Questions about land/cityscaping?

I'm still stuck with photographing landscape - that is, whenever I'm not having a dog in the picture.
Seems I'm much better with composition when I got something to composite around.

Do you know any good reading stuff? Read a lot in danish, but I still dont get shots I'm happy about.

Second question, how do you find good locations? I live in our capital and I go to a lot of green places but hard to find those spectacular images.

Last question - which lens do you prefer for landscaping or cityscaping?

An ultra wide lens are very good for cityscapes. I use a 16-35. For static set-up shots, my 24mm prime works well. As for "finding" good locations, sometimes you have to create your own. Great scenes are out there, they just need a little help. A capital city has got to be a wealth of shots. Good luck.

I agree with Ted, a wide angle lens is somewhat mandatory for landscape type photography.

​As for finding places, there's two ways I use. One it to see what others have done and where they have gone the second and my favorite is to use Google Earth and "Street View". I'm not sure if there's a "street view" outside of the US but here it's great. It allows you to be at that particular spot and to look around and see what is visible from that exact spot. It's perfect for finding new city views, especially when considering places you've never been.

I got a wide angle (12-24mm) and I use Google street view a LOT. I also take detours when driving somewhere, to spot places. Think my problem is seeing the composition, when I'm standing there?

If you got websites/flickr pages/whatever you would recommend, someone who do great landscape pictures, I would love to see them. I mostly browsed on google images, but guess that mostly works with people naming their image "landscape".


See this - I looked at the bushes in front which made a line through the image..... imo, its a very boring picture. Done at 12mm.
Thats what I mostly get home with, stuff I thought I saw which didn't work on a picture. Maybe I'm not "understanding" how to really use my wide angle yet:

Wide angle shots are most successful when you have two elements, an interesting foreground subject that is very close to you (often with a WA lens you'll have to be right on top of it) and an interesting background subject. Due to the nature of a WA, you literally have to be right next to your foreground subject in order for it to look like it's in the foreground. Take a look at my landscape images, nearly all of them have these two elements.

Dave_W said:

Wide angle shots are most successful when you have two elements, an interesting foreground subject that is very close to you (often with a WA lens you'll have to be right on top of it) and an interesting background subject. Due to the nature of a WA, you literally have to be right next to your foreground subject in order for it to look like it's in the foreground. Take a look at my landscape images, nearly all of them have these two elements.

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Good Tip Dave! Thanks

Pat in NH

Thank you very much, Dave, that makes sense.

What amazingly beautiful pictures you do! Just saw your website now.

Dave, just want to say thanks again, your advice really helped a lot. I've been out with my camera the last 2 days, searching for interesting stuff for foreground and background - not quite finding it yet, but very glad I finally got some way to approach this.