The incoming storms make a hiker look cautiously ahead toward foreboding peaks.

The old saying is “practice makes perfect,” and the old saying is an unequivocal lie. Practice is the act of building habits, and it’s much easier to build bad habits than good ones. What you need to do is study landscape photography, which I’ve broken into four components: viewing, composing, editing, and hardware. This lesson is a bit longer than the others, because learning how to learn is absolutely critical.

Each of those four components requires longer explanations. This lesson should still be considered as one, even though there are four major topics that could be broken down further. They all build upon each other, and far too many new photographers have the mindset that they only need to practice actually taking pictures. The composition component can’t be on its own page because improvement requires all four of these ideas.

Viewing photos

It’s important to study great landscapes to learn more about photography. In addition to being wonderful technical examples, frequently looking at incredible pictures is an inspiration to keep learning. Just like musicians listen to their predecessors to train their ears, photographers need to look at our predecessors to train our eyes. Igor Stravinsky would never have written Rite of Spring if he hadn’t studied Claude Debussy's unique approach to harmony, and ZZ Top wouldn’t have existed if it weren’t for B. B. King. I break photographers into three major groups to study: past masters, current artists, and local photographers.

For the past masters, almost everyone will tell you to study Ansel Adams. Adams was born in 1902, when the contemporary trend in photography was pictorialism. In short, pictorialism is a photography style that tries to capture a mood, as opposed to capturing an image. 1839 is generally accepted as the real birth of photography. By 1853, William John Newton had suggested that a camera might be more artistic if the image were taken slightly out of focus and by 1885, pictorialism was quite popular. In every art form, rules are established, then those rules are broken, then new rules are established. With pictorialism, photographers began break rules by manipulating the scene or the film to create the desired art.

Ansel Adams, as one of several members of Group f/64, led a push to the return to "pure" photography in the early 20th century: sharp images that incorporate the full tonal range. It may be helpful to think of it in modern terms: Pictorialists are unrepentantly heavy-handed with editing their photos to create whatever art they feel is most impactful, whereas purists work hard to ensure their photos are true to the natural landscape. There's no wrong way to view art, but the lessons here are all geared toward the "pure" photography popularized by Adams. He was one of the first real masters of beautiful, natural landscape photography. Even though Ansel Adams died in 1984, you can still follow @anseladams on Instagram. You may be surprised at the number of old artists who are on modern social media, and it's definitely worth looking for more. Franco Fontana, Brett Weston, Sebastião Salgado, and Michael Kenna are also excellent photographers to study.

For modern photographers, take a look at Michael Shainblum, Jacob W. Frank, Isabella Tabacchi, Chris Burkard, Daniel Kordan, Nicole Frates, and Tim Parkin. Like most people, these photographers haven't limited themselves exclusively to one thing. You may see Frank’s videography for the National Park Service or Kordan’s photos of Japanese architecture. The best artists typically have diverse interests, and photography is a great way to share those interests. While this list is people who primarily shoot landscapes, it's good to learn about a variety of styles and subjects. High key, macro photography, and astrophotography are all great things to learn about eventually. Learning about niche styles will help you maximize the impact of your landscapes. National Geographic, as always, sets a very high standard for photographers. They also have an instagram account @NatGeoYourShot, which shares submissions from photographers of all kinds, from all places. For variations on landscapes, check out Elizabeth Gadd or Piotr Skrzypiec. Gadd adds herself into most of her photos, but it's a gorgeous blend of distinct colors that incorporates a contrasting human subject. Despite having a human in the frame, her photos are almost always landscapes. Skrzypiec similarly takes photos with unnatural objects. Most of his shots include European castles, but they’re set in vast, beautiful landscapes. His work with fog and long exposure is absolutely phenomenal.

Studying world-class photographers is a great way to be exposed to wonderful technical skills being applied in the most incredible landscapes in the world. Most people don't have the luxury of traveling around the world taking pictures of all those remarkable places. Because of that, it's important to study photographers in your local area. If you want to shoot at Garden of the Gods (the one in Colorado, not the one in Illinois), Lars Leber is an excellent person to watch. He lives locally, shoots constantly, and has been working in the area for a long time. Anyone who wants to shoot in that part of Colorado should look him up because he has thousands of great shots of the area. This is beneficial because it's not just top tier photography, it's top tier photography in the same area where you’ll be practicing. It's important to find and follow several photographers in your area, and even better if you can find artists with styles that are distinctly different from one another. You don’t want to imitate one artist; you want to take good ideas from a variety of sources to create your own art.

Please don't limit yourself to the photographers I've listed here. You would benefit tremendously from creating a new Instagram account and following several of the photographers I've listed, then adding more. Social media can be an excellent way to discover artists, but you have to keep your account focused to prevent it from being flooded with “lifestyle influencers” or “content creators.” If you have to set up multiple accounts, it's easy to switch between your account for friends, your account for studying photography, and your account for following influencers. Keep your accounts distinct and your feeds will stay properly focused.

