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Landscape
Photography Artists: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZND3eczqoIA Technique: These quick
tips are not essential to every landscape picture you take, but bearing them
in mind and applying them judiciously will improve your picture-taking. • A foreground object will help to
frame the scene and add a look of three-dimensionality. • Frame the scene so that it
contains a center of interest - an object that draws the viewer's eye into
the picture. • Placing the center of interest
off-center, in accordance with the Rule of Thirds, will create a harmonious
composition.
• Placing the horizon a third of
the way down from the top or bottom of the frame is usually much better than
having it in the middle of the scene. • Scale can often be important to the
understanding of a landscape, and can be achieved by including an object of a
known size in the scene. People, animals or other recognizable objects that
would naturally belong in the scene are suitable for showing scale. • The quality of lighting is perhaps
the most influential attribute of a successful landscape. Waiting for
interesting lighting that is moody, dramatic or diffused usually pays off in
a memorable photograph. • Ensure that your camera's flash
is turned off when shooting landscapes, unless you require it to brighten a
foreground object. Flash in a dusty, misty or foggy scene may cause flare by
reflecting off the droplets of moisture or dust particles. • Use a tripod to ensure sharpness,
especially in low-light conditions. • In very low light, be sure to
select a fast film speed or a high ISO sensitivity setting in your digital
camera that will permit proper exposure and good depth of field. • Watch for unsightly or unnatural
elements such as overhead wires, hydrants, poles and garbage cans, especially
in the foreground. If you cannot easily move them, reposition yourself to a
camera angle that eliminates them from the frame • Don't let the weather stop you
from capturing an attractive landscape. Rain can add a degree of softness and
peacefulness to a scene. On an overcast day, be sure your scene has an area
of color in it to counteract the overall dull lighting. • Keep the rules of composition in
mind when framing a scene. Lines, in particular, can be a strong factor in
making an interesting landscape. An awareness and
the judicious placement of planes in the scene can also be factors in
improving your composition. • Landscape photography is often
more horizontal than it is vertical, presenting the opportunity to shoot a
panorama. If you are faced with a wide vista and your camera has a panorama
mode, this is the time to select it. Cropping afterwards can achieve a
similar purpose. • When the wind is blowing or water
is moving - waves, waterfalls, a tumbling brook -
capturing that movement by using a slow shutter speed to create blur can add
great interest to a landscape. When selecting a slow shutter speed, be sure
you retain proper exposure by also appropriately adjusting your camera's
aperture. Many cameras will do this automatically for you in Shutter Priority
mode. From http://www.photographytips.com Camera
The genre
often calls for high resolution DSLR, Medium or Large Format cameras[5]
to record the very details of the scenery. For digital cameras, the preferred
file format is RAW,
as RAW allows to record a wider dynamic range and all information is
retained. With RAW, the camera does not process the file in a destructive
way, all information is kept, resulting in significant high file sizes. Lenses
Usually wide
angle lens (24 mm and 35 mm are especially popular) are
used to capture the vast scenery of a landscape. For artistic expression,
telephoto lenses are used to compress the scenery and emphasize certain
aspects (e.g. rendering the moon very big beyond a mountain ridge). For high
quality, the lenses are very often prime lenses rather than zoom lenses. Some
landscape photographers however prefer medium telephoto lenses and prefer to
capture a typical part of a particular scene revealing the detail of the
landscape rather than use wide angle lenses that show the vastness of the
scene but which lack detail and can be non-specific. Filters
To reduce
contrast or control exposure, a split neutral density or polarizing filter
are used very often. Neutral density filters are
used to extend exposure and allow to include motion blur (e.g. for waterfalls
or waves) in the scenery. Control of contrast was the major motivator to
create the Zone
System, often associated with Ansel
Adams. Today, the Zone System
may become obsolete for digital landscape photographers as HDR allows a very good
control of contrast by combining several exposures of the scenery to one
single picture. Other Equipment
A tripod
and a cable release is very often used for landscape
photography as this allows minimal camera shake and thus very sharp pictures. Post Production
Digital
Photography has provided landscape photographers with a very useful post
production tool. Conventional photographs give pictures revealing the best
average of brightness and colour. HDR post
production work allows the photographer to darken and brighten particular
parts of the overall scene ( skies often appear
brighter in photographs than originally seen) or to tweak colours
either to give a more accurate rendition of the scene as seen originally by
the photographer or to dramatically enhanse it as
in boosting yellows for instance to make an autumnal picture look more so. Burning and dodging have always
been used in black and white photography to make landscapes more artistic but
difficult to do in colour before the advent of
digital photography. |
