# today's attempt at a landscape.



## dannylightning (Oct 31, 2015)

I never like any of my landscapes, what do you all think of this, i think its lousy as usual.

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## The_Pearl_Poet (Oct 31, 2015)

I can't tell you why you don't like your landscapes, but I can tell you what I see in this image. Firstly, remember that we live in a complex and chaotic world. As photographers, we cannot add to a scene, but we can reduce it and simplify it. The world is actually a jumbled mess that our brains are extremely good at filtering and deciding what is important. However, when we transfer the world onto the 2D surface of an image, we lose that ability to filter the environment in real time. Our goal is to take a complex scene in which the elements may clash and simplify it to a strong composition.

Let's take a look at your image. The first question is what attracted you to this scene. What did you want to photograph? Was it the bridge? In this scene, there are several competing elements: the tree on the left, the tree behind the bridge, the railing and path behind the bridge, and the cars in the parking lot. As you can see, there are multiple elements in this photograph that do not work together to make the composition stronger but instead interfere with each other, weakening the composition.  Simply being able to analyze an image and suggesting how to make it stronger is easy in comparison to actually carrying out that task.

If I were personally trying to shoot this scene (I probably would have not shot this scene and moved on due to its complexity), I would attempt to position my camera in such a way as to focus on the subject and remove as much distraction as possible. This process requires trying several different camera positions and compositions. For example, try getting really close to the bridge and shooting with a wide angle, emphasizing the structure of the bridge and the leaves at its base. When I shoot a landscape, I visualize the shot I want and try several different compositions, refining the image continuously. In a nutshell, I approach composition in this way.

The next issue to address is the lighting of the scene. This scene appears to be photographed with overcast light. Different scenes call for different lighting scenarios. Overcast light is flat and dull, and at times, is what is called for. In this scenario, I do not think that the light is helping you. It makes the scene dull, flat, and unexciting. Golden hour light is the most dynamic light for landscape photography. Not only are the weather conditions important, but the direction of light is also key. I would have likely approached this image at a different time of day or under different lighting conditions. 

The concepts that I have mentioned here are only a few of many that need to be considered with landscape photography. If you would like to improve your landscapes, I suggest that you study landscapes and identify the elements that make you like them. Good landscape photography requires experience behind the camera, so I suggest that you continue shooting if you would like to improve. I hope you find these suggestions helpful.


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## dannylightning (Nov 1, 2015)

the bridge and the fall colors is what i was going for.    it was overcast,  not many sunny days here recently.   winter is on the way i guess.. 

i remember when i got my first DSLR  not even thinking about what kind of stuff i wanted to shoot i started going out to the parks and back in the woods looking for stuff to shoot, i found my self photographing butterflys, dragonflys, birds and stuff like that.   i shot a few landscapes here or there and for the most part there have been very few that i have liked. 

usually always tried to get these big wide landscapes so i tried to tighten up the scene with this one.    i found my self cropping the photo even tighter once i got it home but could not really get a crop that i liked.    i just though a pic of the bridge and the fall colors would look nice.


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## Dillard (Nov 1, 2015)

At a brief glance, my eyes go to the bridge. But if I look at the image even longer, they wander towards the tree in the upper left, or the passing black vehicle in the upper right. 

I'm not sure if the bridge could have been shot from a different angle to make the tree less dominant or not, but it may strengthen the image. Also, I'm not a fan of the tight crop. Landscapes don't always have to be ultra wides, but this one is just a bit tight for my liking.

But again, I'm no landscape photographer. Just my .02


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## Designer (Nov 1, 2015)

dannylightning said:


> usually always tried to get these big wide landscapes so i tried to tighten up the scene with this one.


Yes, I see how you tightened up on the bridge, but there are still other objects in the photo.

The structures to the right are a distraction, as are the cars seen through the trees, and the large shade spot at the left.  Maybe just move around to find a better composition.  

