High contrast black and white images.
It's not always practical to go out with a tripod, filters and a range of lens to cover every eventuality, (that is assuming you own these in the first place). Sometimes just taking your camera with one lens is all that time, or family constraints will allow.

As with all landscape photography timing is one of the most important factors as is deciding how you want to interpret the scene. Ignore the image on the right and imagine we are stood looking at the scene without a camera. Our eyes would be able to see all the detail in the ground as well as the crepuscular rays (sunbursts). As cameras cannot expose the full tonal range of the image without using filters, and we are not using them, we have to decide how we want our final image to look. In this image the suns rays are what inspired me to take the photograph in the first place, so this is what I wanted to capture in my final image.

John Walmsley Canon EOS 40D with 50mm f1.4 ISO 100 1/200sec @ f11
The foreground was about a mile away so depth of field shouldn't really be an issue. I chose f11 as my aperture as optically most lenses perform their best between f8 to f11. Using the spot meter I then placed the spot where the arrow is pointing and adjusted the exposure level indicator until it gave a reading of +1.7EV, which gave me a shutter speed of 1/200th of a second. I chose +1.7EV as anything over +2.0EV will be burnt out with no detail visible. In other words we have told the camera to record the detail in the brightest part of the scene. By recording the detail in the brightest area the darkest area has lost all its detail. This has created a high contrast black and white image.

John Walmsley

Canon EOS 5D with 70-200 f2.8 ISO50 1/60sec @ f11

John Walmsley

Canon EOS 5D mk2 with 70-200 f2.8 ISO100 1/1250sec @ f8

Composition.

Being familier with the basic rules of composition will help you when deciding what to include in an image and how to frame it. A balanced photograph that draws the viewers eye into the frame and makes them explore the image is generally what you should be aiming for. When photographing landscapes with a wide angle lens I look for something to photograph in the foreground that will draw the viewers eye to the background, where the background would be a photograph in its own right. Essentially it is the combining of two images to make one.

Balance comes in three's.

The rule of thirds: by dividing the frame up into nine equal parts there are four points where the lines cross, and these are where you eye is naturally drawn to when looking at a well balanced image. Divide the image into thirds, and place a key feature of the scene on the intersection. Here the vertical line is about a third of the way across the image and the horizontal line is about a third of the way down the image, by placing the point of interest where the lines cross a well balanced image is created. By composing the image so that the sky takes up approximately a third of the frame the balance is strengthened further, and the sea thrift in the foreground draws the eye towards the mine building helping the viewers eye to 'walk' into the image.

John Walmsley The red dots show the key intersect points.
John Walmsley

Canon EOS40D ISO100 18-50 f2.8 1/2sec @ f22