Charlie Waite

Doyen of landscape photography

Britain’s best known landscape photographer shares some advice for those who want to push their photography to the next level

With a major retrospective of Charlie Waite’s images now showing in London, it’s a great time to take some tips from this eminent landscape and travel photographer, and to apply some of the lessons he’s learnt during his long career.

“My number one tip for aspiring landscape photographers is that you need total and dedicated commitment to the image that one is making, and you should see the image as a production,” Charlie explains. “Then, try not to produce images that in one’s heart one feels insecure about. These images do not turn into anything special if in the first instance one had little confidence in them. My third tip is this: continued tenacity is the only way one can produce images that have parity with one’s own standards, which must always be slightly out of reach.”

Charlie’s exhibition, Silent Exchange, runs at the Lyttelton Circle Foyer in the National Theatre on London’s South Bank, until 20 September 2014. Visit nationaltheatre.org.uk for more information.

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* Charlie constantly stresses the importance of composition, so think carefully about what you allow in your frame, and don’t just apply the rule of thirds – or any other of the standard rules of landscape photography – in exactly the same way every time.

* Once you have found a photographic style you like, and that other people like, stick with it. “The voice you have is the only voice you need,” says Charlie.

* However good you get, don’t assume you will make a great deal of money from landscape photography by selling through stock agencies. Consider other forms of income, and obviously, personal projects can be highly rewarding in a different way.