Landscape photography is about capturing nature and the outdoors. Everything from basic nature scenes to the photos of woods, ocean, roads, lawns, sunsets, etc. Look though these basic landscape photography tips and tricks to take those breathtaking nature photos.
17 Landscape Photography Tips
Before going outdoors and trying to capture at least the piece of the beauty that surrounds you, look through these landscape photography tips about composition, shooting tricks, camera settings, gear, and creative ideas.
1. Use Leading Lines Composition Technique
Show the lines as if they guide your viewers into a photo. Seek out patterns, shapes, lines and colorful subjects in nature. Use roads, railway tracks, boardwalks, waterfalls, streams, fencing, etc.
2. Work with the Weather
Any landscape photo depends on the weather. So, it is very important to select the appropriate time for shooting. You can't always predict the weather, but the mobile apps like The Weather Channel (Android, iOS) or Dark Sky Weather (Android, iOS) certainly come close.
Search not for perfect blue sky, sun and warm, but try to pay more attention to the rarer nature’s character demonstrations like a storm, heavy wind, great dark clouds and the sun that shines through them, magical sunset and vivid rainbows after heavy rain.
- Read more about rain photography.
3. Photograph during the Golden Hours
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You won’t find better light, than sun light that is low on the horizon. During the Golden Hour (the hour after sunrise & the hour before sunset) the light is special and greatly influences the scene, depending on its angle and gives you more space for fantasy and creativity.
Download a Golden Hour app ( Android or iOS ) that will become your personal assistant for landscape photography. Play with shadows or sunbeams to create a unique shot. Create sun flares or add backlights to your photos. Use a tripod and bump up your ISO to compensate for the lower amount of light.
- Read more nature photography tips.
4. Place Horizon Right
According to the rule of thirds, the horizon should lie not exactly in the middle of the picture, but on one of the thirds lines in a photo (on the top third or on the bottom one). For a dramatic effect, place it towards the bottom of the frame.
Mind distortion of any vertical lines at the edge of the frame like small houses or trees.
5. Change your Point of View
When shooting landscape photography, try to find various places to take photos from, discover new ways and roads, search for other angles, lay on the ground or find the highest point and climb on it – you may achieve a truly captivating shot.
- View more about birds eye view photography.
6. Shoot in RAW Format
To make your landscape photos pop and vivid, make color correction. Lightroom and Camera Raw are the best photo editing softwares for that. If you're a beginner, use Lightroom presets that automatically enhances colors, tints, saturation, shadows, etc.
7. Take Panorama
One of the most widespread landscape image categories is panorama. Panorama image is a technique which is applied in order to widen the image’s scene. It is also called “wide format photo”.
You take a few pictures one by one and then, with the help of a special photo stitching software (Android, iOS) to merge those images together.
8. Try Time-Lapse Technique
This is a short video of quick moving clouds or other objects in movement. Although the process is pretty fun, it is quite complicated from the technical side. You need to take a lot of photos during a long time period with the help of the tripod.
If the clouds are moving very slowly, set the interval of 10 seconds. If they are very fast - 3 seconds. If you photograph people who are walking down your landscape view, set the interval of 2 seconds. If you’ve decided to take the path of the sun on a clear day, it will be 30 seconds.
- Check out the best time lapse camera.
9. Use Star Trail
Maybe you have seen the breathtaking images of the night sky with thousands of stars which form a circle. To create dazzling star trail photos you need a DSLR camera, remote shutter release, tripod, clear skies, Photoshop, and much time.
Download the Dark Sky Finder ( Android or iOS ) that will help you find the perfect weather, location, stars, time of day, and time of month for stunning star trail photographs.
The ISO speed and aperture will depend on the lens you use. If your aperture is f/1.4, set ISO400, if it is f/2.8, set ISO1600. I always set f/1.4 ISO400 30s, let my DSLR take photos on its own for about 20 minutes to several hours. It depends on how long you would like the star trails to be.
- Check out the best flexible tripod.
10. Make Light Paintings
If you are eager to create unusual landscapes photography, then try the technique of light painting. This is a vivid example of using artificial light for landscape shooting. Use of flash or flashlight to illuminate some parts of the image, for example, a rock in the seascape foreground at nighttime.
- Read more about steel wool photography.
11. Work With Long Exposure
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Landscape photos look amazing with long exposures. All you need is the element that moves at an adequate speed. It can be cars (as on the example), waterfalls, seas, streams, and clouds.
Look for overcast weather, track the Sun’s position, focus a third of the way into the scene, lower your ISO settings, use filters, and experiment with bulb mode.
12. Give Preferences to DSLRs
Landscaping photography needs appropriate camera features that are slightly different than those for other genres of photography. High resolution and capturing a lot of details are one of the most important specs.
- View more about the best cameras for landscape photography.
13.Use The Best Lens for Landscape Photography
Your lens should have a wide angle and a big level of sharpness at narrow apertures. However, you don’t necessarily have to purchase the best lenses for landscape photography to take magnificent images. A standard lens like 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 with just the right zoom range will be a good and inexpensive variant for beginners.
13. Have a Flexible Tripod
With its help, you can shoot highly detailed pictures at any surface. When choosing a tripod for outdoor shooting, remember three main criterions of the good tripod: sturdiness, stability and light weight.
