PERSPECTIVE!! Switch it up!
Sitting high atop a rock overlooking the tree line is beautiful in person, help your viewer see the same thing!
Have you ever heard someone say how the picture just doesn't do the scene justice? I know I have said it personally and it's so true! What we see with the naked eye can't fully be captured by a camera, but we can still give a great idea of the "feeling" of what we were able to witness!
Changing what you focus on can drastically change the feel of your picture and tell a story with one little tweak.
When taking a picture, I try to think of how I can tell the "story" of what is happening. As a portrait photographer, capturing the many different expressions or moods of a person is what I aim to do in a session. When you get into nature however, this is a bit more tricky! You must let your mind go away from the normal point and shoot, and really be creative with composition, focal points, perspective, t make it an interesting picture!
Getting down at the level of this athlete instead of shooting from above, ads a level of intimacy to the shot.
Think about moving up higher or lower than the subject. Possibly shoot either extreme close up or back off for a wide shot if you usually zoom in! Experiment and see what works best for your image!
Including a lot of "extra" stuff in the shot made this picture more beautiful to me than just zooming in on the mountains.
This was shot on the fly, as I was driving (safely of course) and thankfully had my camera on the seat next to me from a soccer game I just photographed. The scene to me was utterly majestic. The road and the tiny cars, the layers and layers of mountains that went on forever, and the clouds floating above in the dusky sky. Had I zoomed in on just the mountains, it would not have had nearly the impact that it does including so much additional detail!
Using my hand to give perspective to the size of the hail made an impact with this picture!
While the picture above is just a snapshot, it is a great example of how to show perspective! If I had just photographed the lawn with the hail on it, the viewer would have no idea how big the hail was!
Whenever you find yourself out in nature or photographing your friends or family, think of how to best tell the story of that situation. Change your physical position, camera angle, what you include in the frame or how close you zoom in or how far you back out! I notoriously like to shoot close up and I am challenging myself to really back off on my images to learn how to make it work!!! It's a fun challenge for sure!