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How to: Photograph Landscapes
Tips & Images © Erica Robinson
We are so fortunate to live on this beautiful planet Earth with enough landscapes to last our entire lives trying to photograph. And even better than that, we can photograph the same scene in an infinite number of ways. The combinations are endless as we grow in our craft and experiment with new equipment, composition styles, and life experiences. Here are a few tips to consider:
Tip #1) Do your research: It can be overwhelming arriving in a new location, excited to try and photograph “it all”. The best way to move past this hurdle and to come out of the shoot with images that you’d expected in your mind, is to research. When you are prepared, you’ll spend far less time worrying and more time enjoying the photo making process. Study the location to understand the weather, sunrise and sunset times, terrain, applicable transportation, and anything unique to that location. Follow other photographers through social media, websites, magazine articles and don’t be afraid to reach out to them for advice. Photography is a community sport!
Tip #2) Experiment with composition: Even if there are 100 photographers in the same location, photographing the same scene, each will walk away having created something unique. That is in part, due to composition. Practice getting creative with leading lines, location of the focal point, depth of field, scale, and low versus high perspectives. For example, when using a wide-angle lens, angling the lens lower to the ground and adding a foreground element can elongate the scene preventing a 50/50 split of the frame and solidifying a foreground, midground and background.
© Erica Robinson
Image Data: f/6.3, ISO 640, 1/640
Tip #3) Lens Choice: We often default to our wide-angle lenses when we think landscape photography, but that is not the only choice. Both wide-angle and telephoto have an important place in our kits. Wide-angle lenses can offer a unique perspective with dramatic, long, foregrounds and expansive horizons. They are perfect when trying to show a full scene of massive, dark rolling clouds preparing to storm over the Grand Canyon but can render a subject small in comparison to other scene elements. A telephoto lens offers a compression aspect the wide-angle cannot. A telephoto lens is a great choice when trying to show layers in a scene, scale, and detail.
© Erica Robinson
Image Data: f/16, ISO 400, 1/200
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