To make the tripod more stable, you may put some additional weight onto it. You can also tilt the tripod’s legs or to fold them up to 180-degrees to shoot the landscape pictures from different angles.
- Check out the best tripod for DSLR.
14. Always Use Polarizers
This camera accessory will come in handy in case you need to add more textures to clouds to make them more massive and natural. The polarizer will help you in bright days and in dimmed lighting, as it is able to cut through the haze and make your landscape photographs more vivid and colorful.
15. Set Correct Aperture Settings
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For regular landscape photos (not a macro, zoom or night shooting, and other “outside of the box” pictures) the best aperture varies between f/7.1 to f/13. This is the space where you will receive the whole picture in focus that is maximally sharp.
16. Use Shutter Speed Right
When you are shooting fast-moving objects, for instance, water, the ideal shutter speed is approximately 1/1000th of a second, because it fully stops the motion, and, as a result, you get a crisp and sharp picture.
If you use lower shutter speed, for example, 1/160th of a second, the object will not be frozen and some areas of the photo will be blurry.
17. Don’t Overdo with ISO
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As for the ISO, there aren’t the one setting for all landscape photos. Lower the ISO as much as possible because high ISO provokes additional noise and grain in your pictures. The lower ISO for the majority of digital cameras is approximately from 100 to 200.
Landscape Photography Types
Landscape photography is not just picturesque nature views, seas and mountains. You photograph building, roads, people, and whether.
Sunrise Photography
Each of you will agree that the sunrise has a unique color palette that seems to be unreal. So, don’t waste your time and capture this moment on your camera. Use ultraviolet or polarizing filters to reduce the amount of light coming into your camera sensor while increasing the required exposure time.
- Read more about sun photography.
Sunset Photography
If you are not an early bird to capture the sunrise, you can always take a shot of the sunset, which looks amazing too. But don’t forget to plan everything in advance to get the desired sunset picture. You may take advantage of tips from the Camping Fun Zone resource to ensure you are ready for a photoshoot in the wilderness. Use the HDR effect on your photos for making sunset vivid.
Coastline and Seascape Photography
Always check the weather before shooting the seascape to find out the tide periods because some landscape areas look good just when the tide is out. Use this trick to receive the best possible image of the area.
Forest Photography
Look for the point of interest to take better forest landscape photo. Use your fantasy and try different points, it can be a tree trunk, a little path or a blossoming vine.
Mountain Photography
How do you see the mountains? Are they great and threatening or inspiring and enigmatic? Convey your image of mountains so the viewer will feel what you feel.
Black and White Landscape Photography
Black and white scenic photography has its own charm. This style focuses our attention on the texture, shape and contrast of the photo. Colors, especially bright and vivid ones, like green and blue, may draw the viewer away from the main meaning of the photo.
Night Landscape Photography
Taking landscape photography during the nighttime is quite a challenging task that requires various tricks. For instance, you may change the object’s position, like stars, still in relation to the general picture. Of course, light is the most important problem to face.
Photographing the Desert
One more great location for your landscape photos is a desert. It is a rather permanent landscape, which means that you may have the same settings for a long time. That gives you an opportunity to focus on the shapes and forms of the surroundings.
Photographing Lawns
It is quite a hard task for landscape photographers to find at least one point of interest when shooting views of plains and prairies. Search for some objects and features, which are special for this area, and turn them into points of interest that convey the meaning of the scene and better show the general picture of the place.
FREEBIES for Editing Landscape Photography
Landscape photography requires good color correction. If you want to make your photos more colorful and clear, I recommend you to try these FREEBIES for photo editing.
Ps Action "Evening"
This freebie for landscape photos is created for the nighttime shots with the lack of daylight. This action makes the photo more colorful and bright.
- Check out how to use Photoshop actions.
Lr Preset "HDR"
This preset emphasizes the foreground by boosting contrast and brightness. Apply this HDR effect when there are a lot of green objects like grass, trees or leaves in your photo.
- Read more about how to apply presets in Lightroom.
Lr Preset "Soft Contrast"
This effect adds brightness and a nice “sunset like” glow to your photo, which won’t leave anyone indifferent. Adjust curves and exposure to highlight or darken some areas in the photo.
FAQ
- • How do I compose a captivating landscape shot?
To compose a captivating landscape shot, consider the rule of thirds by placing key elements along the intersecting points or lines, and create a sense of depth by incorporating foreground, middle ground, and background elements that lead the viewer's eye into the scene. Additionally, pay attention to the balance of elements, use leading lines or natural frames to guide the viewer's gaze, and capture the scene during the golden hour for soft and warm lighting that enhances the overall mood and impact of the photograph.
- • Who are the most famous landscape photographers?
Ansel Adams is widely regarded as one of the most famous landscape photographers, known for his iconic black-and-white images of the American West. Another renowned figure in landscape photography is Galen Rowell, celebrated for his vibrant and dynamic compositions that captured the beauty of remote wilderness locations around the world.
- • Can I combine landscape photography with other genres?
Absolutely, landscape photography can be combined with other genres to create unique and compelling images. For instance, you can incorporate elements of wildlife photography by including animals in the landscape, or experiment with long exposure techniques to capture the motion of water or clouds, adding an artistic touch to your landscape compositions.
Tata Rossi
Hi there, I'm Tata Rossi - a professional blogger, read more
