6 Amazing Landscape Photography Tips For You

As I promised, no more portrait photography tips today and I want to share some landscape tips with you. Landscape photography is about getting out, be close with the nature and capture the beauty of Mother Nature. I hope you will find the tips here useful,

1. Tripod

There will be time that you need to wait for the special shot. Imagine you are holding the camera while waiting for the special moment to appear. It can be really tiring when you are holding a DSLR camera.

Besides, tripod can add stability to your pictures. It certainly comes in handy when you are taking picture with low ambience light because the increase aperture size is going to affect the stability of your pictures. So, it is good that you can mount your camera on a tripod when you are taking landscape pictures.

2. Wide angle lens

You probably have seen some landscape pictures where the scenery extends to the far end of the horizon. Now, if you are using a normal lens, you probably will have a hard time figuring which part of the landscape you have to sacrifice so that you can fit the scene in your picture. It will take you some time and work even you decided to stitch your picture with photo editing software.

All of these can be avoided when you have a wide angle lens to capture the amazing landscape pictures. As the name implies, wide angle lens offer more field of view than normal lens so that it can take in more of the surroundings.

I know some of you might think that you will never enjoy good landscape pictures because you are using a point and shoot camera. Just incase you haven't know, more compact digital cameras with wide angle lens are coming out into the market nowadays. And if you are interested in that, you really have to take a look here.

3. Foregrounds

If you have been following this blog consistently, you will notice that I talk a lot about blurring the background (shallow depth of field) to bring out the detail of your subjects. That can be quite useful when you want to focus on something in the nature like a flower.

However, I think it is more appropriate to talk about foreground here. When you are with landscape photography, you can focus on something in front of you and let your picture extend to the far end of the landscape.

Imagine you are standing at the entrance of a valley and you are focusing on a rock pile in front of you and let the picture extend to the end of the valley. I know the picture can be boring because of less contrast in the picture but it is just the example that pops into my mind. I hope you get the picture of what I am trying to say here. :-)

4. Depth of field

While it is perfectly alright to have shallow depth of field in landscape photography, I personally prefer that I have deeper depth of field where I can see the whole landscape clearly.

To me, I like to have everything in focus in my landscape pictures. It is only then I can feel the overwhelming feeling of Mother Nature. And if you are just like me, you probably will not adjust the setting on your camera and take it as normal as you can.

5. Movement

Just to let you know, landscape photography is not just about still pictures. It is not just about the mesmerizing hills or the silent sun rise.

You can capture the water at the waterfall, waves at the sunny beach and moving clouds. And if you get to travel to Asia, try to look for beach with fishing boat and take the picture standing behind the boat. You want to have a part of the boat in your picture but giving attention to the coming waves.

This can be a wonderful picture.

6. Timing

Have you ever seen pictures that are taken at different timing? I personally think this is important when you are in landscape photography.

Just compare the pictures (at the same location) where one was taken during early morning and one was taken at the afternoon. You don't just see the differences in the pictures, you can even feel differently from the 2 pictures.

The early morning picture might tell you that the scenario is calm and comfortable. The afternoon picture might says that the location is hot and it going through a tough time. Many people might not like the afternoon picture due to its brightness.

The landscape photography tips I shared with you are purely personal preference. It is not the law to landscape photography. However, I will urge you to keep photographing and in the process, you will surely develop something that you like.

Happy taking pictures,

Michael Wong. :-)