Nature Photography How To

“Keep things simple” is great advice for whatever type of images you shoot, but when photographing nature scenes it’s often crucial to simplify the landscape if you want to capture compelling photos without a lot of unnecessary clutter.

In this tutorial, Romanian landscape photographer Toma Bonciu explains why a minimalist approach to composition is particularly useful when shooting during winter. You’ll follow Bonciu on a trek across a snow-covered field, as he provides several framing tips for turning frosty landscapes into scenes of beauty.

Bonciu alternates between a 24-105mm zoom and a 70-200mm telephoto, and demonstrates how it’s important to analyze and compose a photo differently, depending upon the focal length of the lens you’re using. His overall approach when photographing winter scenes is to “think of the landscape as a series of points and lines,” and compose images with a strong sense of geometry.

As Bonciu’s hike progresses, it’s interesting to watch him incorporate hills, trees, and patches of forest into simple images that convey a stark winter mood. He’s not in a rugged, mountainous region like where we’ve seen him before, but rather on relatively flat terrain like you might find near home. So check out the video and give this a try over the long winter weekend.

There are more helpful shooting tips on Bonciu’s YouTube channel. And we encourage you to watch an earlier video we posted, with 13 valuable composition tips from six world-class photographers.