What is it about a photograph that grabs your attention? It’s a big question, and there are lots of different answers we could all come up with. The basic elements of a photograph, like colour, shapes, textures, perspective and subject matter are all important, but more than any particular element, the answer often lies in the way these things combine to evoke an emotional response in the viewer.

One of the things I love about a good landscape photograph is the sense that you could step right into the scene, pick up the pebbles in the foreground and feel the sun and breeze on your face. It is a goal of landscape photographers to try and create this sense in their images, to put the viewer on the spot, but it is not always an easy thing to achieve. Despite how simple and effortless a well constructed image of this sort appears, it is invariably a result of careful technical and creative choices made by the photographer.

A tool that can play a big part in achieving this goal is the wide angle lens. I don’t think there are too many landscape photographers who aren’t aware of the benefits of using a wide angle lens, but I do think it takes some practice to use one effectively. When I bought my first wide angle lens, a 24mm way back in the 1970s, I struggled to work out what to do with it. Having grown so used to the standard 50mm lens that came with my first SLR, the extra width of the 24mm saw me producing image after image that lacked impact because I was trying to fit too much into my compositions. Like a lot of inexperienced photographers, I saw the extra width as a means of capturing that whole, wide view in front of me and making people say “wow…that is grand!” – in fact, it had exactly the opposite effect.

The first thing a photographer should be aware of when using a wide angle lens is that it generally makes things look smaller and further away than they really are. Once you recognise this fact, you can use it to your advantage – you really can fit more into your compositions, but you have to be extra careful not clutter up the frame with unnecessary distractions or leave too much empty space. The best tip I could offer here is to keep your compositions tight by getting in close to the foreground interest. With a wide angle lens, close might mean anything from a couple of metres down to half a metre or less. This is one of the best ways I know of putting your viewer on the spot and inviting them to ‘step into’ your images.

In a lot of my landscape images, the front element of my lens is between 0.5 and 1.5 metres from the nearest foreground element of the composition. This often means getting down on hands and knees, regardless of whether it’s wet or muddy. Some photographers carry a fold-up mat for exactly this purpose. Others just accept that landscape photography is sometimes a wet and dirty business! But by getting in close, it is possible to fill the foreground with features that, to the naked eye, can look insignificant and uninteresting. A small rock pool is easily overlooked in the context of a whole seaside scene, but if you get close enough so that it fills the bottom of your frame, and leads the eye on to more distant midground rocks and background waves and sky, you can create an image that has both beautiful close-up detail and great depth.

Getting in close raises the problem of keeping everything in your image sharp, from close foreground to distant background. Wide angle lenses are very forgiving in this regard but to take complete control over this issue, you need to understand and employ hyperfocal focussing. You can do your own research into the meaning of hyperfocal focussing and hyperfocal distances, but essentially this simple technique gives a photographer the means to maximise depth-of-field so that everything in the final image appears sharp (presuming it is the photographer’s desire to keep everything sharp – which is not always the case).

For example, the hyperfocal distance for a 17mm lens (on a full-frame DSLR) with the aperture set at f11 is approximately one metre. This tells you that by setting your 17mm lens to f11 and focussing at one metre, everything in the image from a distance of 0.5 metres (half the hyperfocal distance) to the far distance will appear acceptably sharp. The hyperfocal distance is different for every combination of focal length and aperture, but you don’t need to memorise these things or be a mathematician to work them out. Hyperfocal distance charts and apps are readily available online so you can either download one and keep it in your pocket or just refer to your smartphone. I carry a small laminated chart for each of my lenses in my top pocket every time I go out.

Now that you’re down on hands and knees and focus is taken care of, all you need to do is fill your frame with a pleasing composition. I’m not going to try and tell anyone what makes a pleasing composition – it’s one of those things I think is very personal and varies with different scenes and different photographers. It’s a matter of learning to recognise what is pleasing to your own eye so that everything looks balanced – not too cramped and not too empty. You can read about various compositional guidelines, like the “rule of thirds” and the “golden mean”, as good starting points.

A wide angle lens is only one tool in a landscape photographer’s kit but it is one that can add great impact to your images. Like any tool it takes some trial and error to get the best out of it, but it is certainly worth the effort when it puts your viewers right there beside you.

There were lots of little pools and hollows like this along the beach and, at first glance, they didn’t seem to hold much photographic interest. But by getting right up close they can become an important feature of the overall image. Canon 5D MkII, Canon 17-40L lens @ 17mm, f14, 5 seconds, ISO100

These foreground boulders were quite small, so to fill the bottom of the frame I had to take off boots and socks and position my camera within one metre of them. It’s a little hard to see in this small image, but at full resolution there is lots of detail in the lichen and algae growing on the rocks which draws the eye into the image and then on up the stream into the distance. Canon 5D MkII, Canon 17-40L lens @ 17mm, f13, 5 seconds, ISO200