Here is a version without the cars showing:


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## weepete (Nov 1, 2015)

I found my landscapes got a lot better after I made a concious effort to include elements in the foreground, middle ground and distance. The shot you've posted is full of mid ground with no distance and very little foreground interest. I tend to think that this makes shots very flat. Compositinally the path leading to the bridge is nice but after that it all goes wrong as my eyes are lead up to the right and out of the frame, only coming back in to notice the cars. There's nothing much in the third of the photo on the left and that gives the impression that the composition is heavily weighted to the right hand side of the picture.


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## JacaRanda (Nov 1, 2015)

Hi Danny, you continue to receive great advice imo.  Slow down and think about it more prior to taking the shot.  Designer's edit gave an entirely different image.  Who would have known there was a parking lot.  

Dont get discouraged and understand that not many of us were good at this stuff initially.


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## JacaRanda (Nov 1, 2015)

In my case,  I'm still not good at it.


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## vintagesnaps (Nov 1, 2015)

Some of the pictures I've seen you posting that are good are the birds, etc. Maybe that's where your passion is; with trying to do landscapes you might be forcing it. I think you need to really love something to spend enough time doing it to get good at it.

When you're out photographing birds maybe spend some time just looking thru the viewfinder and think about what you see with the scenery. You don't have to shoot a vast landscape; getting in much closer you might have seen the bridge differently and gotten a better picture.


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## vintagesnaps (Nov 1, 2015)

Maybe this is more what you wanted the picture to be about, what you wanted the viewers to see (since your profile shows OK to edit I just did a quick crop). I think the balance in the composition could still be better; my inclination taking the picture would be to get in closer, and to have taken a step or two and maybe gotten more of the orange leaves to the right in the picture and eliminate a lot of the foliage and background. Learning more about composition could be helpful and think about what the picture is about - if it's about the bridge, that's what you want to show in the picture.


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## dannylightning (Nov 1, 2015)

when i am out shooting birds i usually have my 150-600mm lens on,    i took this photo with that.   unless i can really far away from something its usually way to much zoom for a land scape.

i appreciate all the advice,  the edits of my photo look pretty good.   i like them allot more than i like mine.   

 thanks everyone


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## Derrel (Nov 1, 2015)

I see a faint footpath that leads to the bridge...it might have made a good foreground element, one which would have lead the eye naturally and directly to the bridge. Had the shot been framed/composed differently, including the footpath would have reduced the amount of background, which would have eliminated the cars in the parking lot.

So the question on this landscape is: how many different camera placements did you try? Was this the result you got from one, single try? Or did you literally walk to different positions and attempt to compose a good shot?


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## dannylightning (Nov 1, 2015)

i probably took 6 or 7 different shots from different spots and angles.   i figured one of them would turn out good but that seemed to be the best one. 



i think i have only ever gotten a few landscape photos that i have really liked,  that was back when i first got into photography and i kind of slayed them with the processing and back than i never saved any copies of the originals.  

i guess i just don't have a eye for framing up a landscape scene.


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## jcdeboever (Nov 1, 2015)

dannylightning said:


> i probably took 6 or 7 different shots from different spots and angles.   i figured one of them would turn out good but that seemed to be the best one.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


You have the eye but does not come natural yet. You just need time, practice. and patience is what I think. With birds you use negative space well. The negative space in landscape is the challenge in my opinion. Path, bridge, rail, tress. So maybe the balance of negative space becomes color of leaves in your composition? 

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## dannylightning (Nov 1, 2015)

jcdeboever said:


> dannylightning said:
> 
> 
> > i probably took 6 or 7 different shots from different spots and angles.   i figured one of them would turn out good but that seemed to be the best one.
> ...



with birds its just kind of find them and snapping away,  i usually get photos that i like.


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## Derrel (Nov 1, 2015)

Well...using a 150-600mm zoom lens is probably not the best strategy for a beginning landscape shooter, at least in small areas like city parks. It will force you to be quite far away from your scene, and the "bottom end" being a narrow-angle 150mm foca length puts a lot of _equipment-dictated direction_ onto the photos you can make. Meaning, with a shortest length of 150mm, if you need to move back "a bit", then "a bit" might very well mean 100 feet, or 150 feet back, perhaps more.

