by Jared Falk

Created on: June 02, 2009

There is a lot more to landscape photography than taking pictures of beautiful scenes of nature. There are a lot of different ways to capture the same scene or subject. You must determine what you want to emphasize about the scene, what story you may want to tell, or just find out the best way to capture the moment so the photograph reflects what your eyes first saw before raising the camera.

Choosing a subject can be overwhelming when you are surrounded by so many beautiful possibilities. The tree? The mountain? The animal? It's in your eye what to choose, but now how can you tell the film what you want it to look like? With an obvious subject, say a tree, depth-of-field is a popular but usually satisfying and easy shot. Widening the aperture and focusing on the subject will blur the background causing the subject to pop out on the print. Take many of these and record your aperture and shutter speed settings so you can get a feel for what style you like. Usually, blurring the background too much takes away from the story; as with the tree, do you want to see just a tree or a tree that stands out with a forest in the background?

Light fill can also assist in popping a subject. With less adequate light all around, you can light up a subject and make it really stand out; looks cool, but not quite as natural.

The angle is also very important for a photo that stands above the rest. Many people take the same picture of popular landscapes, but how many of them take the photo laying down, or climbing up to a high point and angle down? Pictures that stand out and don't seem monotonous are usually taken from a location that people usually don't stand, like off the path, or from a tree. Make your picture unique.

The hardest part about landscape photography is timing. Most of the best lighting is captured at dawn or dusk. When the sun is at the right angle, shadows are well defined, texture stands out, and the sun, at that point, has a magical way of bringing out colors that aren't there any other times of the day. This is hard because you must be patient and wait for it. Early morning can sometimes bring a soft fog hovering above the ground. Night can turn a wheat field into a beautiful golden photo full of shadows and texture. Time between 10:00 am and 3:00 pm are usually bland since shadows are so small and texture is hidden.

It is all preference. Do you prefer the sky all blue, or with aggressive white clouds? Is that water fall best captured crisp with a fast shutter speed, or streaked by using a slow shutter speed? With landscape photography, the best way to learn is to first learn how to talk to your camera and be able to make it do what you want. Then, go out and take many, many pictures (many of the same things) and record the settings you used. Then you can figure out what subjects you like, and how to portray them and how to get the camera to do it.

It should never matter if anyone likes your art, it's what you like. If you take pictures thinking about what sells, that isn't art it's a job.

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