Achieve perfect landscape composition

Foreground interest

Many otherwise promising landscape shots are undermined because all the focus is on the mid-ground and far distance. Try to include some foreground interest, be it a rock or a stone wall, to balance the image.

Make sure your foreground interest is actually interesting. A couple of mouldy rocks or scruffy bushes won't always do the job. Don't just tick boxes. Look for genuine interest and then compose the rest of the scene around this eye-catching starting point.

Ensure that the light is falling on your foreground, otherwise the viewer's eye won't be lead into your landscape. It doesn't matter if you include long shadows in the distance.

Can't find anything suitable to feature in your foreground? Try creating some interest of your own. On a recent visit to Kilve, Somerset, we piled stones on top of each other to create some foreground focus.

You may need to use a little fill-in flash to brighten up the foreground you find. We found that a flashgun on an off-camera lead worked best, pointing the flash to light one side of the stones to recreate the effect of sunlight.