Introduction
Landscapes are beautiful but the difference from a point & shoot landscape and a professional picture can be dramatic. In this article we will try to cover some tips and ideas to make your landscape photography better and the best way to start is with the four key things to a succesful landscape photo: Time, Location, Settings and Composition.
Time and Location
The two most important factors in landscape photography are of course time and location. Without a good location nothing can be done and even with a good location you need to be there at the right time. The right time is defined by two narrow windows of time centered at sunrise and sunset. Only a few minutes before and after sunrise and a few minutes before and after sunset are appropiate for landscapes, the reason is that at those times is when the lightning conditions are perfect to show all the colors in the spectrum without becoming too white or too dark, mattices and contrasts are also more intense and every color can be captured as-is. More than 80% of professional landscape pictures are taken at the "golden time" so get early or stay late if you want your picture to look like a pro.
Settings and Composition
Assuming you are at the right place at the right time the next step is to get the right settings for your camera and compose the shot.
For the right settings you basically need to set your focal length, aperture, ISO sensitivity and shutter speed so we'll take a quick look at which values are recommended now.
For a landscape you usually want your lens to be as wide as it can be, wide angle lenses or zoom lenses in wide-angle mode are usually used. Something from 18mm to 28mm is very common for landscapes but depending on your composition you can zoom more, the general rule is to avoid using the zoom if you can and get as close as you can to shoot in wide-angle mode, the wide-angle perspective is usually more pleaseant for a landscape.
You also want everything to be sharp and in-focus so you will need a very large depth of field, to get this you need a very small aperture (large f-number) that is why landscape pictures are usually taken with f16 or higher. F16, f22 and f36 are normal apertures for landscape pictures.
Once the camera is at the right place and the aperture is set you need to determine the shutter speed metering the light in the scene, for a landscape the sky is usually the de-facto place to take the metering. Aim your camera to the sky away from the sun if backlit and take a reading of the suggested shutter speed. Using manual mode fix that shutter speed along with your previously selected aperture and then recompose the shot. Don't worry if the camera says the picture is over or under exposed because that only means that the metering algorithm is probably not good for your scene.
Since a very small aperture is going to be used at sunrise or sunset the amount of light in the scene will be really dim and a long shutter speed is probably needed. This is why a tripo is an absolute must-have for landscapes, fix the camera to the tripod and use a remote shutter to take the picture or the camera self-timer to avoid movement when the shutter is pressed. If your camera has a mirror lock-up mode use it to further minimize movement of the camera when the picture is taken. Only a super-steady camera can achieve a sharp picture with a long exposition time if the conditions are windy try to protect the camera from the wind with a screen, piece of cardboard, a car or even your body.
Now that we are familiar with the settings and the procedure lets take a look at some composition tips and ideas.
Telling a story
There are no people and no expressions in landscape pictures so the scene is the story. The best way to tell a story with a landscape picture is to make sure you have a foreground a background and something in the middle.
This creates a story-telling effect in the eyes that go from the foreground to the background for a very satisfactory result. A very narrow aperture is critical to have both the foreground and background in focus to look sharp in the final result. The foreground can be a rock or group of rocks, plants or flowers, grass or something else. The background is usually the sky, the mountains or a forest.
The Horizon and the rule of thirds
Most point & shoot photographers place the horizon right in the middle of the shot. This is not a good idea because if both the sky and the ground have the same space it is hard for the brain to judge what is important in the composition and the center of attention flips from one to the other resulting in a bad overall experience when looking at the picture. The general rule is to place the horizon 1/3 above the bottom of the picture when the sky is the important feature or 2/3 from the bottom of the picture when the ground is the important thing.
The rule of thirds based in the golden ration automatically creates a pleaseant composition for the eye. If there is an important object in your composition like a tree place it 1/3 from the right of the picture too, do not center it. Remember thirds are good and halfs are bad when composing.
The second important rule for the horizon is to keep it straight. You will surprised to know in how many pictures the horizon falls to the right or the left of the picture. Sometimes the eyes of the photographer are too focused in some object and while framing that object the horizon is left unattended.
The result can be a picture where the horizon is not straight, when we see the pocture this automatically produces a bad effect in our brains because if the eyes notice the horizon is not straigth they will automatically assume the picture is "wrong" in some way. Always check the horizon line when composing your picture and if needed use a bubble lever to make sure your camera and tripod are straigth.
