Landscape photography has the ability to transport a person to the photo location without actually being there. Any amateur can shoot a decent photo of an interesting and picturesque place but it takes a careful and adept photographer to make that picture compelling. If you’ve observed, most impressive landscape photos have a couple of common elements. They have a certain foreground element, the right framing and they all comply with the rule of thirds.

Foreground elements
In order to show the depth of a landscape, it is very important to include some type of foreground element without which the viewer has no way to distinguish distances or sizes; everything looks flat and closer to the camera. A foreground element adds a substantial amount of improvement to what would otherwise be a drab amateur picture. When using foreground elements in landscape photos, make sure you use a very narrow aperture (high f/stop), so the whole scene will be in focus.

Some photographers like to use foreground objects that appear more like subjects. One example of this would be a boat anchored on a beach or a car staring down a long road. A lot of photographers like to use simpler foreground elements such as long grass with large fields in the background or a rusty railing with a cityscape in the background. Sometimes when foreground elements and background elements don’t seem to fit together, the result can be even more compelling. A good example of this would be photos taken from Central Park in New York City with grass and trees in the foreground and massive corporate buildings in the background.