The Vantage Point: Light, Patience, and the Living Landscape

A foundational (100-level) landscape photography course and the first step in the PHO landscape track, built from the Dean’s guide to landscape photography and keyed to real frames in the University galleries. Covers the honest premise that grandeur is not enough and the search for a unique vantage point; composition through foreground, leading lines, and the human figure; the light and the hour, and the deliberate use of front, side, and back light; planning the route with maps, sun position, and weather, and making time your friend; the fieldcraft of hiking to a vantage point with gear intact and treating bad weather as drama; and the technical foundation — the depth that matters, focusing for depth of field, the tripod, exposure and the histogram, and the graduated ND, polarising, and neutral-density filters. Culminates in holding a bright sky over a dark land, closing the circle from seeing to setting.