Landscape images can look polished and still feel flat. When every rock, branch, and highlight is “tidied,” the scene can lose the tension that keeps your eye moving and your mind engaged.
Coming to you from Ian Worth, this thoughtful video looks at how your work changes over years and what actually moves the needle. Worth compares his recent landscapes with images from about five years ago and focuses on one big shift: he no longer treats “perfect” compositions as the goal. Instead of cleaning every distraction, he often keeps small imperfections, like an extra leaf or a bright edge, if they add a little pull inside the frame. You see how that tiny imbalance creates visual tension that keeps you looking a bit longer instead of glancing once and moving on. Worth shows side by side examples so you can judge how much neatness is too much before a scene starts to feel staged.
The video also pushes you to think about how much you manipulate a scene, both on location and in the edit. Early on, Worth would clone out twigs, leaves, and hot spots almost by default, only to feel less connected to the final image. Now he uses tension versus calm as a conscious choice rather than a rule, leaving more of the mess of nature in place when it serves the mood. He talks through a calm waterfall scene where he balances a long exposure for the water with a faster one for moving leaves, then blends them in Photoshop for a result that still feels believable. You get a sense of how to use multiple exposures as a tool, not a trick, when you want motion in some parts of the frame and clarity in others.
Shooting “with the edit in mind” is another big change Worth highlights, and it may hit close to home. Instead of firing off a frame and hoping to fix it later, he now asks on the spot how he plans to process the file and lets that answer guide exposure, bracketing, and composition. He suggests deciding in advance whether you see the scene as color or black and white, tight or wide, simple or layered, so you do not end up fighting the file on the computer. When he walks into a dark quarry with a bright sky, he already knows he will blend exposures to protect both the slate shadows and the cloud detail, which makes the whole workflow calmer.
Later in the video, Worth shifts from technique to the long game of building a relationship with a landscape. He is honest that first visits rarely produce portfolio work and sets his expectations very low when he explores a new area. Returning to the same quarry and surrounding woods over years lets him see how weather, season, and light open up new compositions that were invisible at first. You watch him scout in rough conditions, note future ideas, and use the day as much for learning the terrain as for capturing finished images. That approach takes pressure off every outing and makes progress feel like a series of small discoveries instead of a hunt for a single “banger.”
Worth also talks about what happens when you stop experimenting and how quickly your work can plateau when you only repeat what you already know. To push himself, he has started learning wildlife, not to change careers, but to challenge his field craft and observation skills. That shift forces him to study behavior, timing, and patience in a way that feeds back into his landscapes. Hearing him admit he still feels like a beginner in a new genre gives you permission to try something fresh without needing instant mastery. The video uses this move into wildlife as a reminder that curiosity might be the most reliable way to keep your landscape work moving forward. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Worth.
And if you really want to dive into landscape photography, check out our latest tutorial, “Photographing the World: Japan II – Discovering Hidden Gems with Elia Locardi!”