A Complete Guide to Capturing Creative Landscape Photography
Landscapes are one of the most accessible yet challenging genres of photography. Many landscape photographers struggle to capture the raw power of nature’s fleeting moments in a single frame. For OM SYSTEM Ambassador Peter Baumgarten, the key to landscape photography is moving beyond simple documentation to achieve a more personal and creative style. Baumgarten shares his field-tested techniques for bringing more creativity and personal impact to landscape photography.
Full disclosure: This article was brought to you by OM SYSTEM
At a Glance
With over four decades of experience, OM SYSTEM Ambassador Peter Baumgarten has established himself as a respected photographer and educator, including his popular Guide to Astrophotography. Working from Manitoulin Island in Canada, Baumgarten draws inspiration from the surrounding wilderness. The retired teacher loves creating stunning images, but his real passion is teaching others the creative process behind them.
“Anyone can learn about the numbers displayed on a camera screen,” Baumgarten says. “The real journey in photography begins when you learn to see. My goal is to help photographers move past asking ‘What settings do I use?’ and start asking ‘What story am I trying to tell?’ That’s where creativity truly lives.”
Chase the Light That Creates Stories
“I believe great images are made by working with nature, not just in it,” Baumgarten says. “This means seeking out the soft, warm light of the golden hours, the gentle tones of the blue hour, or even the dramatic mood of an overcast sky. Photographing in the midday sun means missing the most compelling opportunities that nature gives us.”
Baumgarten treats light as the foundation of every compelling landscape photograph. “We’re guests in nature’s studio, and we have to operate on her schedule,” he explains. “That often means being out when it’s inconvenient, like early mornings, late evenings, or in weather that sends everyone else indoors. That’s where the magic happens.”
“Often, the subject doesn’t make the photo. The light does,” Baumgarten concludes. “A beautiful sky is a dime a dozen, but how that light interacts with your subject is what creates the story.”
Embrace the Unexpected Opportunity
“I’m always ready to ditch my plans when something better shows up,” Baumgarten says. “This flexibility is often the key to capturing something unique.”
While planning is crucial, Baumgarten stresses that some of his most rewarding photographs have come from moments he never could have anticipated. “Many of my most memorable images weren’t on any shot list,” he explains. “I was driving home from an appointment one day and decided to take a road I’d never explored. I came over a small hill to see a forest floor blanketed in thousands of spring flowers. I carry my camera everywhere for this exact reason.”
“That’s the real work of a landscape photographer: developing an instinct for when to ditch the plan,” Baumgarten concludes. “You have to be receptive to what the world is offering you. Those unexpected gifts are often the most rewarding, but you have to be ready to take the detour.”
Plan and Control Light Like a Pro
“The days of looking out my window to judge the light are over,” Baumgarten explains. “I use satellite imagery on websites like zoom.earth to see what the cloud cover looks like, and I’ve learned to predict how a sunset will look based on those clouds. Low-lying stratus clouds often mean an intense but very brief sunset, maybe only a few minutes of fiery reds. High cirrus clouds can produce softer, painterly pastels that linger long after the sun falls below the horizon.”
“This planning is only half the battle; I need the confidence to see it through,” Baumgarten adds. “I need to wear the right clothes for the weather, and have equipment that can handle harsh conditions. That’s where the OM SYSTEM OM-3’s IP53 weather sealing is critical. It gives me the freedom to head out into the most dramatic, moody conditions, knowing that if a storm rolls in, my gear won’t be the reason I miss the shot.”
Beyond prediction, Baumgarten actively shapes the light he captures. “One of the ways I love to tell a different story is to use a long exposure to blur motion,” he says. “Long exposure photography involves using slower shutter speeds to capture movement over time, transforming choppy water into silky smoothness or rushing streams into ethereal mist. Traditionally, achieving these effects in daylight requires neutral density filters: dark glass that reduces light entering your lens. But they’re heavy, expensive, and you need multiple strengths for different situations.”
“Long exposure is a photography technique I use constantly, but I rarely carry physical neutral density filters anymore,” he says. “The Live ND Mode on my OM-3 camera gives me that same creative power digitally. With the press of a button, I can smooth out fast-moving water or create a painterly abstract, all without carrying heavy ND filters in my camera bag.”
