Photographs are not just a jpeg file but a bundle of emotions, experience, and thoughts. It puts a smile in reminiscence.  Capturing the best is important not just to showcase your talent, but to seize every bit of that moment so you can relish (or laugh) about it later in the day.

While practicing travel/landscape photography, emotions do play a significant role but so does the needs of the viewers. There are always those few things that one must keep a check on, irrespective of the purpose of such capture. So here are a few tips/ideas that may help in seizing the moments in the most perfect manner:

USE THE RULE OF THIRDS

There are various composition techniques to enable a better and far more engaging arrangement of elements within a picture; where the rule of thirds is one of the most important rules. Imagine breaking an image into two or three equal parts, either horizontally or vertically. 

It is said that any viewer’s first glance usually goes onto the intersections of the gridlines. Consequently, it is advised that your image’s primary element must be arranged in such a way that it lies at the gridline’s intersections to grasp a longer span of attention from the viewer’s end. Just like the image below, we can see that the first element we would see would either be the branch of the tree onto which the girl is taking the support or the girl herself. 

Also, try to use elements in all the grids, from the foreground, midground, and background. Like the above picture, the foreground is where any person would look at first, i.e. the lady with the camera and the tree she’s standing under. The mid-ground is the lake, and the background is bushy vegetation, hidden by the branches of the tree in the foreground.

USE LEADING LINES

Creating a line or a way to lead up to something can make the photograph more eye grasping. It helps the photographer make the viewer look at a specific point in the image. One of the best examples of leading lines is roadways and water streams that lead up to elements like waterfalls/mountains/valleys.

Here, we can see that the image of rail tracks are the leading lines that are trying to portray an endless journey towards anything the viewer wants to relate to.

FOCAL POINTS AND USAGE OF COLORS

Focal points help the photographer to blur out the parts that are not significant, or want his/her viewers to only pay attention to a certain set of elements. It is mostly used in portrait images but can be effectively used in landscape travel photography, like the image below.

Concerning colors, opposite colors tend to complement each other wherein, one color has a greater percentage than the other colors of smaller percentages.

LOOK FOR UNIQUE ANGLES

It is very easy to click conventional images in a very normal manner, but looking out for different angles to capture the same image most unexpectedly. This image must have been taken while standing in some bushes to give a touch of adventure and forest. The photographer could have taken this same image keeping the leaves and branches away from the background. This image truly justifies the emotion behind unique angles, and such creativity in imaging must be reflected for a viewer to understand.

WHITE BALANCE

White helps in turning the other elements of images more vibrant. ‘Direct sunlight’ is the best light to bring out the colors of the image in the most effective way. The second-best alternative is ‘Flash’ which would help in bringing warmth to the photograph, in both indoor and outdoor scenes.

PORTRAY A STORY

Various pictures intend to portray a story in just two dimensions. One must try to click an image such that it reflects either upon our lives or gives us a sort of perspective to life. It must engage the viewer to think harder about what message or information or story it is trying to show.