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Framing the landscape

Perhaps what makes landscape hard is exactly the quality that appears to make it easy: it’s just sitting there. It isn’t neatly parcelled up into photograph-sized chunks. With a portrait or an action shot it’s usually easy to identify what the subject is. Fill the frame with it, get it sharp and correctly exposed (which the camera can help with), and the subject will probably speak for itself.

Landscape photography doesn’t work like that. Landscape is all around you. It’s a big world, but we’re trying to catch it in a small rectangle. That’s the challenge. Put it another way: how do you place your subject in the frame if you can’t say exactly what your subject is? This returns us to some of the questions raised in ssss1. While ‘what to point at’ may be a no-brainer with action or wildlife, it can be the hardest decision you’ll have to make when taking a landscape photograph. In other words, framing is primary and fundamental.

Framing begins with seeing. This means more than just looking in the right direction. It means really being aware of what you’re looking at. This sounds very simple, but simple isn’t quite the same as easy. It calls for concentration and full attention to what you see, both directly and through the viewfinder.