Also, everything that lens sees is a flattened image, with the background magnified and "squished" to a high degree. You're also using a long, heavy, awkward lens, and that means it will take tremendous discipline to move around to find the exact, right camera position that the lens _forces onto_ the shot.

This would be a better lens for longer-distance "scenic" type landscape shots, such as at the ocean shore, in the mountains, or when shooting more distant shots. A city park is a fairly confined space for a 150-600mm zoom lens and its angles of view. Can it be used successfully? Yes, I think so, but keep in mind that it has a very,very narrow angle of view, so the camera placement must be very precisely chosen at such a close distance!

You are basically using a most-unusual tool for the job. Kind of like a big, industrial nail gun to drive a couple of carpet tacks...


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## jcdeboever (Nov 1, 2015)

He was using the Hubble for that? Oh my...

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## jcdeboever (Nov 2, 2015)

Like that a lot. Love how the foreground color line breaks the third. Interesting solution. Well done.

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## dannylightning (Nov 2, 2015)

That's a nice edit.  Thanks 

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## dannylightning (Nov 3, 2015)

Derrel said:


> Well...using a 150-600mm zoom lens is probably not the best strategy for a beginning landscape shooter, at least in small areas like city parks. It will force you to be quite far away from your scene, and the "bottom end" being a narrow-angle 150mm foca length puts a lot of _equipment-dictated direction_ onto the photos you can make. Meaning, with a shortest length of 150mm, if you need to move back "a bit", then "a bit" might very well mean 100 feet, or 150 feet back, perhaps more.
> 
> Also, everything that lens sees is a flattened image, with the background magnified and "squished" to a high degree. You're also using a long, heavy, awkward lens, and that means it will take tremendous discipline to move around to find the exact, right camera position that the lens _forces onto_ the shot.
> 
> ...



i was in the parking lot of the park and that is the lens that was on the camera when i though hey, that looks like a nice landscape to try out and it was one of the few things i could get far enough away from with that lens.

now from what i have been reading lots of guys seem to like the 70-200mm lenses for landscapes,   at what point does the long focal length start to squash the image,   that was at 150mm. 

from what i am seeing is with the right and tighter framing my landscapes would be half way descent.


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## runnah (Nov 3, 2015)

Not applicable but I love my 24-105mm f/4 for landscapes. 

Not my best but took this this past weekend. I am really starting to only shoot at tighter focal ranges. It makes you work a bit harder and certainly forces you to rethink locations.

@60mm



K52A0281 by runnah555, on Flickr

@105mm



K52A0223 by runnah555, on Flickr


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## Derrel (Nov 3, 2015)

Yeah, like you said, from the parking lot, the 150-600mm lens gave you a shot opportunity! I know what you mean! I think the 70-200mm lens is a good landscape lens...there are a lot of useful lengths in a 70-200, for many,many types of photography, especially with a FF sensor, but it's also got a good deal of usefulness with an APS-C camera, especially if the landscapes are not close-up or small-scale landscapes.

At what point does focal length start to cause that "telephoto compression" look? (I put that phrase telephoto compression in quotes because that's not a really proper term, but people know what we're talking about nonetheless.) I think it starts to become very noticeable at around the 135mm on Full Frame focal length; at 135mm, the background objects become noticeably larger, and appear "closer than in reality". By 180mm, background objects are looking pretty magnified, and distances are appearing to be closer than in reality. By 200mm, the effects of so-called _telephoto compression _are quite visible. Using a 300mm length lens, the telephoto look is very strong, and also, the angle of view behind the main subject becomes pretty narrow in angle. The 400,500,and 600mm focal lengths have extremely narrow angle of view, high degree of magnification of background objects, and extremely strong distance compression effect.

