A version of this article appeared in Australian Photography.
What makes a great landscape photo, great?
The topic of what makes a landscape scene compelling is one I’ve examined for many years. (And it’s one I’m still exploring).
Technical considerations such as crisp focus and an even exposure are necessary, but not sufficient. Captivating scenes—the ones that hold our gaze as we scroll by on social media—often rely on considered composing by those who created them.
Bombo Quarry, NSW. After a grand sunrise fizzled out, I was soon mesmerised by this smaller scene where each surging wave was ignited by the rising sun. The rocks in shadow provided a natural vignette to help frame the golden glow.
Yet the art of composition is one of the most challenging topics to codify—not to mention apply. You’re likely familiar with common maxims, like:
Align your horizon with the rule of thirds
Include nearby elements to create foreground interest
Position leading lines toward your subject
These tips are well-known for a reason. They tend to work.
But have you taken time to consider why they work? Are there other composition principles you can harness? And when should you break the rules altogether?
The nebulous world of landscape composition is so much richer than leading lines. So let’s delve a bit deeper and consider a few key tips to be mindful of next time you go out to frame your shot.
Zenith Beach, NSW. With Tomaree Mountain towering over the top left of this coastal scene, I positioned several rocks in the bottom right to balance out the forms and visual weight in the scene.
1. Balance your scene by carefully positioning subjects
Big bold seastacks or giant old-growth trees make for impressive subjects. But when a single element carries too much visual weight, it can dominate your photo and leave it feeling unbalanced.
So what can you do to restore harmony? Position supporting foreground or midground elements in an opposing zone of the frame to even out the scene so it’s not so lopsided.
Here are two scenarios to illustrate the principle:
If you have mountain peaks running across the top of your frame, consider including hills or rocks to ground the scene below.
If you position a bold tree in the top right, look for a fern or fallen trunk to position in the bottom left.
Unless you’re shooting a minimalist scene, you need to be mindful of how all the elements in your frame interact with each other.
As a visual artist, it’s up to you to arrange all the pieces of the landscape puzzle to create balance—so your image isn’t a one-trick pony of a single sea stack.
Subject positioning is less of a hard rule. And more of a ‘vibe of the thing’ type of principle.
You can develop your eye by reviewing the portfolios of some of your favourite photographers. Evaluate how they arrange scenes to establish harmony across the frame.
This first principle weaves into the second: controlling flow through your image.
Fiordland, New Zealand. With these ancient beech trees standing strong, I spent the better part of an hour walking around the scene to find a complementary foreground. This patch of ferns showcased the lushness of the forest, while also directing viewers up into the scene beyond.
2. Finesse foregrounds to control flow (big-to-small transitions)
“I’m including these rocks to add foreground interest.”
It’s a line that’s repeated on endless landscape photography vlogs. But have you stopped to ask why? Why might we want to add foreground interest?
Foreground elements in wide landscape scenes serve two main purposes.
The first? To direct attention.
If you let your primary subject fill the majority of the frame, your viewer’s eyes will jump straight to that single, prominent element.
You can counter this by positioning your more distant subject in the top 30-40% of the frame and filling the remainder with foreground and midground. With these nearer elements occupying the majority of the frame, your viewer will process these first, before moving back through the frame.
(This is precisely why the rule of thirds is such an effective rule of thumb.)
The second purpose? To tell a richer story.
Supporting foreground subjects provide context and can offer viewers a richer experience of the scene.
By dedicating a majority of the frame to environmental cues—such as slick coastal rocks or arching fern fronds—viewers will first gain a greater grounding in the scene. Then they’ll turn their attention to the main mountain or waterfall deeper in the frame.
You can harness these big-to-small transitions to accentuate that feeling of depth through the scene.
So don’t stop at including foreground elements just because it’s repeated on YouTube videos. Include foreground elements to add layers to your scene so you can tell a richer story.
