How to Plan a Landscape Photography Trip Like a Pro
- Jessica Santos
- 22 hours ago
- 5 min read
Planning a landscape photography trip is part research, part intuition and part creative practice. When you plan well you remove stress and create space for curiosity. You get to respond to the landscape with a clear mind instead of rushing or guessing. Good planning does not take away adventure. It gives you more room for it. Once the details are in place you can follow the light, explore new ideas and build images with intention.
Over the years I have planned photography trips and workshops in places like Escalante, Death Valley, the Oregon Coast, Colorado wildflowers and the New Mexico badlands. Each trip starts with the same simple and creative workflow. This is the process I use and teach.
Start with a Purpose
Most people begin a photography trip by picking a location. I start with a purpose. A purpose gives your trip direction the way a theme does in art school. It helps you make decisions that support a cohesive body of work instead of a random collection of images.
Your purpose might be a visual study, a mood or a story you want to explore. Some examples are:
Color harmony in sunrise and sunset light
Warm and cool relationships inspired by Impressionist painters
Milky Way alignment over natural forms
Tonal design inspired by Tonalist landscapes
Wildflower storytelling with controlled color palettes
Quiet, simple scenes for a print series
Light and shadow studies for chiaroscuro practice
A clear purpose shapes the entire trip. It guides your choices and helps you stay focused on images that feel connected.
Choose a Region with Variety but a Shared Mood
Once you know your purpose, choose a region that supports it. A small area with varied subjects saves fuel, saves time, and gives you more options when weather changes.
Variety matters, but mood matters more. Mood creates cohesion in your work.
If your purpose is soft and quiet, look for:
Dunes with smooth lines
Sandstone curves
Calm foggy coastlines
Simple desert scenes with negative space
If your purpose is dramatic and story driven, look for:
Mountain peaks
Strong backlight options
Broken clouds
Open night skies
Let mood lead your location choices, not the other way around. This helps you create images that belong together.
Use Tools That Support Your Vision
Most photographers use planning tools only to nail timing. But you can also use them to plan design and shape your creative decisions.
PhotoPills
Track golden hour angles to plan chiaroscuro lighting
Use shadow length to explore tonal structure
Check Milky Way elevation to match foreground scale
Google Earth
Find repeating patterns for rhythm
Look for natural leading lines
Preview how shapes simplify into strong geometry
Weather and cloud apps
Chase atmospheric diffusion for soft color studies
Plan for fog on the coast
Find windy regions that shape dunes
You are not just planning where to stand. You are planning how the landscape will help you tell a story.
Build a Loose Daily Schedule
A good schedule guides you without boxing you in. In classical art school, you never went straight into a finished piece of work. You sketched first, explored ideas. Photographers should do the same. Here is the daily structure I use on trips and workshops:
Morning: Sunrise
Start with clean color and long shadows. Shapes feel strong and defined. This is a great time for compositions that rely on structure.
Midday: Observation and Study
This is where photographers often feel stuck, but midday is full of creative value, use it for:
Scouting
Sketching compositions
Building color palettes
Exploring textures for future print sets
Planning night images
Slow, quiet exploration
Midday is practice time, not wasted time. This is where you learn the landscape.
Afternoon: Scouting With Intention
Walk the land. Notice how shadows fall. Study the small scenes. Look for places with potential when the light shifts.
Sunset and Blue Hour
Work with atmosphere, color harmony and mood. This is when emotion enters your compositions.
Night: If Conditions Allow
Plan for Milky Way work, star trails or mood-heavy long exposures. Use your purpose to guide the type of night images you want to create.
This schedule keeps you productive while still open to surprise, this rhythm trains you to work like a painter: observe, sketch, build, refine.
Know Your Gear and Use it with Intention
Bring gear you know well. Simplicity keeps you creative. Instead of asking what gear you should pack, ask what design challenges you want to explore.
Wide lenses help you explore shape and scale.
Telephoto lenses help you compress patterns and rhythm.
Prime lenses help you slow down and commit to choices.
Gear is not about having everything. Gear is about having the right tools to support the purpose of your trip. This helps you to make intentional choices when it comes to vision, you stop chasing settings and start chasing visual structure. Just like a painter makes an active choice on paintbrush type and size to create a specific texture, you do the same with lens choice and gear options.
Give Yourself Time to Connect with the Landscape
Easily one of the most important steps. Strong images come from connection. Spend time in the place. Walk slowly. Ask yourself what the place feels like, not just what it looks like... And do this all with no camera in your hand.
Sit in silence before shooting (or with music if you're like me)
Look for repeating motifs in the environment
Follow light the way it follows form
Study where the eye moves naturally and why
It is important to not have anything between you and the landscape (especially a lens), this keeps you grounded in the place you took all this time and effort to get to. Take it in and develop a story that makes you feel something.
This is the same calm, intentional approach we use in our workshops. We walk photographers into a landscape like a guide leading them into a gallery. We advise against using a camera or phone for at least 10 minutes while our students get to know the place that they find themselves in. That quiet connection shows up in the final images. Connection creates meaning. Meaning creates memorable photographs.
Stay Flexible and Respond to Mood
Even the best plan will change, and that is often when the best images happen.
In Escalante, winter storms completely shifted our shooting direction and plan to capture something truly unique.
In Death Valley, flooding and winds have shifted ideas and shooting choices.
On the Oregon Coast, fog simplifies chaos into calm shapes, and it can roll in at any minute, you have to be there ready and waiting.
In Colorado’s wildflower fields, even the slightest breeze can be a nuisance, how can you shift your perspective? Afternoon monsoons also bring the most amazing moody clouds, respond accordingly.
In the New Mexico badlands, light changes the landscape dramatically from sunrise to sunset to blue hour and passing lightning storms make the terrain difficult yet beautiful.
Mood is a gift. Let it shift your plan. Let it shape your story.
Final Thoughts
Planning a landscape photography trip like a pro is not about rigid rules. It is about building a simple structure that lets you create with intention. When you choose a purpose, understand your mood, use the right tools and stay flexible, you create space for real discovery. You work with the landscape instead of against it. You slow down, stay curious, and build a trip that supports both creativity and meaning.
A good plan does not limit your art. It protects it.