Minimalism is a concept that finds its way more and more in design, architecture, art, and even lifestyle.. The idea is to use only essential elements and find beauty within simplicity. You can apply minimalism to photography as well. You can choose to be a minimalist photographer and keep your equipment at a minimum. But you can take the concept further and apply it to your compositions. Instead of spending your time searching for spectacular landscapes, you can find that one notable characteristic of the landscape in front of you. It may be a color, a line, or a shape. Taking minimalist landscape photos means decomposing the scene into layers and filtering the essence. The viewer gets the entire story, but there is just one actor on the stage.
Make Capturing Minimalist Landscape Photos Your Purpose
Good minimalist landscape photos don’t happen by chance. You have to train your eye to look for emptiness instead of the detailed landscape you usually photograph. It means going to different locations and choosing open spaces over spectacular mountains. Like any other photographic genre, minimalist photography requires dedication and passion.
Minimalist landscape photos may change the way you choose the gear and camera settings too. Instead of a wide-angle lens, you may prefer a zoom lens to isolate a subject. You may give up fast shutter speeds and deep depths of field. When you want fewer elements in the frame, blur becomes your friend. A long exposure helps you create soft textures, blend in colors, blur moving elements, and reduce the number of items in the frame. And a shallower depth of field will clean a busy background and make the subject stand out.
While a minimalist landscape photo is poor in visual elements, it is rich in meaning. You need to create atmospheric photographs that add depth to your story. Look for misty mornings with moody weather that hides the bright colors of the landscape. Subtle gray gradients create a dreamy atmosphere and reduce the differences between elements. Try long exposures on windy days to capture the gentle movement in blurred photographs. Bright overcast conditions eliminate a lot of shadows and highlights. Shadows and highlights are also a compositional element. And sometimes you will want to avoid them in the frame.
Minimalist landscape photography requires as much preparation and planning as landscape photography. And you can’t take good photos in the wrong mindset.
Redefine the Subject
Most minimalist landscape photos have a singular subject. And it can indeed be the kind of subject you’re used to, such as a tree, mountain, rock, silhouette, and so on. However, in minimalist photography, every visual element counts as a subject. It may be an edge between two surfaces (e.g., the horizon or the shoreline), a texture (e.g., wrinkles on bark), or a shape (e.g., a cloud). It may be light or color.
You can even have contrast or lack of contrast as the subject of your photographs. Think of working with analogous colors and fill the frame with atmosphere and mystery. Or try high-key photography techniques, and exaggerate the brightness of snow and clouds to reduce the number of elements and create dramatic minimalist landscapes.
Minimalist photography redefines the concept of the subject. To create unique compositions, you need to train your eye to see the world differently. The tiniest details can be the star of your minimalist landscape photos.
Color is Optional
Landscape photographers hardly choose to give up the color. Yet, black and white landscape photography can teach you to focus on shapes and textures, follow lines, and understand the power of geometry. In the absence of color, it’s much easier to observe other visual elements and find a place for them in your compositions. Furthermore, the shades of gray reduce the differences between elements and help you hide busy scenery and isolate a subject.
You can eliminate color or incorporate a single color in your compositions. For example, the golden and blue hours change the colors of the landscape and provide unique moments when everything is either orange or blue. Autumn is another good moment to focus on a single color. Or you can use the pale tones of winter as inspiration.
However, you can use bright colors as well. For example, a ripe field is a bright yellow surface that can be an excellent subject for a minimalist landscape photo. You can also decide on using only two complementary colors. Don’t associate minimalist photography with only moody, dreamy compositions. It’s up to you to deliver minimalist shots in vivid colors, speaking about joy, life, and energy.
Work with Leading Lines and Other Common Composition Rules
Leading lines are powerful elements in photography but even more so in minimalist landscape photography. When you strip the frame of distracting elements, a line becomes the center of attention. Any edge between two surfaces is a line. So you have to be careful where you position the horizon, shorelines, waves, contour lines, and so on. Even the edge between two different colors or shades is a line, and it will capture the viewer’s attention whether you like it or not. So be careful where you place them.
The rules of composition help you a lot here. With just a few elements in the frame, it’s essential to place them in the right spots. Use the rule of thirds, especially for compositions with landscape orientation and horizontal lines. The golden triangle rule works very well for compositions with strong diagonal leading lines. Place the subject in the center of the frame only when symmetry is part of your composition. Otherwise, use the rules of composition and allow into the frame as much negative space as possible.
Working with leading lines may require you to change the position and angle of the camera a lot. Because you photograph a natural landscape, you can’t change the view. But you can change the angle of shooting, camera-subject distance, and depth of field. So take the time to observe the landscape from more than one angle and find the best perspective. For example, you may found that shooting from your eye level is much less interesting than shooting from the ground level.
Concluding words
There is something exceptional and personal about minimalist landscape photos. On one side, they are decorative and look amazing on any wall. But on the other side, they tell stories and invite the viewer to enter into a world of beauty and simplicity. Minimalist landscape photos remind us of the value of ecotherapy, of contemplating nature as a way to improve our health. They create a profound bond between photographer, landscape, and viewer. When you create a minimalist composition, you don’t photograph emptiness. On the contrary, you reveal the unseen essence of the landscape.
It may be hard at the beginning to filter the view and extract the essentials. It may also be hard to create well-balanced compositions, limit the number of elements in the frame, and deliver appealing landscape photos. But when you find the right mindset and your inner voice as a photographer, it all comes naturally to you, and that’s when minimalist landscape photography becomes very rewarding.
