Taking a great landscape photograph does not mean you have to book a trip to the Serengeti or repel down a cliff. Sometimes, you can get a great shot in your own backyard.

I awoke this morning to heavy fog hanging over my house. I threw on shoes and a sweatshirt, bundled Chloe in a blanket and headed outside. I liked the starkness of the bare trees and the colorlessness the fog provided. While this shot looks to be black & white, it’s actually a color shot in a foggy world. It was a great environment for picture taking. I walked up and down the street finding compositions I liked and happily snapped away. I took this shot with my point-and-shoot digital camera set to Auto.

Here are some tips to remember when shooting landscapes in your neighborhood:

• Crop out power lines and telephone poles. We tend to ignore these blights on our landscape as we go about our day, but your digital camera sees everything you tell it to.

• Take a lot of pictures and vary your frame. Sometimes, panning just a little can make all the difference. Here are some of my less successful shots from this morning’s excursion. Also, don’t delete pictures from your camera until you look at them on your computer monitor. That out-of-focus shot might be a stunner on a screen larger than your viewfinder.

• Vary your angle. Stand on your car, your roof, crouch down low. Our eyes already see from “eye level,” so vary your perspective a little. We also tend to get lazy. Try walking around a bit, mosey down the street and you may see surprising things that you pass every day without noticing.

• Pay attention to the light. This shot is cool because of the fog and the diffused light. The same shot taken a few hours later might not be so special.