Photography is half science/technical and half art/vision. When you get to a scene what do you do in terms of your vision? I just take the scene in. I look at the major features before me. I look at the weather, the sky. I decide what I want to do with the major features in the scene. Then I walk around. I look at how the position of the major features change as I move around. I am looking for balance. I want these features to work together, to compliment each other. I am always asking myself: "Where will the viewer's eyes go in the scene?". Once I am satisfied with my position and where the major features of the scene are I start looking around at the foreground. I almost always seek to find something of interest in the foreground. Once I find it, that is where I setup and shoot. Sometimes you do not have a foreground close to you and sometimes you do not need one.

          Let's look at this scene:

The major features are the little river, the rock stacks, and the cliffs (shoreline). A little ways to the right is a bridge that connect the cliff I am on with the cliffs on the other side (in the scene). So, I could move to the other side and along that cliff. I could also move to my left and right. Given that I could position myself almost anywhere in this scene, why did I chose this particular spot to photograph from?

          What makes this photograph compelling to me (compositionally speaking) is the balance, the flow, the complementing features, and the harmony. Let's start with the foreground. The little river takes the viewer's eyes and let's them move toward the rock stacks. The ocean and the cliffs take the viewer along the shoreline, into the image. The cliffs and the rock stacks balance with the little river.

          I wished I could move slightly to my right to get the rock stacks to separate from each other just a bit as that would have made them a bit stronger in the composition. As you can expect I tried that but the shape of the cliff I was standing on interfered with the image there.

          I used a long shutter speed to get the spooky look in the ocean water. Get yourself into the habit of thinking before you shoot. Really look at the scene. Walk around. Plan your composition. Think vision.