How to Shoot a Landscape

"To take a good landscape you have to go about it as if you were taking a portrait," says Macduff Everton, who views sweeping vistas as individual faces, and composes his images with a focus on detail. Everton's steps to building balanced, graphically strong images include:

• Mastering light: Light is the most important and tricky element. It can make a photo mysterious—or just plain boring.

• Choosing a good vantage point: With portraits you can often tell how tall the photographer is. It's the same with landscapes. So move around a bit; switch elevations, kneel on the ground, or walk around.

• Paying attention to everything in the frame: What's in the corner is as important as what's in the center; it's often the difference between an interesting photo and an interesting subject. Be careful not to slip power lines or half a person into the images because you're not paying attention.