Trees, forests, fields, meadows, dunes, beaches, rivers, lakes, plains, hills, flatlands, mountains, glaciers, plateaus... The world is full of amazing places to see. Capturing them well on camera takes a lot of skill which I generally don't have! I like landscapes, and I like trying to capture them on camera, but they are not my niche.
What I love about landscape photography is that everyone sees them in different ways. I am a subscriber to the Digital Camera Magazine (part of Digital Camera World) and each month 2 people battle to get the best shot of the day. A lot of them are landscapes, for example the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland. They would be challenged to capture part of it, and they each would take a completely different shot.
So despite them being generally stationery, landscape photographs are still subjective. And that is what I love about them.
Techniques for capturing amazing landscapes include:
HDR Images
This technique may be a setting in camera, but otherwise done via Photoshop or similar. The photographer takes at least 3 exposures of the landscape; one to expose for shadows, one for midtones, and one for highlights. These are combined in software to create an image that is correctly exposed throughout. The more photos taken, the more even the exposure will be. (But only up to maybe 8 exposures - I've not fully used this technique yet) A good example of practical use is this website.
Slow Shutter Speeds for Movement
When including rivers, waterfalls, and waves, you will see many photographs have a lovely soft look to the water. This is done via slow shutter speed. However to have the shutter speed low enough in the daytime, it can mean that the photographer uses ND filters. These are basically darkened filters that lower the brightness by a certain amount. This lets the photographer slow the shutter speed down without over-exposing the image. I have 3 ND filters that can stack on each other to make the image even darker.
Three Shires Head, Derbyshire