Baumgarten also controls light in specific parts of the frame, like balancing a bright sunset sky against a shadow filled foreground. “Graduated Neutral Density filters are a necessity for any landscape photographer,” he explains. “These filters are dark on one half and clear on the other, with a gradient transition between them. They allow you to selectively darken just the bright sky while leaving the darker foreground unaffected, balancing exposures that would otherwise be impossible to capture in a single frame.”
“The OM-3’s built-in Live GND gives me the power of a graduated filter for any lens I own, even my M.Zuiko Digital ED 8mm F1.8 Fisheye PRO OM. I can digitally position the gradient, change its hardness, and perfectly balance a bright sky against a dark foreground in seconds. It has completely streamlined my workflow, letting me focus on composition instead of fumbling with gear.”
Composition Trumps Camera Settings Every Time
“The first question I get when showing my photos is always, ‘What settings did you use?’ Like there’s some secret formula,” Baumgarten says. “But the truth is, the settings matter far less than people think. To be a creative landscape photographer, I still need to understand the exposure triangle. But landscape photography offers much greater tolerance for different settings than wildlife or astrophotography, where precise technical execution is critical. In most landscape scenes, whether you’re at f/5.6 or f/7.1, 1/60th or 1/125th, the difference is negligible.”
For Baumgarten, this obsession with technical data misses the real work of creative landscape photography. “Focusing on the numbers displayed on the screen is a distraction from what it actually takes to capture creative landscapes: a strong composition that tells a story,” he explains.
“No one has ever stood in front of a breathtaking photograph and said, ‘Wow, what amazing settings,’” Baumgarten concludes. “They have an emotional response to the photo. They connect with the story, the mood, and the vision of the artist. That connection is forged through composition: how you arrange the elements in the frame to guide the viewer’s eye and evoke a feeling. Prioritize that story, and the right settings will simply follow.”
Build Visual Journeys Through Layered Composition
“I think of composition as building a visual journey for the viewer,” Baumgarten explains. “A strong composition needs a place for the eye to rest, and that’s usually my main subject. But to get there, I create distinct layers: a foreground element to invite you in, a midground to hold that subject, and a background to give context and scale. This layering makes a simple scene feel much more immersive.”
Baumgarten explains the benefit of using layered composition. “Creating depth through intentional layering prevents images from looking flat,” he describes. “A common instinct is to make the main subject the biggest thing in the foreground, but I often do the opposite. I prefer to place my key subject smaller and further back, usually in the midground. Then I use foreground elements like rocks, flowers, or leaves that draw interest.
“I also think in terms of primary, secondary, and even tertiary subjects within a composition,” Baumgarten adds. “Multiple subjects create visual interest and give the eye different places to explore within the frame. The primary subject anchors the composition, while secondary elements support the story and tertiary details add richness without competing for attention. This hierarchy of subjects transforms a simple scene into a complex visual narrative that rewards a closer look.”
“This layered composition makes the viewer an active participant,” Baumgarten concludes. “They aren’t just looking at a subject; they’re looking through a carefully crafted visual story to find the subject, which makes the final image feel far more dynamic and engaging.”
Control Depth of Field to Shape Your Story
How a photographer uses depth of field is one of the most powerful creative decisions in landscape photography, offering two distinct ways to tell a story. Whether pursuing edge-to-edge sharpness or isolating a single detail, that choice shapes the entire story.
“Focus stacking changed everything about how I approach landscape composition,” Baumgarten explains. “It allows me to get my lens inches away from a foreground element, like a pattern in the ice, and keep everything perfectly sharp all the way to the horizon. The technique blends multiple images taken at different focus points into one hyper-focused final image, creating depth a single exposure can’t match.”
“Focus stacking used to mean hours in post-processing, but many OM SYSTEM cameras now automate the whole process in the field, which can save me a lot of time and frustrations later,” he continues. “At a frozen waterfall, I was able to focus on tiny ice crystals and stack them with a sharp waterfall in the background. With focus bracketing, my camera merges the shots and gives me a JPEG preview on the spot, so I can confirm I nailed the focus on my RAW files before leaving the scene and heading home to create my focus stacked image on my computer. Having that preview removes all the guesswork and saves critical time when the light is fading. Alternatively, I can actually have the camera do the focus stacking for me, which saves the edited and focus stacked JPG to my memory card.”
