Landscape Photography Overview

Landscape Photography

A beautiful sunrise, fog-covered mountain summits, or a crystal-clear lake – landscape photography can create enchanting natural images of areas that remain hidden from inattentive tourists forever. In the process, many factors play an important role in ensuring that the photo is perfect afterward. Not only the correct settings are important, but also the image composition and the time of day are decisive. Landscape photography is associated with a lot of precision, patience, and sometimes even some experimentation.

Capturing atmospheric moments, capturing the magic of a moment, or skilfully portraying a motif in such a way that it captivates the viewer, that’s what good landscape photography is all about for me. It is important to me to depict the scene as realistically as possible and to underline the pure beauty of nature.

Important Basic Settings

Aperture

The optimal aperture is about:

f8 – f16

I’m convinced that simply try it out.

Tip:

The sun is shining, choose aperture 8.

ISO

The ISO value describes the light sensitivity of the image sensor. Best is a value of :

ISO 100

This reduces the later noise on the image, but also increases the exposure time. Another advantage is that the dynamic range of your camera increases as the ISO value decreases.

Shutter Speed

Unlike the aperture, there is no definite rule for shutter speeds in landscape photography – it is used as a creative tool and can have a massive impact on the shot. How fast the shutter opens and closes depends not only on the lighting situation but also on the location of your landscape photography. If the sun is shining very strongly and there is no protective shadow far and wide that could take away light, short shutter speeds are almost inevitable to stay within the range of the optimal f-number. If the shutter should remain open longer, strong gray filters are recommended.

Further Adjustments

I usually photograph landscapes in manual mode, because here all degrees of freedom are given to you. So you can influence all variables according to your wishes and correct them quickly.

I take the pictures in RAW format to get the best picture quality and to be able to adjust my white balance in post-processing.

Depending on the requirements, I mainly focus manually, but sometimes the autofocus is also in use.

It is essential to have a stable stand, as even minimal vibration can have a maximum effect on the final result. Therefore a safe and stable tripod is not to be renounced. Moreover, the camera does not know that it is firmly fixed, and the image stabilization could still try to compensate for something that does not exist. Therefore the image stabilization should also be switched off.

After all, settings have been made, it is not easy to give tips on image composition, because everyone has their own ideas about what should be in the image. In general, I would say: Less is more. Try to only include elements in the picture that should be part of it and perhaps have a relationship with your central motif.

Design Samples

Skills needed

Mastering the basic understanding of your own camera
Choose the right time of day (e.g. golden or blue hour)
Manual focusing your camera
Be well rested & have fun by your photography

Planning 42%

Shooting Time 31%

Selection & Editing 47%

Publication & Recognition 26%

Tripod

Since most of the suitable photo positions are in the open, there is no possibility to place the camera anywhere. For this reason, you should use a stable tripod to avoid camera shake. A tripod is therefore mandatory for fireworks photography in any case!

Remote Trigger

When you take pictures from a tripod, you do it, so the picture doesn’t jitter. However, the moment you press the shutter button on the camera, you may be shaking the image.

To avoid this error, I use a remote shutter release. To my knowledge, there are wireless, infrared, and cable remote triggers on the market. All three fulfill this function.

Batteries & Storage

In landscape photography, you won’t find a power outlet in nature so quickly, so you should always have your batteries properly charged, but also have a spare battery with you. Batteries have lower performance at low temperatures, which you should keep in mind.

You should have your memory cards properly formatted and choose the right size for your purpose.

Gloves

Especially in the later seasons, it gets faster colder in the evenings and at night, so think of gloves. The best thing to do is to try out whether you can still operate your camera well with them.