A strong distance compression effect is often referred to as a flattened perspective, or a compressed perspective. These longer focal lengths are actually quite useful in longer-range landscape situations, meaning from 100 yards out to infinity. There **is** a real place for very long,long telephoto lenses in landscape photography. Many people really like the way the long,long lenses make the real world look "lensy"...long telephoto lenses make things look very different from the way the human eye and brain tends to see things.


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## dchung00 (Nov 5, 2015)

Personally I don't find anything about this image interesting. Not trying to sound like a buzzkill, but if your subject is supposed to be the bridge try to find a unique/different angle. You can also utilize techniques like the rules of thirds, the golden hour, etc. to spice up your image!


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## AlanKlein (Nov 5, 2015)

Maybe you can combine your nice  bird shots with a landscape like this.  You don't always have to use a telephoto lens.


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## Jim Walczak (Nov 6, 2015)

Over-all, I think you're getting some _really_ good advice here.  To reiterate or expand on Pearl Poet's comment, whether I'm shooting critters, people or landscape, I very much follow the philosophy of "simplify and eliminate"  If it doesn't contribute to your composition, then remove it from the frame (either by moving the object physically or moving yourself).  To use my favorite analogy, imagine you're shooting a monkey at the zoo (because "monkey" is easier to spell and type than "orangutan", LOL).  As you look thru the viewfinder, ask yourself "what is this shot about?".  Is it about the other people watching the monkey?  Is it about the monkey's habitat?  Is it about that glob of poop the monkey just flung on the wall??  Or is it about _the monkey_.  Once you've determined what the shot is about, then simply remove anything from the frame that doesn't contribute to the composition.

Also, to expand on weepete's comment just a bit, while I do (mostly) agree with the idea of fore, mid and background regarding landscapes, if you're going to follow that concept, do remember to pay attention to which lens you use as well.  I see where you shot this with a 150-500...and regardless of your distance from the subject, I would be so bold as to suggest that's just NOT an appropriate lens for landscapes.  Remember, the greater the focal length, the more you images tend to "flatten out", thus minimizing or eliminating the distinction between foreground and background, etc..  While it's hard to say without seeing the actual scene, I suspect that if you got MUCH closer and used a wide angle, you probably would have gotten better results than you did using the super-dooper zoomsky...in other words, don't use a jack hammer where you really only need a framing hammer 

That all said...and I'll admit this is perhaps a tad subjective and most certainly my own personal opinion...I _really _think you could have used a better subject. Over the years I've tried to shoot many such bridges and I'm seldom happy with the results.  I've tried a variety of angles, a variety of lenses, a variety of lighting, etc., and they just usually leave me wanting.  At the risk of making excuses here, I've come to the conclusion that it's not me - it's simply the bridges!  LOL!!!  This is probably going to sound like a MASSIVE rationalization, but I think the truth is that there's just not really a lot of visual appeal to bridges found with scenery such as this.  It's pretty in a park and otherwise works well with the natural ambiance, however when I look at the bridge itself...there's not really a whole lot there to knock my socks off.  If you were to look at that bridge completely isolated from the scene, would you _really _standing there thinking to yourself "Wow!  Cool bridge!"?   See what I'm saying?  An old stone bridge will usually have some degree of visual appeal and certainly some of those highly ornate oriental bridges make for interesting compositions, but what you have there is basically a simple wooden bridge such as many folks see in parks and such all the time...I've walked over many such bridges countless times...nothing really special or that interesting about them.  I'm not trying to be rude here AT ALL, but I strongly suspect that this is one of those cases where you could examine the bridge from countless angles, get perfect light, perfect exposure, yadda, yadda, yadda and no matter what, you'll probably be disappointed with the shot.  -IF- there was some other interesting element here...say a bridge and groom standing on the bridge kissing (where the bridge is essentially just a simple prop for the composition), the photo would likely have worked MUCH better, but I just don't think the visual appeal of the bridge is strong enough on it's own to really carry the composition.

Just my own opinions, but I hope they help!


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