okay so i feel like my photos are technically fine now, exposure is decent, they're sharp, whatever. but they just look boring. like yeah its a field from above, great, who cares. ive seen people post stuff that makes you go wow even if its literally just a parking lot or whatever and i cannot figure out what theyre doing differently

is it just finding better locations or is there some compositional thing im missing. i feel like everything i shoot just looks like a map view on google earth lmao

the google earth problem is real and i think the biggest thing is angle ? most beginners default to straight down nadir shots because it feels like the "drone" thing to do but honestly 30 to 45 degrees off horizontal is where a lot of the interesting shots live. you get foreground, middle ground, background, sky, the whole thing. straight down has its place for patterns and symmetry but if everything you shoot is top-down then yeah it'll feel flat

also think about leading lines the same way you would in ground level photography. roads, rivers, shorelines, rows of crops ? find something that draws the eye through the frame instead of just centering whatever the subject is. i spent way too long just centering things and wondering why they looked meh

and honestly location does matter somewhat but ive seen people make a gas station look incredible just from the right angle and light, so dont use that as an excuse

shadows are huge and people sleep on this. shooting when the sun is low means long shadows that give everything texture and dimension, makes even flat terrain look dramatic. try the same spot at golden hour vs midday and it'll look like a completely diffrent location

also try to have something in the foreground if you can, even if its just the edge of a treeline or a road coming in from the corner. gives the eye something to move through the image rather than just landing on one thing