In the first hint of this series I suggested that lots of practice is a great way of getting better results. We learn a lot from experience, making mistakes and trying again. It's great then to have a favourite location that's not too far away so you can keep going back to try different things, or to attempt the same photo but correct the mistakes you might have made the last time. Experiment with different times of day and year, weather conditions, long and short exposure times etc. Landscape photographers generally like the light around sunrise and sunset. Photos of waterfalls or forest scenes seem to work best of overcast days.
Here's a photo of one of my favourite return-to spots... "Secret Falls"
It's sometimes easy to spend too much time playing with camera settings rather than actually taking the picture. Try taking your camera and put it into a fixed mode : set a fixed zoom (focal length), a fixed aperture or shutter speed (by choosing aperture or shutter priority) and force yourself to leave it that way. Go out the back door, take 20 steps and stop. Then, from that spot, take 20 different photos of whatever is near you. It will help you concentrate on composition rather than the techy stuff…
You don't necessarily need to be in a spectacular location to improve your photography. A lot of great photos come about by showing ordinary things in a different way. Challenge yourself by choosing an everyday item or place (your fridge, the front door, the bathroom, a tree in the back garden) and try taking photos of it from different angles, in a range of lighting, or look for something simple that is characteristic of the thing but is just a small part of it.