With a howling easterly blasting through, it sculpted these shifting sands—forming corrugated waves and peaks several stories high. I stumbled on this smaller trio nestled beside a larger dune that offered partial respite. I ducked down, kept the tripod low and snapped a few telephoto frames before the sun dipped out of sight.
3. Zoom in to focus on order amongst the complexity
Natural landscapes and wild scenes can be, well… wild.
Forests are often pure chaos. Seas can rage with menace. While mountains are temperamental at the best of times.
So when we stumble on scenes of order, they grab and hold our attention. These pockets of calm stand out in contrast to the disorder and complexity around them.
Yet these more harmonious frames can be challenging to a) notice and b) capture. Particularly if your mindset is set on capturing grand epic scenes.
My advice? Put the wide-angle lens away and opt for a telephoto zoom. Particularly on a day hike, the chance of an epic midday sky is low—so why not exclude the mediocre sky altogether?
Even a mid-range 24-70mm lens will help you to move beyond being anchored to wide-angle frames. With a tighter field of view, you’ll be able to place greater emphasis on the core elements of calm.
What qualifies as ‘order’ depends on the environment you’re in. So to help prime your eye, here are some examples of what to look for in different settings:
Forests: Compressed trunk columns or fractal branches spreading out
Cliffs: Contrasting rock cracks, colours and textures
Rivers: Long-exposure water patterns as streams cascade down
Coastlines: Repeating pebbles or stones set against a distinct backdrop
Lakes: Smooth ripples and reflected golden hour light
Smaller scenes—consisting of patterns, shapes and textures—have formed some of my most unique and striking compositions.
Compared to sweeping vistas at scenic lookouts, these intimate compositions are less likely to be replicated by other photographers. By focusing on key details, you’ll walk away with a more personal photo that you can truly call your own.
When photographing waterfalls, it’s tempting to use a wide-angle lens and include the entirety of the falls. But often, there are equally impressive hidden gems, waiting to be isolated and captured with a telephoto lens.
4. Shape light and natural vignettes (dark-to-bright transitions)
Vignettes—where the periphery of the frame is darkened—are an essential technique in photography. But why?
Our eyes are drawn to more luminous areas. So with darker edges, your viewers will drift towards the brighter areas in the centre of the image.
In Lightroom, I’ll often use a gradient mask to lower the exposure in the foreground, transitioning up to a brighter subject in the middle of the frame. (Ideally one that is already being lit with natural light to help it stand out.)
And while vignettes are often left for the post-processing stage, you can also achieve a similar effect in the field. By carefully observing light and considering your framing.
Let’s consider my composition thought process behind this image of Mackenzie Falls in the Grampians.
First: Determine the details. I wanted to distil this waterfall down to its core elements: the water trails and the rock wall they spilled down. So I opted for a telephoto lens to focus purely on the streaming water. This eliminated other distractions, like the bright sky above and the messy river in the foreground.
Second: Centre in on the scene. This particular section was an isolated section set amongst the much wider falls. I took a few portrait frames of the vertical cascades. But after reviewing the images on my camera—they felt too cramped, with bright white water filling the entire frame.
Third: Finesse the frame. Next, I rotated my camera to landscape orientation. I found the most balanced cross-section of the cascade. And, most importantly, the shift to the horizontal frame now included black rocks to the left and right—acting as a naturally darker vignette to frame the brighter falls.
When you’re out in the field, you might exclude bright rocks in the periphery that are glowing with direct light. Or you could try to find foreground ferns in shadow that point towards a brighter midground tree.
And you might decide to break this rule altogether. By using a lighter periphery to frame a darker central subject—such as bright leaves framing the dark branches of a shapely tree.
To harness this composition technique, be mindful of the luminosity transitions across your images. The key is to use those variations to frame and highlight your main subject.
A tiny fragment of the reservoir that’s still known as Lake Pedder. On the surface, it’s decidedly beautiful. But it’s a shallow substitute for the wilderness that once was. The directional light helped to add form and depth to the scene.
5. Turn away from sunrise to harness directional light
For many years, my photography was centred around bold sunrises and sunsets.