However, Baumgarten states that maximum sharpness isn’t always the most compelling choice. “Sometimes the most powerful way to tell a story is to control what the viewer doesn’t focus on,” he says. “By using a wide aperture, you can melt the foreground, background, or both, away into a soft wash of color and light. This immediately isolates your subject and tells the viewer exactly where to look.”
“I also combine shallow depth of field with focus stacking for the best of both worlds,” Baumgarten adds. “I’ll use a wide aperture to get that beautiful, soft bokeh behind a flower, but then focus stack the flower itself. This ensures the entire flower is perfectly sharp, while the background remains a distraction-free canvas. This combination achieves incredible subject sharpness and background softness in a single image.
Apply Design Principles Like a Visual Artist
Great composition isn’t just about applying design principles; it’s about removing anything that distracts from the story. “Great composition isn’t just documenting a scene. It’s building something that guides the viewer’s eye and tells a story,” Baumgarten says.
“Once I have found my subject, I forget about it and focus on everything else in the frame,” Baumgarten explains. “It forces me to see the distracting elements I might otherwise miss, like a bright rock in the corner or a stray branch. As the photographer, I am responsible for every square millimeter of my image. My job is to remove anything that pulls the viewer’s eye away from the story I am trying to tell.”
“I often think back to the basic elements of design I learned in art class: line, shape, color, and texture,” Baumgarten continues. “While they all play a role, the one that I believe has the most impact in my landscape photography is the use of lines. In almost all of my compositions, I am actively looking for a linear element to act as a visual pathway for the viewer.”
“Leading lines can be obvious, like a road fading into the distance, but they can also be subtle, like the ridge on a sand dune or a crack in the ice,” he says. “By carefully repositioning my camera, sometimes by only a few inches, I can use that subtle line to pull the viewer into the frame and guide them directly to my subject.”
“Simple compositions are almost always the most effective, but simple doesn’t mean empty,” Baumgarten clarifies. “It means being intentional. I am not in the business of taking photos; I am in the business of making photos. That act of making involves carefully deciding not just what to include, but what to leave out.”
Use Focal Length to Control Your Story
“Lens choice does more than just frame a scene; it shapes the entire story,” Baumgarten says. “Different focal lengths don’t just change what fits in the frame,” he states. “They alter the entire narrative by controlling what the viewers see and, more importantly, what they don’t see.”
“Adjusting a focal length is one of the fastest ways to completely change the story one of my images tells,” Baumgarten explains. “People often think landscape photography is all about the wide-angle view, but some of my most powerful images are made by subtraction. A telephoto lens gives me that power. I can reach deep into a grand scene and isolate a single compelling detail, a distant pattern, or a specific interaction of light and shadow.”
“Conversely, there are times when even an ultra-wide lens can’t capture the sheer scale of a place,” Baumgarten continues. “That’s when I’ll turn to a fisheye lens to create a dramatic, immersive view. I’ve even used it to get my camera into tiny caves or openings where I could never fit, capturing a perspective of the world that is physically impossible for a person to see on their own.”
Find Stories Beyond the Obvious View
While grand vistas are captivating, Baumgarten believes the most powerful stories emerge when a photographer moves beyond documenting a scene toward interpreting it. “No matter if I am discovering intimate details within big landscapes or transforming scenes into abstract art, both approaches require seeing differently and expressing my emotional connection to a place.”
“I always look for the grand scene within the details, which help me create compelling and intimate landscapes,” Baumgarten explains. “An intimate landscape is a small, self-contained composition that tells a story. It’s a fully realized image found in the intricate patterns of ice, the texture on a wet rock, or a single fern growing from a cliff face. These details can be just as interesting as a sweeping sunset, but they require me to slow down and see differently.”
This intimate approach often becomes Baumgarten’s creative solution when conditions don’t cooperate. “This is my go-to strategy when the light for the wide-angle landscape just isn’t working,” he says. “I might have come for a big sunset that never materialized, but instead of giving up, I can leave with a beautiful abstract of colors on a lakeshore if I make myself see the scene differently.”