As you study the artists who came before you, be mindful of all the lessons you’ve learned so far.

Lastly, the photographer whose work you should study most frequently: you. One common habit is to take pictures, then wait and sort them into winners and losers at home. As you sort your photos, think about different ways you could have taken those shots. The best way to do that is to have 10-15 shots of the same scene. When something catches your eye, try to capture what it was that caught your eye. Then try to capture the same thing in a different way. Take a step back and adjust your shutter speed. Take three steps to the left, hold your camera over your head, point it downward, and try to include a flower in the corner. Once you finish, you'll have a variety of photos of the same area. Next time you’re in a similar setting, you can take better photos - which you can then analyze, which will help you take even better photos the next time. But you have to look at all of your winner and losers to get feedback.

Composing photos

Before you look through the viewfinder for each shot, you need to answer two questions: why and how. First, why are you taking a picture here and now? Form a complete statement that makes the concept clear. For example, if a flower caught your eye, the statement is not, “I’ll take a picture of that flower.” The statement might be, “the big red flower caught my eye because it stands out from the smaller, yellow flowers that are blanketing this entire area.” In short, write the caption first.

Once you have a clear concept for the photo, you have to ask yourself how you’re going to take it. How can you apply thirds and halves? What can you use for leading lines? Although there aren’t very many rules for landscape photography, you have to apply most of the rules in every single photo you take. To make it even more complicated, you first have to decide which rules even apply to the shot you’re taking. The photo above doesn’t have much to think about in terms of lighting, for example, but the thirds and halves are very obvious. Conditions outside are constantly changing, and you have to quickly run through all the rules and pick the ones that apply to the scenario in front of you.

For your first practice session, focus on thirds and halves and either framing or finding leading lines. Take your camera for a walk, and look for any opportunity you have to apply both of those rules. If you’re unsure if you have a good photo, take the picture anyway. Most of your pictures will probably be pretty bad at first, but that’s no reason to be discouraged. If you think you have an opportunity for a picture, take it. Every single time, take the picture. If you’re uncertain of the composition, make an adjustment and take the picture again, and again, and again. When you sort them later, be sure to analyze every picture you took to decide not only whether it’s a winner or loser, but also why. It doesn’t take long for each picture, but it’s important to look.

Remember that reviewing your losers requires you to know what you’re looking at. You have to study each of the four components to really learn about photography. It’s impossible to master one aspect without knowledge of the others.

Flame azaleas are in a patch of sunlight, with a fat bee coming to check them out. I knew what I wanted immediately. I stood in direct sunlight in 100 degree heat for over half an hour taking picture after picture to get two good shots.

Below, there are a lot of photos of the same subject, taken in slightly different ways. The experimentation can be seen: there is more or less foreground, the rock is moved from one side of the frame to the other, and the exposure varies significantly. As you study your own photos, imagine what it might look like if one of your favorite photographers took a photo there. Visualize the scene the way they’d shoot it. Picture the framing, the crop, the foreground, and the sense of scale or drama. Once you have a mental image of a spectacular photo there, look at your photos again. What makes them different? Consider all of the individual lessons here and think about the reasons their photos are different from yours. Next time you go hiking, you’ll probably be able to compose better photos. When you review that new set of photos, look for how you’re improving with thirds and halves or leading lines. It’s thoughtful, deliberate practice that makes perfect.

This portion of the workflow can feel very tedious at first, but it gets much faster over time. The more you train your eye, the more quickly you’ll be able sort through scenes that are likely to create winners or losers before you even grab your camera.

I have ninety photos of this rock formation in Kansas. I knew that I wanted a picture of it, but I was too inexperienced to intuitively know the why and how of composing it. Rather than risk driving across Kansas to try again, I took a ton of pictures while I was there.

This is the other photo that I like from the same rock formation. This one was taken from the opposite side from about a quarter mile away. I wouldn’t have had either of these two photos if I had gone with my first instinct. Experimentation and variation gave me two shots that I love.

Editing photos

This is where I’ll write about how to practice editing photos. This is after a preliminary pass to sort winners and losers. Now, you want to edit the photos. What do you do?

Crop (include aspect ratio), auto adjust/presets, light/shadow, color if necessary, healing, effects. I store photos on SD cards, local hard drives, and in the cloud in three places. Once I’ve spent time on it, I want to keep it forever. Going through old photos yields winners sometimes, now that I’m better at editing photos. It’s great practice to do that too.

You already have a lesson that is a tutorial on Lightroom. This is about practicing how to edit photos. Use auto, look at the settings. See what it changed. Pick one aspect and move the slider from side to side to see what it does. Go through each menu and play with the options, but don’t adjust everything all at once. Sometimes it’s good to adjust highlights on 15-20 pictures in a row to see what exactly highlight adjustments do in a variety of scenes. Repeat the same for