The first lens a lot of landscape photographers want to buy is a wide-angle. Intuitively, it makes some sense that the most useful lens at an amazing scene is the one that captures as much of the scene as possible. But that mindset only works so well in practice. So, for this week’s video, I traveled to Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah to photograph some amazing slot canyons and talk about how to use your wide angle lens.
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Recommended Camera Menu Settings for Landscape Photography (Video)
In the following ten minute video, I go over the most important menu options that you can use in your camera when photographing landscapes. I start off by going over RAW image quality settings, then go over long exposure noise reduction setting, then picture controls and their impact on your images. From there, I move on to explaining how you can reduce camera shake by using specific camera modes and settings like timer, Mirror Up and Electronic Front Curtain Shutter.
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9 Rapid-Fire Landscape Photography Tips
There are so many little tips and tricks I like to use in landscape photography to make my life easier, and I’ve included nine of the most important in the article and video below. I’m focusing especially on composition, but there are some post-processing and camera related tips as well. My hope is that some of these techniques are new to you, and that you find them valuable for your own work.
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Manual Focus or Autofocus for Landscape Photography?
Landscape photography is often slower paced than other genres, allowing for a more methodical approach to composition and camera settings. That includes focusing; manual focus is more popular for landscapes than most other genres. Indeed, there’s a whole market of third-party manual focus lenses geared almost exclusively to landscape photographers. But autofocus still has its benefits. So, which method is right for you?
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Video: How I Took This Sand Dunes Photo
In this week’s video, I’m going to show the story behind a photo I took a few days ago in Great Sand Dunes National Park. Because it’s our first case study video at Photography Life, I wanted to shoot an image that I already had in mind – hopefully lowering my chances of returning empty-handed. In the end, I definitely got a photo I liked. But it didn’t happen quite how I had expected.
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The Nikon Z Cameras for Landscape Photography
I’ve now been using the Nikon Z7 for more than six months, and I’ve also tested the very similar Z6 extensively for our review at Photography Life. The takeaway in both cases is that, despite a few flaws, Nikon produced an excellent and surprisingly refined first-generation mirrorless camera. But the more I use the Z7, especially side by side with my older D800e, some of the mirrorless camera’s strengths really shine for my favorite genre – landscape photography.
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Making Sense out of Chaos
The natural world can be a chaotic place. If you’re a landscape photographer, you’ve probably found yourself taking pictures of scenes that seem too disorganized and overwhelming to work right no matter what you do: forests, canyons, coastlines, and so on. You’re chasing the elusive gem of simplicity within a landscape that is anything but simple. How do you make sense of things and capture good photos anyway?
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How to Take Better Black and White Landscape Photos
Landscape photography goes hand in hand with black and white. It isn’t just because of famous landscape photographers like Ansel Adams, but also because the intricate shapes that attract our attention in nature often “just feel right” in monochrome. Want to take better black and white landscape photos? This article explains why such images work so well, including how to make your own black and white landscape photography as strong as possible.
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How to Use Leading Lines in Photography
Lines are some of the most fundamental elements of photography, and some of the simplest, too. But don’t let that fool you. Lines come in many varieties – sometimes leading lines that guide the composition, other times barriers segmenting a photo. They also impact an image’s sense of emotion and structure. In this article, I will cover the best ways to use leading lines and other lines in photography, including how to put them into practice in your own compositions.
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Double the Distance Method Explained
One tricky part of landscape photography, along with other genres such as architecture, is making sure that your nearest and farthest subjects are both as sharp as possible. We’ve written before about a few techniques to maximize front-to-back sharpness, and I thought it would be worth emphasizing one of the most important ones again: the “double the distance” method. Here’s how it works.
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