Taking better landscape pictures

Take a trip to any museum and you’ll be surrounded by landscapes. For centuries, artists have created paintings, sculptures, and, more recently, photographs of beautiful scenes of nature. Part of the appeal of a landscape to the artist is that it changes so slowly — it’s easier to paint a picture of a mountain range than to paint one of a jogger, because painting takes a long time and the mountain isn’t going anywhere, while the jogger will be gone before you know it.

However, artists don’t just choose landscapes because mountains stick around longer than a moving person. If that were the case, photographers wouldn’t ever take a picture of a sunset or a beautiful meadow full of flowers. Instead, photographers spend a lot of time taking pictures of scenic locations. There’s something appealing about photographing nature, and with just a little bit of work, you can easily produce a great photo!
 
Location, location, location
The best place to start when taking a picture of any scenic locale is, obviously, a scenic place. A nice landscape can be found just about anywhere. It helps to have a snow-covered mountain range, a field of growing corn, or a tropical island, but any interesting location can make a good landscape. The sprawl of a highway, the tops of city buildings, or a row of old houses can all make for excellent landscape portraits.
This landscape is interesting, but the fence in the foreground overpowers the scenery

The secret is to pick something interesting — an environment that makes your eye look around. A good landscape picture is compelling no matter where you look. Even if there’s a part of the image that stands out (a striking tree or a mountain peak), the whole picture should be intriguing enough to capture the viewer’s eye.
Don’t forget: Colors and shapes are important. You should see a pleasing variety of objects without any glaring distractions.
Getting some distance

Cameras see a smaller slice of the world than people do. If you point your camera at someone in front of you, for example, you might just see their head and chest, but if you look at that same person, you could see their whole body and some of the background. When you look at a landscape, you can turn your head and look around to take in a very large view of the area. Unfortunately, your camera can’t do that — it can see only what’s directly in front of it.
Part of what makes a picture an actual landscape, as opposed to just a nice picture of some object, is the distance between the photographer and the subject. A good landscape should give the same sort of view that you’d see looking at a scene and turning your head from side to side.
Since a camera can’t actually do that, you either have to get really far away from your subject or you could use a special add-on wide-angle lens.

Backing away from the subject allows the camera’s lens to take in more of the scene, while using a wide-angle lens changes how much of the overall scene the camera can capture. Either way, you’ll want to take a picture that looks like it was shot from farther away than if you were shooting a portrait. It’s the distance between the subject and the objects that really makes a landscape unique.
This landscape was taken with a wide-angle lens.

Depth perception
Many cameras let you adjust a setting called the aperture. While aperture (sometimes called f-stop) is a complicated topic, one thing to keep in mind is that the higher the aperture number, the farther away your subject can be yet still be in focus. If you’ve ever taken a picture of someone and had the background blurry, this is because the camera’s aperture was set very low. If you’ve taken a picture and the background objects were in focus and distracting, this is because the aperture was set to a higher number.
The aperture is the part of the camera that lets in light, like the iris in your eye, and the numbers describe how open or closed it is. The reason this is important is that you can set the camera’s aperture so that your landscape pictures have sharp focus all the way into the distance. If your camera allows you to change the aperture, set it to a higher number to get a picture with more areas in focus. If your camera doesn’t have a manual aperture setting, but it does allow you to set different shooting modes, chose the “landscape” mode, which is normally indicated with a picture of a mountain. This will automatically change the camera to the right mode.
Keep it steady

Taking a landscape shot requires a steady hand. All the little details must be in focus for a good shot. When you change the aperture, or set your camera to landscape mode, it often provides more sharpness by letting less light into the camera. This is why many landscape photographers use a tripod to help them capture a great picture. A tripod strong enough to support a digital camera isn’t very expensive and can be found in most photography stores or in the photo section of electronics stores.
However, you don’t even need a tripod to give you a steady picture. If you can find a flat object, such as a picnic table or bench, you can place your camera on that to eliminate it from shaking. Lots of digital cameras now come with remote controls that allow the camera to be triggered without even touching it. This is a great way to capture a clear landscape photo. If your camera doesn’t have a remote control, you can try a trick used by lots of photographers: Turn on your camera’s self-timer and let the camera take the shot for you! That way, after you push the button, the timer counts down before actually taking the picture, which should make it shake-free when the picture is taken.

Panoramic shots

For really interesting landscapes, you can try to make a panorama. A panoramic picture is comprised of a series of shots stitched together using software like Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.

Photos and article supplied by David Schloss.

Related Posts

• Taking pictures in bright light
• Photos of national monuments and icons
• Taking great fireworks photos
• Taking a good picture…
• Taking artistic photographs
• Say goodbye to red eye
• The art of the closeup
• Taking pictures in winter
• Taking photographs of animals
• Photography Tips : How to Photograph a Rainbow