Composition

Jeff Engelhardt says: The most influencial/important technique my Dad every shared with me was the use of "leading lines." There's no more pure or elegant example of them than here, where the lines are strong enough to be the subject all themselves. With his trademark elegant simplicity, Joel throws in a little 'curve' at the end, to give the eye a nice place to pause before studying those clouds.

Curves V by Julius Tjintjelaar

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Jeff Engelhardt says: A beautiful example of how to compose a picture almost completely based on depth of field. Isolating a few sharp flowers that appear to be growing up and growing into focus at the same time - as if they're rising above a lake of blur.

or you won't realize I've gone by Adam Baker

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Jeff Engelhardt says: In my opinion, G Dan Mitchell is the best landscape photographer on flickr. It's really hard to pick just one of his images. This one exemplifies his professionalism because of the sheer difficulty to pull it off (compositionally). First, it's an established rule that subjects should be odd-numbered: 1, 3, 5, etc. Scott Kelby dedicates a chapter in a book to turning 2 boats on a calm lake into 3, because it's so much more effective. Yet Dan pulls off a great point-counterpoint with a light and a dark rock, a foreground and a mid-ground. Lines? Not leading, but an elegant curve that takes you towards, but not all the way to, the second rock - points you where to go and lets you find it yourself. And a bright foreground? Somehow it's complimentary and not distracting, but you generally just shouldn't have that bright of a background. And somehow it all works. An excellent example of breaking the rules with subtlety and achieving high art.

Two Rocks, Morning - Racetrack Playa by G Dan Mitchell

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Jeff Engelhardt says: Brian Reub is another one of my favorite landscape artists on flickr, though he might be known more for his equally elegant writing. Another example of taking a pattern (sort of), and creating a vanishing point. Maybe because this isn't a 'perfect' pattern, or maybe the horizon is so perfect . . I don't know, but everything seems right to me about this example of how to capture a vast desert landscape. Many people shoot these vertically (including me), and though that shows more of the foreground, the lack of width in those really constrains this kind of landscape.

Badwater Before the Storm by Brian Rueb

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