Taking this idea further, Baumgarten uses Intentional Camera Movement to create pure abstract art. “ICM involves moving my camera during a slow shutter speed exposure to render a scene as soft, painterly blurs of color and light,” he describes. “It’s about capturing the feeling of a place, not just its literal appearance. I can transform a forest into soft, vertical blurs or a sunset into a beautiful wash of horizontal color.”
“Traditionally, I needed strong neutral density filters to get my shutter speed slow enough for ICM in daylight,” Baumgarten continues. “This is where the Live ND feature on my OM-3 becomes invaluable. It allows me to enable those slow shutter speeds needed to ‘paint’ with my camera, all without carrying extra filters. I can experiment with different movements and immediately see the results on my LCD screen.”
“The best photo is often the one that is there in the moment, not just the one you came to get,” Baumgarten concludes. “Whether I’m finding intimate stories in small details or creating abstract interpretations of entire scenes, both approaches teach me to connect emotionally with a landscape rather than simply documenting what’s obvious to everyone else.”
Master Your Local Locations Through Systematic Exploration
For Baumgarten, arriving at a location is just the first step in finding a composition. “Rather than settling for the first shot, I actively explore my surroundings to uncover hidden potential, often discovering powerful framing elements that can transform a simple view into a compelling story,” he describes.
“‘Working the scene’ is a physical act. It means I force myself to move. I’ll walk left and right, get my camera low to the ground, climb up on a rock, and try different focal lengths. The first composition that I see is rarely the best one.”
Through this methodical exploration, Baumgarten often discovers elements within the landscape that can create natural frames. “A photograph isn’t just what I point my camera at. It’s also about the context that I build around it,” Baumgarten says. “Using a natural frame, like the arching branches of a tree or the opening of a small cave, is one of the most powerful discoveries I can make while working a scene. It immediately adds a layer of depth, making the photo feel more three-dimensional and immersive while transforming a simple view into a composed story.”
This exploration-focused approach extends to Baumgarten’s long-term relationship with close to home locations. Using a spot just twenty minutes from his house as an example, he proves this point with systematic creative challenges. “I’ve photographed this location dozens of times,” he describes. “Every time I go back, I give myself a new assignment: shoot it only with a telephoto lens, focus only on reflections, or visit during a snowstorm. By constantly changing the conditions and my approach, I can stand in the exact same spot and create a completely different photograph. The real challenge, and the real reward, is in learning to see all of the stories your favorite places have to offer. I learned early on to fall in love with my local spots, because that familiarity forces me to become more creative to find a new story.”
To add fresh perspectives, Baumgarten sometimes introduces new elements to familiar scenes. “While I don’t overuse it, there are times when adding a person makes all the difference,” he explains. “In addition to helping tell a story, it’s also the most effective way to show a sense of scale. In a place like Great Sand Dunes National Park, it’s almost impossible to show how massive the dunes are unless you include a person to anchor the scene.”
The discovery process consistently yields unexpected results regardless of the timeframe. “It’s easy to get discouraged and leave, but that’s when I challenge myself to forget my original plan and just start exploring,” Baumgarten continues. “More often than not, by truly working the scene, I find a completely different photograph that ends up being far more compelling than the one I came for. Whether it’s discovering a natural frame I hadn’t noticed or finding an entirely new angle, it’s about turning a potential failure into an unexpected success.”
Free Yourself from Tripod Dependence
Modern cameras have completely changed the rules for stability and composition in the field. While tripods remain essential for specific techniques, Baumgarten says that they should never become creative anchors that limit exploration and spontaneous composition.
“A tripod is for a specific job, like a very long exposure, but it should never hold you in one spot,” Baumgarten says. “I often see photographers plant their tripod and then compose for hours from that same original spot, never moving one inch. I do the opposite: I find the composition first by moving around handheld, and only then do I bring in the tripod if the shot absolutely requires it.”
“Honestly, most of the time I don’t need a tripod,” Baumgarten continues. “The OM-3 camera’s powerful 5-axis in-body image stabilization system, which has up to 7.5 stops, is so effective that it completely frees me to work the scene. I can shoot handheld exposures for several seconds and still get tack-sharp images. I’ve even done handheld focus brackets where the camera is firing for six or eight seconds straight. That freedom to move and react quickly is where so many of my best images come from.”
