Today I want to share my tips on how to photograph landscapes and can even protect someone from wrong actions 🙂
1. Place
Before preparing for landscape photography, check what awaits you there. And I’m talking not only about how the area looks like and which angles are more suitable, but also about how comfortable it is. Warm clothes, comfortable shoes, a thermos with hot tea (or something hotter) will not be unnecessary. Besides it is also important to protect the camera from possible rain, snow or sand and other dust.
2. Weather
The less favorable the weather is (snow, rain, storm, wind, fog), the more interesting and unique your photos will be. For example in May there are incredible sunsets, and in October is a lot of fog. Don’t forget to protect yourself and your camera.
3. Golden hour
Yes, I have this topic almost in every article with photo tips 🙂 If in portrait or subject photography you could cover an object or subject from the sun, then with the landscape everything is much more complicated. The golden hour (which is during one hour after sunrise and during one hour before the sunset) is your savior, it has the right shadows, extra contrast and incredible warm colors.
4. Blue hour
During an hour before the sunrise and an hour after the sunset. It’s a time of “cold” and almost night photos. What you need: a tripod and a long shutter speed (details below).
5. Tripod
An important thing, especially in the Blue Hour or when taking pictures of water. But for me it’s an extra burden that I have to carry in the fields and mountains, so I do not often take pictures with a tripod, but in vain 🙁 Use it, as much as possible, or find some place where you can put your camera and take a picture from that point of view.
6. Horizon
Here it is especially important. If in other cases you can say that “I am an Artist and I see the world like that” in the landscape you will just turn everything up side down. Imagine two dots on your horizon at the edges of the shot, they should be on the same level.
7. Perspective
Add volume to your photos. Draw imaginary lines that make the viewer follow them. For example, tracks, roads, lines of trees and lines of houses (which are in reality the same, the farther they are the smaller the become). The Rule of Triangles also works great here.
8. Foreground
Even in landscape photography there must be a Main Hero. It may be a very small and insignificant detail, but this detail will definitely make the shot more interesting.
9. Lens
I think it is worth mentioning such an important thing as the lens. It is built into phones and chip cameras and is usually universal. In SLR cameras the lens can be changed. There is a whole collection of special lenses for landscape photos. In the picture below you can see my favorite landscape lens: Canon EF 20mm f/2.8 USM. Without going into technical details, I will tell you what parameters are important for landscape photography. I suggest you take your camera right now and adjust all these digits manually, or at least find the “Landscape” mode 🙂
10. Focal length: 10-35mm
The smaller the number, the larger the viewing angle, i.e. the bigger the number of objects in the shot. Of course you can come to a beautiful place and take pictures of flowers in Macro Mode at a focal length of, for example, 85mm, but it will no longer be landscape photography 😉
11. Closed aperture: f/5.6 – f/22
The larger the number, the sharper the photo.
12. Long shutter speed: 1/200 – 1″
It is especially useful in the Blue Hour and it is simply irreplaceable at night. When using a long shutter speed (anything longer than 1/60 second) it is important to take a tripod, otherwise the whole shot will be blurred.
There is no golden ratio between Shutter Speed and Aperture (there are dozens of other important parameters), so I suggest you try it yourself and find your ideal ratio. Or use Photo Pair (priority of Aperture or priority of Shutter Speed). For example, in the photo above: focal length – 20mm, aperture – f5.6, shutter speed – 1/80 sec.
13. Filters
You can use special filters to shade or emphasize some color or texture in the image (without using Photoshop). Polarizing filter is the most popular, it will make the colors more saturated, especially for blue skies and green grass.
14. Enjoy the moment
You are in a beautiful place. You walked or drove there for hours. Stop for a moment, calm down, enjoy the moment and observe the environment not through the viewfinder. And your frame will come to you!
