How To Take Landscape Photos?

When you're inspired so much by beauty surrounding you, photographing landscapes could seem easy. It takes more than just bringing out your camera and taking a few pictures to truly produce a fantastic picture that you want to share with friends or post on your wall.

Once you've mastered the fundamentals of photography, there are a number of things you can do to increase your chances of taking a shareable landscape snap. Here are 8 tips on how to take landscape photos, which can assist you in taking better landscape photos.

Let’s dig in to gain more knowledge.

What is Landscape Photography?

Landscape photography is the art of capturing beautiful images of nature. It requires good composition, lighting, and a lot of patience. Most of these photos are taken using a tripod and a remote shutter release, so they have a very deliberate look about them.

While nature and landscape photography are frequently combined, in many cases a skyscraper may also be regarded as a landscape.

It's not necessary to use a horizontal format while taking landscape photos. In fact, it's a frequent assumption that it's impossible to capture a vertical landscape shot. Every scene will present new components that assist determine perspective, camera settings, and approaches for taking the best possible pictures.

How to Take Great Landscape Photos?

1. Grab a Good Camera

DSLR and mirrorless cameras are the best kind of cameras to use if you want to take a lot of landscape photos. While the most advanced smartphone cameras of today may capture some fairly stunning landscape images, they are still lagging behind the caliber of professional photographers. However, it is still fantastic if you are about to use a phone camera.

If you don't already own one, there are several reasonably priced entry-level cameras available. However, a full-frame camera will get the greatest results. You'll use your lenses to capture the broadest possible views in this manner.

See more: Best Cameras for Landscape Photography

2. Get a Good Lens

Select an appropriate lens for your camera that is designed for photographing landscapes. A wide angle lens is required because it provides a broader view and catches more of the image. Smaller focal length values are seen in wide-angle lenses (35mm and below). However, experienced landscape photographers frequently use lower focal lengths than 24mm.

3. Camera Setting for Landscape Photography

You might wonder how to shoot landscape photos with perfect lights. One of the most crucial pieces of information in this landscape photography guide is about to be revealed. Learn about the shutter, aperture, and ISO components of the exposure triangle when using Manual Mode on your DSLR or mirrorless camera. Each has a numerical value and has an impact on how much light enters the lens.

Here are our suggestions for landscape photography camera setting:

Aperture: Between f/11 and f/16

ISO around 100 – 200

Shutter speed: 

Using a tripod or not will affect your shutter speed setting. If you're using a tripod, you may change the shutter speeds according to the amount of light present.

If a tripod is not being used, the shutter speed you use must not be less than the maximum lens' focal length. For example: 50mm lenses need shutter speed of at least 1/50th or faster.

When photographing landscapes, rapid shutter speeds (1/250 or greater) are advantageous since it's important to freeze quick motion.

Utilize slower shutter speeds (1/15 or longer) appropriately if you like to have softer, blurrier motion in your landscape photographs. If you want to smoothen the flows of a river or waterfall, set your shutter speed at 1/8, 1/4.

4. Photograph in Golden Hours

Most photographers love to take landscape photos in “golden hour” such as sunrise and sunset because of the gorgeous, diffused light produced by the sun at that time. Go outside at these hours and snap several photos if you truly want to capture a beautiful landscape. The subject will take on a warm glow when the sun sinks below the horizon, and you may be able to catch lengthy shadows that will give your pictures depth and intrigue.

However, that doesn't mean that there aren't other periods of the day when you can capture landscape photos. In the middle of the day, when the sun is sitting high in the sky, the light will probably be intense and glaring, which doesn't always result in the prettiest photographs. Find techniques to lessen the light in these circumstances. 

Consider waiting for clouds to obscure the sun if there are any in the sky so the sunlight will be a little softer. Alternatively, you can try setting up behind a tree or divert your focus from the expansive view and try taking pictures of things that are closer to you, like the leaves.

5. Use a Polarizing Filter 

Polarizing filters are mostly used to improve color and contrast and lessen glare in their pictures. They can be very helpful for photographing landscapes with reflections in the water or sky.

6. Use the Rule of Thirds

It's simple to make an image that is both balanced and visually appealing by using the rule of thirds. By placing your subject in the left or right third of your image, you may leave the other two thirds of the layout more open or vice versa. This compositional rule is known as the rule of thirds.

In order to assist you in creating photographs that follow the rule of thirds, many cameras feature a grid in the viewfinder or on the screen. Many phone cameras like the iPhone also have a grid when capturing photos.

When photographing an ocean photo, for instance, instead of letting the horizon in the middle, adjust to place the horizon in the bottom or top third of the image.

7. Use of Leading Lines

“Leading lines are a compositional technique where human-made or natural lines lead the viewer's eyes through a photograph to the subject or the heart of the image,” says the photographer Lukas Kosslow.

8. Capture Landscape Photos in RAW format

Simply said, if your camera is equipped to take pictures in RAW format, we advise that you do so at all times when taking landscape photos. They provide significantly greater freedom in post-production without sacrificing quality and include a great deal more details and information. Note that you can save all RAW files in any formats you choose, but you cannot save JPEGs as RAW images.

Final Thought

With the appropriate equipment and instructional materials, you can study every type of photography. You may practice landscape photography and gain more skill by using these tips.

But it's all, though; push yourself to combine landscape photography with other types of photography. Try to use other techniques. Find the methods and circumstances that best suit your requirements.

You could discover that you've eventually mastered your favored landscape photography tips. You could even start to consider what you produce as fine art as you get more skill and time. Like any other creative form, photography requires ongoing education. It will offer you fresh eyes to perceive and value the world in a completely new way.