5 EASY LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS THAT WILL TAKE YOUR PHOTOS TO THE NEXT LEVEL!
If you’ve hit a roadblock in your landscape photography and need some inspiration, I have five tips that are essential to landscape photography and will help take your photos to the next level.
Landscape Photography Tip #1
Landscape Photography Tip number one. Shoot during the golden hour. The golden hour is a term coined by photographers referencing the time of day shortly after sunrise and right before sunset. When the sun is low in the horizon, the light needs to travel through more atmosphere, physically changing the color temperature to a yellow or cast. Hence the name, golden. The warm soft diffused light gives subjects more perceived edge definition, clarity, separation, and character, making the picture look better. The sun at lower angles is also more directional, producing longer shadows, which can add drama to a photo and of course, waiting until sunset may result in a fiery explosion in the sky. While not all landscape shots need to be made during the golden hour or at sunset, the kind of light emitted during the golden hour, will improve the perceived quality of your photos, and could add interest to an otherwise boring landscape.
Landscape Photography Tip #2
Landscape Photography Tip number two, use filters. Polarizing at neutral density filters are essential items in any landscape photographers kit. The effect of a polarizing filter increases blue hues in the sky, cuts through the reflection in the water and makes green foliage more vibrant. Neutral density filters act like sunglasses for your camera, purposely reducing the light that can enter the lens. This will allow you to use longer shutter speeds, capturing silky smooth water or blurring moving subjects like people or cars in the daytime. Polarizing in neutral density filters can be found for relatively cheap, and they can open the door to so many opportunities.
Landscape Photography Tip #3
Tip number three, always consider composition. The composition is a key part of any photograph, whether it be architectural, orature or landscape. So many artistic elements like foreground interest, negative space, balance, and movement, need to be considered when determining what composition will work best in a scene. Landscape photography is a very deliberate process. So take the time to find a composition you think is striking.
Landscape Photography Tip #4
Tip number four, use longer focal length. While you may have heard that you need a wide angled lens for landscape photography, telephoto lenses are a unique way to capture the beauty of individual features in a scene. Longer focal lengths will allow you to isolate small, distant portions of a landscape, providing a clear focal point to viewers, and eliminating distracting elements. Using a telephoto in the field may even make you a better photographer, forcing you to think hard about subject and composition and the drastically different perspective created by longer focal lengths is refreshing in a genre dominated by the same boring wide angle field of view.
Landscape Photography Tip #5
Tip number five, the final tip in this video is to just go outside. This may seem pointless. But too often, We have seen photographers refuse to take photos in bad weather because they didn’t have the right gear or because they don’t think they will get a good photo. My advice is to do it anyway, and even if you don’t like the photo, regret is the landscape photographers worst enemy. Weather can discourage landscape photography, but the inbrasing bad weather will train your eye to find striking compositions and make the best of a bad situation. Good gear is not necessary either, because if you produce an amazing image, no one is going to scoff if it came from a phone rather than a DSLR. A good photo is a good photo.
Landscape Photography Tip Summary
Finally, confidence is key. Even if you think your photos are bad, each photo you take will add to your pool of experience, that is vital in photography. You can only really learn how to use good photos by actually taking them. So don’t give up. Now that you know these five tips, you should be on your way to taking amazing landscape photos.
We hope this easy to understand landscape photography tip article has given you the inspiration and confidence to go out and try these tips right away. Practice is the key. Commit to trying one of these tips every day this week, or if you are feeling ambitious try them all today. The point is we are often our worst critics, and that is good if it helps us raise our photography games, but not if it keeps us from actually taking the photos in the first place. Get out there and capture the next great of landscape photography art. It’s a big world, and we need you to help commemorate a piece of it.
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