That meant shooting into a (very) intense light source. And while this produces brilliant colours—when the clouds align—it also results in many harsh shadows and dim landscapes.
I still chase bold skies, but now I pay equal attention to the quality of light falling across the entire lay of the land—not purely the colours in the sky.
My tip? Instead of shooting directly into a sunrise, turn around and look for frames where the sun shines perpendicular onto the landscape.
From a compositional perspective, the directional light will add shape and create a sense of dimensionality. Even softer light will highlight contours in the land. In fact, I often prefer diffused light as it’s not too intense with white-hot highlights and pitch-black shadows.
Directional light can bring a flat scene to vivid life and inject depth into your composition.
Consider this image of the (former) Lake Pedder in Tasmania’s remote southwest.
Sunrise was out to the east. But after surveying how the light was falling across the rolling landscape, I decided to turn northwest—and I’m so glad I did.
The side light emphasised the shapes and forms in the hills, drawing attention to the layers and adding dimensionality to an otherwise static image.
This remains one of the most ancient tree groves I’ve set foot in. As I weaved through these moss-covered trunks, a shroud of fog fell over these forest veterans. The tree on the right acts as a natural frame and helps to direct viewers up towards the equally impressive trees beyond.
6. Avoid these elements (most of the time)
So far we’ve explored what you should do or include. But often, the most powerful compositional choices you can make are the things you avoid and don’t do.
There’s an old expression that photography is the art of exclusion. Painters slowly add elements to their canvas, shaping light and colour with each stroke. Whereas we photographers often seek to remove or obscure distractions.
Here are a few composition tips on what to avoid:
Centred subjects: Unless you're intentionally seeking perfect symmetry, a centred subject will be too quickly processed by the viewer. Their visual journey will be over before it begins. Instead, recognise that some degree of tension can be a good thing, like sweet and sour sauce or an unexpected bridge partway through a song. By offsetting subjects in the frame—and harnessing some of the earlier compositional choices—viewers will process your image more deeply and for longer.
Overlapping zones: Sometimes you’ll want to crouch low and send your seastack soaring above the horizon line. On the other hand, for example, bushes that poke up into a tranquil river stream can be a distracting edge and disrupt the flow of the scene. The solution? Move your tripod, gain elevation or obscure the offending element behind a tree trunk or rock. The key is to keep the edges between zones as distinct as possible.
Busy borders: Clean, open borders provide breathing room around your main subjects. So avoid harsh edge shadows or lines that run parallel to a border. And look out for lines (such as overhead branches) that cut through a corner of the frame. The fix? Alter your crop to make the lines appear less precise—we’re showcasing imperfect landscapes, not geometrical renderings.
Final thoughts
Earlier, I referenced the idea of photography as storytelling. And you’ve likely heard this expression time and again. But it’s true—and it underlies most of the theory behind strong compositions.
If you point your cameras at a grand waterfall or a bold sunset, great—but more often than not, that’s just a pretty snapshot.
It’s nice to look at, but rarely will it hold attention. To do that, you need to tell a richer story. To harness (or obscure) surrounding elements and imbue the scene with deeper meaning.
Strong compositions ensure your work stands out from the crowd. That it holds its own amongst the millions of other images of Bombo Quarry or famous waterfalls.
Above all else, the key to compelling compositions is time.
Memorable landscape photos aren't rushed and are rarely taken on a whim. They require careful consideration. By taking the time to learn and apply composition techniques (like the ones explored here), you’ll become more aware of the concepts to look for in the field.
You’ll be able to work a scene until you create the most appealing composition to tell a richer story of your experience.
One last note: I’ve never been a fan of theory for theory’s sake.
I encourage you to be mindful of the concepts explored above—not all are appropriate all of the time. A luminous high-key image, such as a tree in snow, will be visually processed very differently from a seascape sunrise.
So take time to apply the theory in service of your creative vision. (And ignore it when it doesn’t.)