Of course rules exist to be broken but make sure you have a reason when go against them.
Diagonals and zigzags
Diagonal lines and zigzags are usually nice in landscape photography. When you use something with a diagonal shape try to make it enter or exit the picture from one of the corners, this creates a "path" that the eye will follow to examine the picture.
Zigzaglines have a very similar effect they create a "path" to examine the picture and the curves are usually nice to trace for our eyes resulting in a beautiful picture.
Representation of the path traced by the eyes following an S-shaped curve. S-shapes are usually easy to follow by the eyes and they scan the picture quickly for a more appealing result.
Framing
Another good composition rule is to frame the scene is possible. This doesn't mean that you have to surround your composition with objects it just means that if you have something to place at the edges of the picture the framing effect will have a good result.
Sometimes you frame on both lateral edges other times from the top and one of the edges. Left and top along with left and right are usually the two best combinations if you only have 2 framing elements in your compositions.
Focus
The next big question is where to focus when you want everything to be sharp? With a narrow aperture such as f22 or higher this may not seem important because of the very huge depth of field everything will seem to be well focused so you may think that you can focus anywhere. Others always try to focus in the background or the foreground objects. From experience the best place to place the focus is usually somewhere 1/3 up from the bottom of your composition. It doesn't matter a lot where you focus but how high your focus is for a better overall result.
If you have a very special feature in your scene this is clearly overruled and you have to focus in your subject but when there is no subject and just the hole landscape the 1/3 rule works well.
Smooth Skies and reflections
Sometimes in landscape pictures the amount of exposure you need for the ground objects can make the sky appear featureless even if the color is right. Another common problem is to have harsh reflections in the water if you have a lake or stream in your picture. Both problems can be solved, usually with the aid of a polarizing filter. The polarizer will make the sky look better with more definition and features and can soften or eliminate the reflections from the water bodies.
The key to a polarizing filter is to have the sun at a 90 degrees angle from your position, the polarizer is optimal at this angle and starts to underperform if the angle changes, with the sun directly in front of the scene or directly behind the polarizer is almost useless. So if possible make sure you have the sun on the left or the right of your scene, use your index and thumb fingers in a "L" shape, if your thumb points to the sun your index points to the best direction for your picture. Adjust the polarizer filter to your lens and rotate it until you get the sky or the water in the way you want.
Smooth Water
Water streams and lakes with small tidal movement or waves can be smoothed in a landscape picture using a sligthly longer exposure time.
Exposures from 1 to 4 seconds are usually good enough to smooth the water bodies producing a silky effect. If this is what you need then experiment with different shutter speeds adjusting your aperture to the value that you need to.
Impossible landscapes
Sometimes the scene and the light are problematic for your shot. Maybe you want to use a 2 second shutter speed to smooth water but the aperture that you need to use makes the picture unfocused. Maybe the lighting conditions make impossible to get both the sky and the ground properly exposed, when the sky is right the ground is underexposed, when the ground is right the sky looks burned. In a backlit scene maybe you get too many shadows or silouettes you don't want or the opposite thing may happen you may want silouettes but you can't get them to appear without making everything too dark.
When you are just about to give up there is one more thing you can do which is bracketing. Exposure bracketing means taking several pictures of the same scene with different exposures and then digitally combining them to get the result you want. Many cameras have a bracketing mode where you set the differential in exposure and the camera automatically takes 3 shots, one with the selected exposure, one overexposed and one underexposed. If the camera does not have a bracketing mode you can do that manually changing the exposure without moving the camera and taking different shots. Then with your favourite photo editor you can blend the different exposure pictures to get one where everything has the right exposure.
This is the same technique used for HDR pictures, HRD pictures are the result of processing via tone-mapping a series of pictures with different exposures, the result is usually a very vibrant-looking picture that is very attractive to the eye. Adobe photoshop and photomattix are popular software programs to create HDR pictures automatically from a series of pics.Conclusions
The technique for landscape pictures is interesting and requires a lot of experimentation to get the best results, the good news is that landscapes usually don't move so you can wait until the light is right, compose your picture in the way you want and prepare the settings you need. If the results are not right the scene will probably be still there so it just needs some patience to achieve professional looking results.
