© Allen Birnbach

One of the most challenging parts of shooting on location is giving a sense of what you were feeling when you first got the idea to shoot a particular scene.  For me, scale relationship is a key ingredient in that.

In composing the image, I think about the elements that made me stop the car.  Here, it was the aged barn, lost in the vastness of the American West.  So rather than zoom in on the building, remarkable as it was, I made it relatively small in the frame relative to what was around it. That scale relationship in respect to the mountains and sky to give a sense of place I wanted to convey.

When shooting scenics, keep this idea of scale, along with rule of thirds, and keep it simple in mind.