How Create Stunning Landscape Photography

By Amy Renfrey


Landscape photography is one of the most satisfying styles of photography. Not only do you have the opportunity to take spectacular shots for your associates or workplace, but you can make canvases, large prints and even presents for others. How to take good landscapes relies upon on a very small number of very significant factors. The light you photograph in and your photographic lens are the two prime aspects that generate stunning landscape photos.

How to take good landscape photos

First, before I go into detail about these two things, let's look closely at how to take beautiful pictures of landscapes. You will require a camera that is able to be clipped on to a sturdy tripod. Then of course you need a tripod. A tripod is what supplies you very sharp and clear pictures. We use a tripod for landscape scenes because we would like to be able to keep the camera free from camera shake. Having a camera that is perfectly immobile enables us to get sharp images in many different types of lighting.

A remote shutter cable is another practical tool that is often a big part of becoming good at your landscape photography methods. A shutter release cable is a little cable with a push button at one end. You can connect the cable into your camera and press the shutter, simply by clicking down a push button on the end of the remote cable. It means you do not have to come into contact with your camera in any way. This increases your probability of gaining even sharper shots.

Lenses for photographing landscapes

Now that you have your camera, tripod and shutter cable, now what? Now we come to our photographic lens. There are many different types of lenses for photographing landscapes. It can be awkward to choose one if you have not mastered landscapes before. One of the best and sharpest lenses is called a prime lens. This means it does not zoom in and out. It can't. It stays at a permanent focal length. This is why it is known as a fixed length. As a consequence of this immobility, your panorama photos become sharper and clearer than if you used a zoom lens.

If you want to capture a huge, expansive look to your landscape photos, then I suggest looking at your camera manufacturer's wide angle and ultra wide angle lenses. A wide angle lens is a focal length of about 24mm to 40mm. An ultra wide angle lens is even wider and can be about 14mm-17mm. There are lots of lenses to select.

Landscape digital camera settings

There is never any perfect camera setting for a landscape image. On the other hand there are some pretty good guidelines to create landscapes. To begin with the goal of landscape photography is to create outstanding, sharp images with superb light. Before we get into lighting, I would like to clarify that a smaller aperture is usually what landscape photographers photograph at. A smaller f stop, such as F22, is what is thought as an ideal aperture for landscape scenes. This is purely because it facilitates our camera to focus suitably into the distance. If you are shooting at an average middle distance of ten to twenty meters away F13 or higher works perfectly well too. You will certainly have to take your lighting into consideration.

The ideal lighting for photographing landscapes

I have to come clean. I am very surprised there is not more written on getting the right light for landscape photography because it is extremely central. I?ve left it till last; because I want to concentrate your awareness on the most important facet of landscape photography.

The reason why a landscape photo appears so vibrant and beautiful is because of the lighting. Without excellent lighting a landscape photo can look boring and uninteresting. And no amount of cool gear will answer this problem.

The greatest time of day to take photos of your landscape is in the early morning or late afternoon. This subdued light is called sweet light. You will find that the light is soft and gently vibrant. At these times of day the light, hues and tones give your scene a completely different look to the middle of the day. Working in the mid summer sun can create unwelcome shadows, washed out colours and a general lack of depth. Working in a gentle light gives us back those soft colours, muted tones and gentle skies. There are generally no tough and awful shadows ruining our landscapes.

Photographing landscapes editing techniques

Once you have your fixed lens, camera set up on your tripod, small aperture and best lighting you can shoot off a whole succession of images to your hearts content! I know I certainly do. Once you have created your lovely landscape shot you can then begin editing. Finding the exact photo editing techniques for landscapes isn?t that hard. You must first know what you are aiming to attain. Some of us love to turn a landscape photo into a monochrome scene. Others love to keep the soft, muted colours that mornings can provide. Some of us love to create different effects altogether to add more intensity and impact to capture an almost apocalyptic appearance to our landscape photos.

The main thing is to keep your images clear, broad and colourful. Aim to have your photo looking clear and colourful. This means you may have to enhance the sharpness a little using the smart sharpen tool in Photoshop. For Lightroom fans, open up the Detail panel and boost the sharpening, radius and detail sliders to the right hand side.

Improving the colour vibrancy can do miracles for your landscape photo. You will detect that nearly all landscapes have outstanding colour. That is as a result of increase in particular colours throughout the scene. It is also due to a general increase in colour vibrancy right through the whole photo. Don?t amplify the colour too much; you don?t want dark greens to look fluorescent green or pastel pinks of wildflowers to look hot pink. It will just look out of place. Keep the colours natural looking as possible, but just enhance the presence of colour.

High Dynamic Range

If you have trouble getting shadows that are under exposed and highlights that are way too bright, then try HDR. This is a splendid landscape editing method that can really save your photos. You take 3 different photos. The first is two stops under exposed. The second is perfectly exposed and the third is two stops over exposed. This will bring about natural highlights to your shadows and tone down your highlights to a more natural looking appearance.

Landscape photography ideas

Based on where you live, you may have many chances. In case you are stuck for ideas then try these. A beach scene, waterfalls, a highway from a bird?s eye vision, a cityscape at twilight, a long open highway, mountain range with hanging fog, a grassland with flowers and even a paddock with cows and sheep grazing in the backdrop. You can see that there are endless opportunities for successfully photographing landscapes.

Taking photos of landscapes is dependent on your light, lens and clarity. You don't have to have an expensive camera to take beautifully stunning landscape photos. You can rely on the methods I have taught you and in no time at all you will be on your way to creating stunning photos.




About the Author:



0 comments:

Post a Comment

Archives