Shooting Landscapes: Settings, Composition, Editing Landscapes

Landscape photography can be such a rewarding pursuit, but there seems to be so much to learn that it puts people off from enjoying it.

In this article, we’re going to look at some tips and tricks for improving your landscape shots, including some that may fly in the face of the accepted wisdom. Hopefully, you’ll learn something that will help you gain in skill and confidence.

Preparation

Before you even take your camera out to shoot landscapes, there’s some prep work to do. Boring, I know, but it’ll make your landscape photography so much better.

Scout out the location you want to shoot beforehand. This will save you time and frustration, as you will know the right place to set your camera up, or the right time of day to go there.

Make sure your camera or phone is fully charged and ready to go, and make sure you’ve got enough memory cards. There’s nothing worse than having to stop shooting because you’ve run out of space on your storage.

Buy a tripod. It may seem unnecessary, but for landscape photography it is one of the most important pieces of gear you can buy. Tripods stabilize your camera in low light shots, and allow you to take long-exposure images once it gets dark.

The best tripods are heavy, so if you’re traveling you’ll want to find one that’s sturdy, yet lightweight and compact.

Settings

We’ll get to some recommended camera settings for landscape photography in a moment, but first things first. There are some very simple tips to improve the quality of your images:

Shoot close to sunrise and sunset to achieve more balanced exposures. Shooting in broad daylight produces very contrasty light, and it’s difficult to capture details in both the shadow and highlight areas.

If you want to capture waterfalls, do so in overcast conditions. This lets the shutter remain open for longer to achieve that ‘silky’ water look. Alternatively, shoot in shutter priority mode and set it to a speed of at least 1/15th second or lower.

If you want to achieve that turquoise blue water look, shoot when the sun is directly overhead, around midday.
Shoot at the lowest possible ISO, which is 50 or 100 for the best possible image quality

Camera Settings for Specific Scenarios

These settings are just guidelines to give you a base to work from, so there will be a bit of trial and error involved as every situation is different. Using manual or semi manual will give you far better results than fully automatic mode, so it’s worth finding some good tutorials on the internet on how to use your camera in these modes.

Sunrises and Sunsets

Exposure mode: Manual
Drive mode: single shot
Aperture: f/11
ISO: 100
Shutter speed: Variable
White balance: Daylight, shade, or cloudy

Capturing Motion with Long Exposure

Exposure mode: Manual
Drive mode: Single shot
Aperture: f/16
ISO: 50 or 100
Shutter speed: 1/4th second
White balance: Variable

Mastering Depth of Field

Exposure mode: Aperture priority
Drive mode: Single shot
Aperture: f/8
ISO: 100
Shutter speed: Chosen by camera
White balance: Variable
Focus mode: Manual focus

Composition

Don’t be Scared to Break the Rules

You may have heard about the rule of thirds, and how you should stick to it, but I would suggest steering clear of rigid composition guidelines.

The rule of thirds is basically dividing your frame into a 3 x 3 grid, then placing your focal point where the gridlines meet. This rule is perhaps one of the most commonly used in landscape photography, but it’s best to treat it as a guideline, not a hard-and-fast rule, or your compositions will end up looking like each other all the time.
Nature doesn’t always follow the rules, either. The landscape you want to shoot may not fit into a nice, neat rule of thirds composition. The key here is to allow the subject to suggest a composition, and not force it to conform to the rules.

Don’t Include Too Much

A lot of strong, striking landscape images are as much about what the photographer chose to leave out as what they included. A shot with too much going on in it dilutes impact and distracts the viewer.

Decide which part of the scene is essential to the image, and then gradually try adding other elements to see if they fit into the composition without distracting from the main subject.

Look for the Best View You Can Find

Don’t just take the same old shots as other people have before you, try and find something new. That doesn’t mean avoiding the popular beauty spots and tourist attractions, but finding a new vantage point or angle to shoot from.

Editing Your Images

Your images will nearly always benefit from some post-processing work, even if it’s just to straighten the horizon line, fix exposure issues, or add more contrast or color. Editing isn’t cheating or making images unreal, it’s enhancing what’s already there.

The screenshot below show how effective a little editing and polishing can be for your final images:

Another popular technique for landscape photography is HDR. To use this technology , you have to set your camera to Auto Exposure Bracketing Mode, take a series of exposures of a single scene and merge those exposures into one image using photoeditng software – advanced programs like Photoshop and Lightroom can do this, or you can download special HDR software like Aurora HDR or Photomatix .

Here is a result of merging the exposures:

Landscape photography, especially while traveling, can create amazing memories. If you follow these guidelines, hopefully you’ll come home with images you’ll be proud to share.