Five ways to simplify your landscape photography and tell a more compelling story

 

 

It's a common phrase not only in photography, but in many facets of life, that you ought to keep things simple. It's good advice but how can you implement it into your landscape photography? Adam Karnacz with First Man Photography has produced a new video highlighting five ways you can simplify and improve your landscapes.

As Karnacz says, it's not a matter of removing objects from an image. While simplifying a composition may involve removing something from the frame, it's more about stripping away unnecessary elements of a shot in order to better convey a specific story to the viewer. How does a scene make you feel? That's what you want to be able to share with a person who sees your image. You may not be there to explain it to them, so you need your photo to do all the talking. This means including elements which help tell a story and not including elements which either don't serve your purpose or in some cases muddle or contradict the story.

There are different compositional techniques you can use to share emotions in your landscape photos. While every situation is different, a few possibilities include using leading lines, incorporating foreground elements, shooting when the light paints a scene in specific colors, utilizing different tones of light to lead a viewer through a scene and more.

(Via First Man Photography)