I love to travel, be it domestically or internationally. These days, and you can well imagine, most of my traveling is local and within the borders of the United States. Regardless of where I go, I love to travel off of the beaten path so to speak. Day trips, weekend trips, and longer trips affords me the opportunity to explore and to create some great landscapes.

On a recent week-long trip to the Bar Harbor, Maine region, I had several opportunities to travel unfamiliar territory (all of it was unfamiliar to me) and do some exploring. The weather was in the 70’s and the humidity was low as well. Quite a difference from the mid 90’s we have been experiencing in Maryland at the time.

What I will typically do is look at an online map of an area and then I look for water. Where there is water are usually bridges to shoot from or just great reflections of the surroundings.

If there are some great skies during the day, even better. A great sky to a photographer is one with stunning clouds against a great blue backdrop.

When I compose a landscape, I look for layers. Maybe there are some foreground grasses or a nearby tree, and then possibly a stream or lake or a meadow. Then another layer may be mountains or another line of trees, and then lastly a layer of the sky.

If you have not yet joined my free photography educational group, The Annapolis Photography Workshop Group, you may want to consider it. We do a lot of online training so your location will be irrelevant for the most part, but we also do in-person domestic and international workshops. Also don’t forget to visit my main website Positive Negatives , and be sure to check out all of the training videos I have produced and made available, typically for just $8