The Power of Imagination in Landscape Photography

There is a difference between average photographs and really strong ones. Well, composition, light, weather, timing are really important things. But there is one ability - if you get this one thing right, you will have much higher chances to get out a really strong photograph.

#1 Beeing out at the wrong conditions

This headline sounds like anything you should avoid, right? But honestly, most of the time we have the wrong conditions for a special scene. What I do is, I go out whatever the conditions are and I think about my options.

And sometimes this could also mean, that I am at an amazing place, with an outstanding vista over a lake, although it looks poor and boring:

This doesn't look like a master piece? Well, it isn't :) It is not more, that a quick test shot. I often do this, when I know already what I want to photograph, which conditions I need. 

#2 Turn on your Imagination

This is nothing your phone or your computer can do for you, this is an ability you have to get used to. What I do is, whenever I am at a place, I try to imagine how it would look through different conditions.

If you look at that poor, boring and - quite bad photograph above: Imagine what would happen, if the sun would come from behind that mountain at the rightern side, how all the wrinkles in the hills and mountains at the leftern side will be defined, how much depth we will get into out scene. If you are able to do this, and this is something you will learn with the time, you just have to come back when the conditions are exactly that how you want to have them.

#3 Return when conditions are better

If you are able to imagine how a scene will get transformed through other conditions, and this is something you will learn with the time as a landscape photographer, when you practise point #1 - the only thing you have to do is, to come back when the conditions are how you'd prefer them for your composition.

In my recent case, I went home and came back in the following morning, as the sun was exactly there where I planned and this brought me finally to this photograph:

What a difference, isn't it? I just finetuned the crop a tiny bit, to consider the light itself in my composition. But finally it got that photograph with those conditions I've predicted a day before.

Check out my gear, which I use for my landscape photography:

My Landscape Photography Gear

Nice greetings,

Christian