Composition problem

I love landscape photography and would love to practice it but I live in a flat boring area. Or are there shots out there and I just suck at composition? How do you improve this?

Some places are hard to take a bad photo- a lot of the west coast of the USA, a lot of the Mediterranean shore along Spain, France, Italy, etc.

I don't live in those places.

Look for rivers, streams. Agricultural activity can be interesting. Find the highest point and show the vista. Build on a point of interest- the shot below isn't where I live, but it has the same issues- I found it by accident on the way to a customer. If you know someone with a small plane, that gives a different point of view and useful for scouting different things to photograph.

IMAGE LINK: https://www.flickr.com …/album-72157696664236161/

JAK_6233

Check out some of the landscapes posted by HiBoss. They are from Kazakhstan and look like they are of a more or less flat terrain. The subject matter is not so special, but the treatment is very good. You might get some ideas.

https://photography-on-the.net …showthread.php?​p=18694078

Evertking wrote in post #18724449
I love landscape photography and would love to practice it but I live in a flat boring area. Or are there shots out there and I just suck at composition? How do you improve this?

Where exactly is that "flat boring area"? Someone here might have some ideas. One has to use their imagination; a few months back, and not too far from my house one of the hot spots was a huge field of sunflowers. It was like a reunion of photographers. The field, being about 5 acres, offered plenty of vantage points. Sometimes images were just of the field, sometimes people were composing with just a person's head above the flowers.

See gallery here...https://www.readingeag​le.com …WS&ArtNo=727009​999&Ref=PH

Evertking wrote in post #18724449
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I love landscape photography and would love to practice it but I live in a flat boring area. Or are there shots out there and I just suck at composition? How do you improve this?
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That's funny ..... where I live is surrounded by mountains, and I long to be in flat areas so that I can photograph sunrises and sunsets and all of the silhouette opportunities they provide.


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Tom Reichner wrote in post #18791203
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That's funny ..... where I live is surrounded by mountains, and I long to be in flat areas so that I can photograph sunrises and sunsets and all of the silhouette opportunities they provide.

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I don't know about wanting to be in a flat place, but yeah, what you said, those sunrises and sunsets are hidden when you are up in some valley. I've been up in the mountains in the summer when the sun dips behind a mountain about 2 hours before sunset, and I always think - do I want to sit here twiddling my thumbs for 2 hours and see if the sky lights up when the actual sunset occurs? The answer always turns out to be no. Plus there is always an hour or so hike back to the trailhead.

I think the real challenge is to make any environment look interesting. There are NO formulas for good composition no matter what is said on forums.

It is said the Edward Weston could spend a half hour in a parking lot and come out with a significant photograph that looked like and Edward Weston photograph. That is the key to going beyond what the masses are producing. Making photographs that don't look like everyone else's by using the way each individual sees, composes, process, prints to come up with a unique signature by using all of those tools. A great quote by Weston and it is so true.


".....so called “composition” becomes a personal thing, to be developed along with technique, as a personal way of seeing." - Edward Weston

If you look at Weston's work it has a visual signature as does most of the greats. Not matter the subject matter his work looks like his works. His nudes look like his peppers that look like his clouds that look like his toilets that look like his peppers that look like his nudes. Most of us will never reach that level but I think it is worth a try.

So my advice would be find something that you would like to say visually about the environment you are in. Figure out a way to say it in an honest way. The way that you interpret it. Find your own way of putting images together visually and find a way to say what you are feeling about your subject and then use all the tools including composition, processing, printing etc to communicate what you saw in the personal way that you saw it. BTW it can take years even decades to get to this level but it wont happen without the first step.

One of my favorite midwest landscape photographers in Michael Johnson and he thrived in the midwest. He photographed in many different areas but I find his most unique and satisfying work to be the work he did in the midwest. He found a way to communicate his feeling about where he lived.

A link to Johnsons site
https://www.michaeljoh​nsonphotography.com

He has work in many permanent collections including the Art Institute of Chicago.

You can find lots of interest in simple patterns, shapes, texture, collections of color... you do not need to have a 'scenic' location. you may be disadvantaged in shooting classic landscape photography, but have perhaps you simply have overlooked things like patterns in a cornfield or a wheat field.

Wilt wrote in post #18801380
You can find lots of interest in simple patterns, shapes, texture, collections of color... you do not need to have a 'scenic' location. you may be disadvantaged in shooting classic landscape photography, but have perhaps you simply have overlooked things like patterns in a cornfield or a wheat field.

And figure out what makes the landscape in your area unique and try and photograph that uniqueness and then try and make it yours. Try and make it more than the noun or as Weston called it the obvious which is what 90% of most everyone else does. The obvious.

Evertking wrote in post #18724449
I love landscape photography and would love to practice it but I live in a flat boring area. Or are there shots out there and I just suck at composition? How do you improve this?

When I retire, my wife wants us to move to within a short drive of the Delaware beaches. The Delmarva peninsula makes the land in those Michael Johnson photos look like a roller-coaster ride. Yes, I'm concerned, because there's also not a lot of "stuff" on all that flat land, and what there is doesn't look all that inviting (think 200-foot long chicken coops, and soybeans).

It helps that I don't take traditional landscape photos, but it will be an interesting test of creativity. Look up; look down; take photos at night (I really need to start doing that); do long daytime exposures; if you can afford it, take a plane ride and do some William Garnett-style stuff. And whenever the weather gets "interesting", be out there to shoot it.

This is my first post here so I hope I am not messing it up.

On weekend, one of my contacts at Flickr shared an image which shows a completely entirely totally flat landscape. Through cleverly reduced composition, he converted the scene to a nearly abstract graphic. Maybe you will find this inspirational in the context of this thread. If not, it is safe to ignore this post.

https://www.flickr.com …3087463768/in/d​ateposted/

I started a thread for flatlands photos four years ago. It hasn't had any recent activity, but what's there may suggest different things to do with flat country.

It might not be your thing, or true flatlands, but I've been following Phil Koch of Flickr for a while. Maybe it would give you some ideas or inspiration.

https://www.flickr.com​/photos/philkoch/

Ejenner's post reminded me to post this guy. One of my favorite photographers, he's worked for National Geographic, he lives in Minnesota, so that might have some similarities to wherever you are (some prairie stuff in the western part of the state). I've posted links to him before in other threads, nothing flashy, but when you try to do this, you realize how good he is. (Koch appears to do some pretty serious editing)

http://jimbrandenburg.​com/

Flat, featureless land didn't stop a photographer called Andreas Gursky. I think he even sold a print of it.