Digital Landscape Photography Tips

Do you want to take breathtaking pictures of the scenery that surrounds you? These landscape photography tips will help you do just that. When you're first starting out with digital landscape photography you may not know how to get the beautiful pictures you want, but with the right techniques and a little practice anyone can take stunning landscape photographs.

Let's begin by looking at what you need to get started.

DSLR Camera - You can take good landscape pictures with your compact point and shoot but in order to get great image quality a DSLR camera would be the best to use. Most of what is contained in this tutorial is relevant to a DSLR user, but you may have a manual mode on your compact camera that will allow you to change the camera settings.

Wide Angle Lens - A good quality wide angle lens will take in the entire scene you're trying to capture. A 28mm lens usually works great for landscape photography, but when you're buying a lens you must consider your camera's crop factor. Sensor size affects how wide angle your lens will actually seem. If you don't have a full frame sensor in your camera you might want to try an ultra wide angle lens like a 11mm.

Polarizing Filter - These filters are great to use in landscape photography because they cut the reflections that might interfere with the picture quality. Have you ever had blown out white skies or super reflective water surfaces ruin a picture? That won't happen with a polarizing filter. These filters allow you to get the details of the water's surface and the true color of the sky in your picture. These filters are quite thick and shouldn't be used with a lens any wider than 28mm though. On wider lenses they will can vignetting.

Tripod - Hold your camera steady with a good quality tripod.

ISO - The ISO controls the sensitivity of your camera's sensor to light. The ISO settings are measured in numbers like 100, 400, or 1600. The lower your ISO is set the less sensitive your camera senor is to light. That means that the shutter will have to stay open longer to get the right exposure at ISO 100 than it would at ISO 1600. The higher the ISO number the more noise you'll get in your photograph. This visual noise reduces picture quality and takes away from the details in your picture. When you're taking pictures you should try to use the lowest ISO number possible to make sure you get the highest quality picture.

Aperture - The aperture measures how wide your camera lens it open. The lens to your camera can open and close just like the pupil in your eye to let in more or less light. Aperture is measured in f-numbers or f-stops. These numbers will look something like this, 3.4, 8, or 22. Wide apertures are denoted by small f-numbers. When the aperture is open wide it will let in lots of light, but it will also decrease the depth of field of the picture. So you can think of it as small number = small depth of field. If the aperture is small it will let in less light and the picture will have a greater depth of field. Large number = large depth of field. In digital landscape photography you want as much of your picture to be in focus as possible.

White Balance - Don't forget to set your white balance appropriately. I find that custom white balance usually works best, but you can use the sunny, shady, or cloudy setting depending on what the day is like.

When to take your picture

Usually the hours just after sunrise and just before sunset provide you with the best light for outdoor photography. At these hours the sun is low in the sky and the light has a bit of a gold glow to it that will give you lovely colors in your pictures.

Horizon

Always make sure your horizon is straight. Where you place the horizon in the picture will affect the photo's mood. If you place the horizon in the upper third of the picture it gives the sense of distance. If you place the horizon in the lower third it gives the sense of isolation.

Find your focus

Even though you're taking pictures of a large scene you still want to have a focal point in the picture. That focal point should naturally draw the eye of the viewer. It could be a cluster of trees, a babbling brook, mountains in the distance or whatever you think is the most interesting aspect of the picture. Use natural lines in the picture to help draw your viewer's eye to this focal point.

Now that you know these basic digital landscape photography tips get out there and take some pictures. The more you practice your photography the better you'll get.