Landscape photography refers to the capture of the images which comprises of the land with some exciting features in it. These features are nothing but refers to landscape in its raw form consisting of physical elements such as landforms, living elements like colorful or amazing flora and fauna, abstract elements like weather conditions, lighting features or human elements like some manmade or built environment or any human activity.

Landscaping is an arts as well as science requires good observation skills, imaginative skills as well as good designing skills. A good landscaper is the one who can understand the nature, feel it, and can blend it together. A good landscaper should be able to apprehend the elements of nature and construction and hence must possess the extraordinary qualities to make a simple hut or even a simple road look wonderful and should express the entire landscape.

Landscape photography is of different types like documentary nature photography, fine art nature photography, wild life photography, nature landscape photography and even close up nature photography. Even the picture of a sunrise or sunset can make a perfect landscape photograph.

The issue in landscape photography is that many think ,one has to just find some hills, waterfalls etc., capture that and natural photography is done. It is just not that. Landscape photography can be something of normal natural phenomena, which should evoke some emotions and move persons’ heart and soul. The scene should be realistic enough to drain some feeling from one’s heart.

Landscape photographs are more than just clicking the striking surrounding photos. It is about capturing the beauties, the wonders and the colorful creations from Mother Nature. This can be done by reading some photography books, but the wonderful landscape photography can come out of sheer creativity.

But still there are few tips a beginner can follow before switching on to landscape photography. These can be kept at the back of the mind and is well worth knowing.

• Positioning Shapes – This can be done by imagining some geometric shapes and by positioning them one can help create a balanced composition. The most common and easiest way for positioning shapes is to use a triangle shape between the objects in an image; there should be three objects in the frame. Two images should be to sides of one another and one image should be at the central position.

Using geometric shapes for positioning is a technique to balance the shot and if one is clever enough, one can lead an eye into it.

• Diagonal Lines – This is one of the main techniques used to attract attention of the audience. This is a very effective way to lead an eye to the main focal point. It is not necessary that these lines should be natural, but these can be anything – a crooked road, a line of trees, a fence, a wavy river or any other image.

If these lines are converging i.e; if the line is originating from a single point then it makes the image look more stunning and effective.

• Rule of Thirds – This is the first and foremost rule or technique taught to students pursuing photography and it gets trotted out more often in all types of photography. This can sometimes be very plain or cliché, but at the same time it can be very effective technique in some landscapes.

This technique is basically focusing on key points of interest and keeping them the focus point in the landscape between imaginary ‘thirds’ points in the image. This provides the image balance and at the same time the attention on the focus points remains intact.

• Framing Images – This is a technique to add a point of interest to the foreground by introducing a frame to the picture. The most common way to introduce a frame naturally is by including a hanging branch of a tree either in the upper part of the picture or it can be sneaking in from sideways. This creates an extra interest in the landscape and can be tried out using different features like bridges etc.

One should follow these rules, but at the same time one should not stick only to these rules. This means that one should not kill its creativity and by using one’s talent the picture might be even more stupendous.
In short landscape photography should express itself and the phrase “a picture is a thousand words” should be worth striking the image….