Beauty in the most random places
This one isn't necessarily a new technique but more of a reminder to whip out your camera when doing mundane boring tasks because you never know when you may snap a beautiful shot.
Two of my most favourite nature scenery shots were taken in China, found completely by accident. In one of the cases I was running around all over the place either collecting metals or visiting excavation points.
I noticed the sun was setting and I didn't have many photos of China back then, especially during the sunset, so I've powered up my camera to see if I could capture anything decent. I saw this:
http://imageshack.us/a/img685/7840/screenshot16hj.jpg "width=640" "height=480"
In another case I saw some fireflies (the fog emitter ones, not the ones that came with Showtime) during one evening and tried taking a picture of them. It was a little too light and they were far too small to be visible on the photo, so I've scrapped that idea. Instead, with the camera still in use, I turned around and saw this:
http://imageshack.us/a/img233/6259/screenshot15rd.jpg "width=640" "height=480"
I loved the soft tender mountain shapes mixed with the harsh stark black tree barks.
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http://imageshack.us/a/img59/6421/screenshot25m.jpg "width=640" "height=480"