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Fill the Foreground
A successful landscape depends on great light, but also on strong composition, and while you can’t control the former, the latter is completely down to you.
Most coastal images are shot with a wide-angle lens, so you can ‘get more in’. However, what you choose to include needs to be interesting otherwise the picture will be boring.
To avoid a boring shot, look for foreground interest, then get in close to emphasise it so the eye is naturally drawn into and through the scene. This will capture a sense of depth and scale.
You won’t have to look far to find something of interest by the sea. Ripples in the sand, a lump of driftwood, pebbles, seaweed, seashells– you’ll be spoilt for choice.
Of course, you also need to make sure that everything is in sharp focus, from the immediate foreground to infinity. Wide-angle lenses help here because they give you lots of depth-of-field, but you’ll still need to stop down to f/16 or f/22. Don’t make the mistake of
focusing on infinity as this could result in an out of focus foreground. Instead, focus on a point 2-3m into the scene.
