This may seem like a redundant title, considering the entire principle behind landscape photography is finding locations and landmarks, but it’s surprising how many photographers who want to try landscape photography do not know where to begin. Locating interesting or unique locations and landmarks can be a challenging task, but depending on your locational situation there are plenty of ways you can find interesting in even the mundane and daily.
The first thing you need to do is identify which type of landscape you are more interested in shooting and what is available in your area. The primary locations of landscape photography can be divided up into two categories, Nature and City. The difference in these types of landscape photography, let alone the process in finding locations and landmarks, is an immense one. For now I will try to focus on tips and tricks in finding areas to shoot in the two, rather than how to shoot them.
Natural Landscapes
Of the two types of landscape photography, natural landscape photography is often regarded as the more “breath-taking” and “awe inspiring”. The reason for this is because of the principle of natural landscape photography. That principle is to capture the essence of grandeur, a larger than life scenario that comes from the planet itself with minimal human interaction. This does not mean that you should only be shooting mountain ranges and valleys, or that you should avoid anything man made. Rather you should look for locations that are epic in some degree. As for human constructs or destruction, this only means that you should avoid locations that maintain a higher level of grandeur than the natural elements around it. For example, shooting a rolling prairie with a fence cutting through, or a city built into a mountain side, can be just as magnificent as shooting a hidden valley in the Amazon.
Image by Sergio Tudela
Location hunting for natural photography can be time consuming and costly, to understate. You will need a fair amount of knowledge about your location to really find any locations. This is because, as I’ve said before, you need to know what is unique in your area. Learning about local parks and geographical features will definitely help you find locations, since these are already locations that people have deemed as note worthy. This is a good starting point, but to find new and interesting locations you’ll need to explore the area. This requires driving back roads, hiking though forest off the trail, and going beyond the limits of typical civilization. Learning how to read a topographical map is an excellent skill for this. Though the primary way to find these locations is simply exploring places you or someone else would not usually go.
Image by angelocesare
In a previous article I had mentioned how I spent a good amount of time storm chasing, in that time I traveled hundreds of back roads, and journeyed to many remote locations. This coupled with my adventurous tendencies are what allowed me to find areas in my region that rarely saw humanity. I found a back road once that in the morning looked as if it and the fields near it had been frosted over, in the middle of summer. Another time I discovered a section of a small plateau range that no one visited, that was made of red rock and a glass like rock that made the range glitter in the sunset. Each of these were random discovers found just by venturing the wilderness.
Urban Landscapes
Urban landscape photography is both more simple and more complex than natural landscape photography. While natural landscape photography focuses on natural grandeur, urban landscape photography focuses on minimization of humanity. This is the focus of making a person feel small in the area they live. Most of the urban landscape photography is done from a distant or aerial viewpoint to especially emphasize this, but these are not required to create an urban landscape image.
Image by TheFella
Focusing on things people typically take for granted, and the scheme in which these are implemented in will also lend itself to this principle. Abandonment is also a good way to emphasize an urban landscape. Either one of these will create a sense of grandeur in an unnatural setting that works as a minimization of the human persona. This is the real trick when hunting urban landmarks and landscapes, creating a psychological effect from an otherwise unnoteworthy monument. Statues, buildings, railways, anything can be used to achieve this, meaning that the primary point on urban landscape photography is not so much finding locations but knowing how to shoot them.
Image by Eneas
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