Unleash Your Camera’s Built-In Creative Tools
Modern camera technology has transformed what’s possible for landscape photographers, Baumgarten explains. Rather than viewing advanced features as mere technical specifications, he treats them as artistic instruments that enable new levels of creative expression and capture exceptional detail directly in the field.
“The Creative Dial on the OM-3 has become my artistic control center,” Baumgarten says. “If a sunset isn’t quite as impressive as I’d hoped, I can use the dial to subtly shift the hues or bump the saturation, giving me a better vision of the final image right there in the moment. The Creative Dial is an incredibly powerful tool for shaping the mood of a photo before I ever press the shutter.”
“I love that I can preprocess my shot in the field while still keeping the RAW file for full editing control later,” he continues. “My favorites are the mono profiles. I grew up with film, and I believe that color can sometimes be a distraction. With the Monochrome Profile Control, I can pre-visualize the scene in black and white, using digital versions of classic color filters to change the tonal response and even add the perfect amount of film grain for a timeless feel.”
When scenes demand more than standard exposure capabilities can deliver, advanced capture modes become essential. “There are times when I know I want to make a massive print or have the flexibility to crop aggressively in editing,” Baumgarten explains. “That’s when I turn to the OM-3’s High-Res Shot Mode. This mode gives me the ability to capture a 50 megapixel handheld file or an 80 megapixel tripod file. It’s not just about the larger size though. The High-Res Shot Mode captures incredible detail and richer tonal information that makes photos look noticeably better, even on websites and social media.”
“For challenging scenes, like a sunrise with a dark foreground, the real challenge is retaining detail in both the brightest highlights and deepest shadows,” he adds. “HDR photography solves this by capturing multiple exposures of the same scene. One for the highlights, one for the shadows, and often several in between, then I blend them together to create a balanced image with detail throughout. It’s a simple technique any photographer can use by taking multiple shots at different exposures and merging them into an HDR image in post-processing.”
“For me, this is where the OM-3’s in-camera HDR mode becomes essential. It automatically blends multiple exposures to create one perfectly balanced image,” Baumgarten concludes. “And thanks to image stabilization, I don’t even need a tripod anymore. Having a lighter camera setup allows me to travel further and reach locations I simply couldn’t access before.”
“What I love about these features is how they free me from technical limitations and let me focus purely on the creative vision,” Baumgarten says. “Whether I’m sculpting the mood with the Creative Dial, capturing extraordinary detail with High-Res mode, capturing low-light long exposures easily with Live Composite Mode, or balancing impossible lighting with HDR, these tools transform technical challenges into creative opportunities.”
Think Outside of the Box
Photography doesn’t always have to document literal scenes, Baumgarten stresses. Sometimes the most compelling images emerge from blending elements of reality to create more powerful, story-driven photographs that are more engaging than simple documentation.
“After a major event like a lunar eclipse, you’ll see a million photos of the blood-red moon, and they all look identical,” he says. “While those photos work, my goal is to create a unique landscape where that event is a key element, not just a picture of the event itself. I want to tell a different story.”
“During a recent eclipse, the moon was too high in the sky to capture with an interesting foreground,” he explains. “So, I used the Multiple Exposure mode on my OM-3 camera. I photographed the moon, then a landscape with a bridge, and the camera seamlessly blended them. It’s a powerful, legitimate photographic technique that has been used for decades in film cameras. Using outside-of-the-box photography techniques lets me reimagine reality, creating something that goes far beyond a simple snapshot.”
“The real journey in photography begins when you stop trying to perfectly document what’s in front of you and start trying to express what you feel about what’s in front of you,” Baumgarten concludes. “It’s about exploring your curiosity, playing with your creativity, and finding your own story in a landscape, no matter how grand or how small. The goal isn’t to just take a picture, but to tell a story. When you find the tools and the skills that let you forget about the camera and just focus on that feeling, that’s when you’re truly creating.”
More from Peter Baumgarten can be found on his website, Facebook, and Instagram.
Full disclosure: This article was brought to you by OM SYSTEM
Image credits: All photos by Peter Baumgarten
