How to Use Layered Foregrounds for Stunning Wide-Angle Landscape Photos (Lessons from Mount Cook)

How to Use Layered Foregrounds for Stunning Wide-Angle Landscape Photos (Lessons from Mount Cook)

I spent an entire vacation chasing a single waterfall shot. I kept moving closer to the falls, trying to fill the frame with water and mist, and every image came back looking flat. The problem wasn’t the location. It was that I kept removing myself from the scene, getting closer and closer until there was no sense of scale, no journey for the eye to take. That instinct to walk right up to your subject and shoot is one of the hardest habits to unlearn, and it quietly ruins more landscape photos than almost any technical mistake.