When I am shooting a landscape I often strive to put the foreground (where I am standing) into the composition. I feel it gives the viewer a ‘sense of place’. The viewer can imagine themselves in this location as they can feel the connection between ‘terra firma’ and the view. When shooting in the landscape/horizontal format this often involves keeping the tripod low to the ground and using an ultra wide-angle lens. The image above was captured a while back using a Sony A700 and a 16-70 Zeiss zoom lens. The location is one of my favourite beaches in Victoria (The Pinnacles on Philip Island) just after the sun had set. I positioned the tripod on one of the large rocks you can see in the foreground and captured three vertical images that I then stitched together in Photoshop to create the Panorama. The focal length of the lens was only 24mm but when I chose the ‘Perspective’, rather than the ‘Cylindrical’, option in Photoshop it gave me an image that appears to have been captured with a much wider lens. Now that I own Sony ultra-wide angle zoom lenses that start at 15 mm (equivalent) or 16mm I usually just capture one single image.
One of the creative tasks during my one-on-one training sessions and workshops is how to create professional looking landscapes and seascapes.