As you go on your search for the ultimate landscape, start by considering the number of compositional layers that are usually involved. More often than not, there are three: a foreground, a middle ground, and a background. And, not surprisingly, most experienced landscape shooters use an aperture of f/22, or even f/32, to render the necessary front-to-back sharpness that these compositions rely on.

More important, experienced landscape photographers make compositions that use texture in much of the foreground and middle ground because most of us react with a “feeling” when textures dominate. Our personal experience with texture goes way back to our earliest days, when we quickly learned to make assumptions about the soft blanket versus the hard concrete. Soft is good; hard is not.

When it comes to lens choice for capturing an all-encompassing foreground, the wide-angle lens is my go- to lens. Just how wide I go is determined in large measure by the foreground subject. Flora and fauna can be shot with a super–wide-angle lens and without the slightest concern of unwanted distortion. If only for effect, you can even reach for your full-frame fish-eye lens for the most intimate of encounters. Though be warned: Overuse of the fish-eye in your photography will soon produce a number of yawns.

When my subject is a person or persons, on the other hand, I seldom go much wider than 28mm. Anything wider opens the door to a face that is quickly distorted, Silly Putty–like. Unless it is your intent to embarrass or deliberately call attention to a large nose or chin, I would not use any wide-angle lens in the 12–16mm range on a cropped sensor DSLR or a 14–24mm on a full-frame sensor DSLR when shooting up-close-and-personal portraits. For those I resign myself to a moderate telephoto, or the now-popular fixed 50mm when using a small sensor DSLR.