody in the scene. To avoid having a tree in the foreground that appears to be larger than the mountain, frame your composition to eliminate neighboring large things. A greater focal length will help the mountain fill the entire frame, making it appear larger than life.

Refining my messaging after reading this technique has allowed me to take some of my favorite landscape pictures. All you have to do is decide on a goal and then remove anything in the photo that gets in the way of achieving that goal. When it comes to taking a good photo, there’s no better method than doing that.

11 – Use The Golden Ratio / Golden Spiral

The golden ratio uses a nine-frame grid to divide an image into thirds instead of the traditional thirds method. Because the ratio 1: 0.618:1 is used, the center frames are smaller and the intersecting lines are closer together than if equal proportions were used. Thus, the “Phi Grid” is the consequence of the above equations. The golden ratio is a design principle used in various kinds of art to generate visually appealing visuals with a sense of harmony and balance. The golden ratio is thought to have been used in the creation of many famous and historic works of art, including the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper.


When it comes to the Golden Spiral (also known as the Fibonacci Spiral after Leonardo Fibonacci, the 12th century mathematician who developed the mathematical formulas behind it), a more refined version of the golden ratio uses curved lines to connect intersecting squares in the composition, usually with a central subject in the middle. In many parts of nature, such as flower petals, shells, tree branches, and even hurricanes or tornados, the Golden Spiral is thought to guide the eyes of viewers through an image in a natural flow.

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