All of us photographers are in awe of the epic landscape images, whether of grand light in the mountains ...

1-C_16_0536 ... the full rainbow...

2-15000046Rainbow over Robinson Lake, Sudbury, Ontario ... or vast fields of wildflowers.

3-C_15_0236 My preference is to isolate one small part of a scene, choosing small details within the broader landscape.

4-U_18_0239 From within this overall view of Yellowstone's Grand Prismatic Spring, I took a more personal approach with this photo.

5-U_18_0244 The first one you could buy at the postcard shop. This is my interpretation of the essence of the location.

6-U_18_0279 Here is the grand view of the farm lands of Washington's Palouse country. It is a stunning landscape.

7-U_18_0366 But this illustrates more of my personal impression of the rolling hills. Less is more.

8-970680 The isolating of a  part of the landscape need not always be a small section. Here my focus was on the colour and the triangular shapes of this section of a mountain in Banff National Park. A wider angle photo would have been more distracting and would not have concentrated the viewer's eyes on this element of the mountain.

9a-C_18_0251 After I took this record shot of Kakabeka Falls, I opted for a telephoto lens to isolate a small section of the falls.

9b-C_18_0239 For me, this provides a feeling for the immense power of the water.

Here are a few more illustrations of this technique of looking for the more intimate details in a landscape.

10-U_12_0353Checkerboard Mesa My focus was on the patterns in the rock on Checkerboard Mesa in Zion National Park. The overall photo was uninspiring.

The lone tree breaks up what could have been just a photo of the rock with a lack of scale.

11-970224Tree reflections in wetland, Espanola, Ontario, Canada This is a much more compelling image of this wetland near Espanola than an overall image.

12-C_13_0315 As in the previous photo, this one focuses on the lines on the mountain slope and the interplay of light. It tells a story of a controlled fire burn in Banff National Park showing the regeneration behind burned trunks.

13-S_21_0129 This image (at Nairn Centre) and the one that follows (Lake Wanapitae area) again focus on lines and shapes, something to consider when you are looking around your location for those small scenes.

14-S_12_0111Birch trees and red maples in autumn, Capreol, Ontario, Canada

This photo also focuses on colour, as does the next photo of rocks on the shoreline at Killarney.

15-900699 16-35000023Redbud trees with spring blossoms

Colour again is an important element in this detail of a blossoming redbud tree in Kentucky.

17-C_13_0288

Rather than taking a view of all of Jasper's Athabaska Falls, I took this detail of a part of the falls and a little of the rainbow created by the spray.

18-S_19_0244 After photographing the rapids of the Wanapitae River, I scouted the area and saw this small tree with the rapids as a backdrop.

Isolating one small element simplifies the photo.

19-17000310 Rather than photographing a large area of a forest or a whole tree, These three images included only a small section of a tree. The three parallel lines of red leaves on this maple near Killarney became my selection.

20-17000163Sparlking waters of Lake Mindemoya, Manitoulin Island, Ontario, Canada This tree along Lake Mindemoya frames the sparkles in the lake. How could a larger scale image ever have emphasized those?

21-35000120 Here again I've isolated one branch of this dogwood  to make the blossoms the subject.

This was taken in Cades Cove, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee.

So start looking for those small details in the larger scenes. In some ways, these are easier to photograph than the grand scenic.

22-S_20_0019 Doing this can take your photography to another level. This can be done close to home, as this photo proves.