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Posts Tagged ‘Beautiful’

Taking beautiful pictures every time can be challenging. Taking beautiful landscape pictures consistently can be near impossible. Until now! Read on and learn the tricks the professional photographer uses for outstanding results on a regular basis. Learn how to properly deal with the subject matter, the point of view, the lighting, and some technical pointers that you may not have thought of. By the end of this article you will be taking beautiful landscape pictures on a relatively consistent basis.

The first thing any great landscape picture needs is a landscape. You must be willing to travel a little as you can only shoot your backyard so many times. Get out there and look for the beautiful vistas, whether they be in the city or the country. Don’t always look for a bright sunny day, although they are good too, to go out to shoot. A few clouds in the sky can add a striking element to your photo.

A little inclement weather can be good for a landscape as well. Include some thunder-heads, a hard rain, or lightly falling snow in your picture, and enhance the look of an otherwise mediocre shot. Even getting some motion in the photo is helpful. Leaves blowing on the wind, a stream falling down a rocky slope, or waves breaking on the beach, are stunning images if captured right.

Now that you have found something to photograph, take a look at it from different points of view. Lay down on the ground, or climb a tree, pan a little from side to side. Just look at the subtle differences these actions will provide, and choose the best view.

Your different point of view might also want to include a point of interest. Perhaps something in the foreground to give your photo some perspective. You may wish to make the foreground the dominant aspect of the shot, or you could make the sky the dominating factor. Either way you don’t want to place the horizon in the middle of the frame. Showing more of the sky will set it up as the dominant part,and showing more of the ground, or foreground, will do the opposite.

When deciding on the point of view that you are shooting from, you want to take into account the direction that you are looking. Looking from the south to the north is preferred, but from north to south is almost as good. Either way, you want the light to be crossing the photo. This will enhance the shadows, and thereby the contours of your landscape, resulting in a much more exciting picture.

Lighting brings us to the consideration of what time of day to shoot. Generally, shooting around dawn, or dusk, will bring life to your landscapes. Clouds are considerably more vibrant when lit with the various hues of a striking sunset. The dawn and dusk hours are referred to as the “golden ” hours, as that is when the light is the warmest.

Now, to the technical talk. For the most part, when shooting landscapes you want a greater depth of field. This means that everything in the picture is in focus. You achieve this by using a small opening, or aperture, for the shot. This is referred to as the “f-stop,” and the higher the number of the f-stop, the smaller the opening. You will need to slow down the speed of your shot to keep the exposure balanced. This should not be a problem if you use a tripod, which you should for most of your landscape pictures.

If you are trying to get movement in the picture (as discussed earlier), you will want a really long exposure, possibly as long as 1 or 2 seconds. The golden hours are the best time of day for this as you want to be shooting in less light. Also, you will need to use the highest f-stop on your camera to let in the least amount of light. This will bring everything that is not moving into very sharp focus, giving you a very dramatic photograph.

Another technical “trick” to get beautiful landscape pictures is the use of color correction and GND (graduated neutral density) filters. These are filters that screw onto the end of your lens and affect the light coming into the camera. For example, a red color correction filter will darken the color of the sky adding more drama to the photo, whereas a yellow filter will cause a greater degree of separation at the horizon.

A GND filter will affect the intensity of the light, by allowing less light at the top of the picture, gradually letting in more light as it goes to the bottom. This is especially effective in sunset shots or snowy mountains with green fields in the foreground. There are many other types of filters, and a little research will tell you what they are and what effect they will have on the final exposure.

Experimenting with the above ideas, and technical points, will greatly increase your ability to consistently take beautiful landscape pictures. So keep on looking for that perfect shot, and don’t be disappointed if they all aren’t, just keep on searching out and shooting those landscapes. And don’t forget to have some fun while you are at it!!