The Digital Photography Book

How to Add Depth to Your Landscape Photos

LOCATION: BANFF NATIONAL PARK, ALBERTA, CANADA

There’s a compositional technique pro landscape photographers use that helps to draw you into their image: the way they compose their shots gives them dimension. Their images don’t look flat. They have layers and that gives them depth. Here’s how you create layers: (1) Make sure your shot has something in the foreground. If shooting a lake, the shot doesn’t start in the water—it starts on the shore. Maybe there’s an interesting rock in the foreground, or some driftwood, or, like in the shot above, a gap in the ice—some visual object, right up front, that starts ...