September 17, 2018

Landscape Photography Tips for Beginners 2

The image above (Maroon Bells, Aspen, Colorado) is of one of the most photographed spots in all of Colorado. If you wake up early and catch the sunrise here in front of this beautiful mountain lake, chances are, you won’t be alone.

Landscape Photography Tips

The following is the second post of many tips and tricks for landscape and wildlife photography. Looking for a way to improve your photography? This blog will give stories, tips for landscape photography composition, landscape photography ideas, tips for beginners, and serve as a tutorial for those willing to give it a read!

“That’s one of the best parts of photography for me, connecting and creating with people.”

When I was first starting out as a photographer, I had it in my head that you needed to be way out in the back-country away from anyone or anything. Being “one” with nature, so to speak. This is only somewhat true, I have learned some of the most valuable lessons in this art from meeting and connecting with people out on an early morning shoot.

Now there are times where having a bit of space to work would be great, (your next image coming up will show all about that!) But going to these places there is bound to be people so it just goes with the territory.

On to the image and how to!

Morning light! We talked about this before but getting up for first light is super important!

Landscape photography tip 1! – The most payoff

Getting the most bang for your shot!

Anything you can include and exclude to really enhance your image is up to you! That’s photography!

We all get in the moment and start snapping pictures but it is necessary for us to think about what is included and what is excluded from our images. In other words, keep whats inviting, and throw out (zoom-in/crop) whats distracting!

Landscape photography tip 2! – Trying different shutter speeds

Something that was really fun to play with for this image was getting the “correct” shutter speed. What I mean by the “correct” is what makes it most interesting for me, the photographer, and you, the viewer. For this image I wanted a long enough shutter speed for the clouds to be in motion, but slow enough for the reflection to still come through. To achieve this I just kept taking images at different speeds. My goal is to take as many images as needed to have a variety of settings to choose from later on the computer.

Landscape photography tip 3! – There’s no correct answer

Start out with the correct exposure and play from there! The first option I go to is the opposite! If I am shooting a landscape with a large f-stop at first, I will go to the smallest f-stop number second just to see what I can do!

Let me be completely clear…

I almost never use that second image, but it is a great starting point for me to start being more creative and to start interacting more with my subject.

My challenge for you this month is to go out and shoot something super popular, then find a way to make it different!