Creating a Sense of Place

Whenever I'm making landscape photographs I'm looking to create a sense of place. And what I mean by that is I'm looking to tell the story of the landscape. I'm looking for a feature or a set of features about that landscape that makes it unique, that sets it apart from different landscapes. So here in Badlands National Park, for example what has struck me about this landscape as being really unique is all of the crack mud that surrounds me. There's crack mud here at my feet creating all these interesting patterns. It's cracked mud all around me. There's eroded and cracked mud in the sandstone features behind me. This cracked mud is what makes this place special. It's what makes it extra photogenic. So I'm always looking for an opportunity to include that cracked mud in the photographs I make out here. Whether it's crack mud in the foreground to help lead the viewer deeper into the scene, or whether I'm zooming in on the intimate details of the landscape and just making a composition of the crack mud alone. I'm looking to include that crack mud in these photographs to create a sense of place.