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Home → Composition and Art

What to Photograph When There’s Nothing to Photograph

By Spencer Cox 8 Comments
Published On September 30, 2021

I’m on the annual Photography Life fall colors workshop with Nasim, and our group ran into a tricky photographic situation this morning. A beautiful mountain overlook was completely blocked by clouds at sunrise, ruining any photos we had in mind. Time to pack it up and go home? Not quite.

Here’s the shot we wanted to take, as captured by Nasim a few years ago:

Mt Sneffels at Fall
NIKON D850 + 24-120mm f/4 @ 38mm, ISO 64, 1/3, f/5.6

And here’s how sunrise looked today:

Landscape Covered by Clouds
GFX100S + GF63mmF2.8 R WR @ 63mm, ISO 100, 1/6, f/5.6

It’s hardly the view our group had hoped for after waking up at 5 AM, but sometimes that’s how nature goes. You never know how the sunrise is going to be unless you take the time to get out there yourself.

But even when your plans go awry, some creative thinking can lead to good photos anyway. In this case, the clouds that blocked the mountain weren’t all bad. They also added a layer of fog to the colorful trees all around us.

Rather than facing forward toward the overlook, I started looking around to find compositions that took advantage of the low clouds. With a telephoto lens (I was generally at 240mm with the Canon 24-240mm superzoom we’re testing), some of the foggy trees made for nice, subtle subjects.

Telephoto Aspens in the Fog 1
Canon EOS R5 + RF24-240mm F4-6.3 IS USM @ 240mm, ISO 100, 1/10, f/8.0
Telephoto Aspens in Fog 2
Canon EOS R5 + RF24-240mm F4-6.3 IS USM @ 240mm, ISO 100, 1.6 seconds, f/6.3
Telephoto Aspens in the Fog 3
Canon EOS R5 + RF24-240mm F4-6.3 IS USM @ 183mm, ISO 100, 1/10, f/10.0

The images don’t scream at you with a nuclear sunrise, but I think the calmer atmosphere suits the subject. A morning that looked like a total loss had become a successful exercise in landscape photography at a distance. With a telephoto rather than a wide angle lens – and facing exactly backwards from the popular direction – our group was able to isolate the most interesting colors and foggy layers of the trees to create plenty of good compositions.

Situations like that are pretty common in photography. You show up somewhere with a photo in mind, and it turns out to be impossible to take. Maybe crowds, the light, the weather, or anything else completely ruins your plans. Looks like there’s nothing to photograph. What do you do?

Don’t stand around waiting against hope for conditions to improve. Don’t put away your gear and leave prematurely. Instead, figure out if there are any non-obvious subjects you missed, and spend some time trying to capture the more hidden shots.

A good place to start is with a telephoto lens, like our group did this morning. Telephotos let you isolate subjects much better than a wide angle, from abstract shots to birds and other wildlife. Look around, including behind you, for opportunities with a telephoto even if you’d never shoot that way with a wide angle. (It’s why we tell our workshop participants to bring along a telephoto even when they don’t expect to need it.)

Another place to look is at the ground. Macro and close-up photography is possible almost anywhere in the world and in almost any conditions. In rainy, dreary landscapes, I’ve taken macro photos of sparkling droplets of water on green leaves that have a very peaceful mood. Even if you’re not carrying a dedicated macro lens, a standard zoom is usually capable of capturing small subjects in interesting ways. Don’t pack up your camera until you’ve looked around for smaller subjects.

Spencer-Cox-2019-199-08-40-_1011579
DC-S1R + LUMIX S 24-105/F4 @ 73mm, ISO 320, 1/80, f/4.0

This article isn’t meant to be a long treatise on composition, just a simple reminder to keep your eyes open for more than just the shot you had in mind. It’s rare for there to truly be nothing to photograph – maybe just nothing obvious. If you deliberately look around for different subjects and get creative with your compositions, you’ll find that almost any scene can lead to high quality images.

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Filed Under: Composition and Art Tagged With: Composition, Creativity, Essays, Landscape, Landscape Photography, Light, Photography Tips, Tips for Beginners

About Spencer Cox

I'm Spencer Cox, a landscape photographer based in Colorado. I started writing for Photography Life a decade ago, and now I run the website in collaboration with Nasim. I've used nearly every digital camera system under the sun, but for my personal work, I love the slow-paced nature of large format film. You can see more at my personal website and my not-exactly-active Instagram page.

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TN Args
TN Args
October 22, 2021 3:36 pm

I’m curious about this wish to take a photo that someone else has taken. My wife is like that. I’m not: I just can’t feel the attraction.

1
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Ian
Ian
October 5, 2021 3:07 pm

Consider monochrome subjects and compositions. Use your camera’s color filters to enhance elements of the scene.

0
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Yandoodan
Yandoodan
October 1, 2021 11:22 am

Leave the sky out; there are almost no conditions in which a big swatch of uniform gray is interesting. In addition, the great gray blank area will make your colors look dull as well. Crop out the sky, and the low tonal range will allow vivid colors, nothing blocked or blasted. You might try foggy sky when it dramatically presents multiple tones, like drifting past a lighthouse.

I once happened across sea cliffs when drifting clouds obscured the sunset, and the beach beneath swarmed with disappointed photographers faffing about trying to find an angle. I photographed them from the clifftop, cutting out the sky of course. It turned out well.

0
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Spencer Cox
Spencer Cox
Author
Reply to  Yandoodan
October 1, 2021 2:27 pm

Fog can lead to good skies because of the gradual transition from land to sky. But otherwise, a flat gray sky is usually a distraction. Good idea to exclude it!

0
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Michael Dougherty
Michael Dougherty
September 30, 2021 9:32 pm

I see some interesting color in the trees. Time to take a hike and bring along a close-up lens.

0
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Spencer Cox
Spencer Cox
Author
Reply to  Michael Dougherty
September 30, 2021 9:36 pm

There’s a grove of aspen trees here that is among my favorite places in the world. Our group went there yesterday and photographed some beautiful fallen leaves with water droplets on them. Time spent doing macro photography is always time well spent.

1
Reply
Jeff Shickele
Jeff Shickele
September 30, 2021 9:25 pm

There is always something to photograph.

4
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Spencer Cox
Spencer Cox
Author
Reply to  Jeff Shickele
September 30, 2021 9:34 pm

Exactly!

1
Reply

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