How to Find Landscape Photography Opportunities Where You Live

If you are a keen landscape photographer one of your main challenges will be how to locate places that will provide excellent opportunities to create stand out photographs.  Your first port of call will probably be the work of other photographers in your area.  You can see their work at exhibitions or at photography clubs or via their personal websites or blogs.

Another way to view photographer's work of your area is to browse social networking sites such as Flickr.  Flickr gives you the ability to search for photographs across the millions that are stored in its database.  If you search by town name or county you will end up with a filtered list of photographs that have been taken in your area. Flickr encourages tagging of photographs with keywords, so as long as the contributor has tagged their photograph with the relevant place name it will appear in the search results.

Portholland by Johan J.Ingles-Le Nobel on flickr (licensed CC-BY-ND)

Flickr also allows you to search by groups that have been set up by contributors.  There are many groups that are dedicated to a geographical area encouraging Flickr members to submit relevant photos to the group's bank of images.  These groups provide an excellent source of ideas and inspiration.

You are not looking to copy other people's works but equally there is no such thing as a completely original idea – what you are looking for is inspiration.  Even if you don't think much of a contributor's image of a local scene you might get some ideas about how you could do a better job.

Another way of searching for locations is to use Google Earth.  Google Earth will give you a satellite image of your county or town.  You may spot features that look like they might make interesting subject matter for a landscape photograph.  I have found this especially useful for coastal photography as I can view stretches of coastline picking out interesting features which is much quicker than physically walking the same areas.

alba a settembre by Francesco Sgroi on flickr (licensed CC-BY)

To really be successful with your landscape photography you need to think a little bit deeper than just location.  The time of day is a big factor:  sunrise and sunset provide the best lighting in most cases as direct sunlight often bleaches colours and provides little mood or ambience.

Check the weather also – if you are after a misty Autumn morning they don't come every morning so it's important to check the weather forecast to see whether mist is likely.  If you intend to take coastal shots check the tide – if the tide is all the way out are you going to get the shot you are after?

Misty autumn dawn by James Jordan on flickr (licensed CC-BY-ND)