Photo tips: landscape photography made easy

Landscape photography encompasses a wide range of themes - from simple still-life, to classic nature photography, to architectural photography and more. There are some things which should be kept in mind in order to capture the beauty of nature in photographs. ifolor has compiled the most important tips for you.

Many digital cameras have preset programs, but it is often a good idea to set the ISO speed, aperture and exposure time manually. 18-55m wide-angle lenses are particularly suitable for portraying width and depth of large areas. Although landscape photographers are usually out and about during the day, they often carry their tripod around with them in order to set the frame of the picture more accurately or to be able to use a higher exposure time.

It helps to keep calm when trying to observe the landscape properly and look for the right viewpoint. On the other hand, landscape photography itself is an activity in which you can switch off, relax and recharge your batteries. Enjoy your environment - then you will be better able to recognise the picture's composition and content and won't have to vary your location so often to find the perfect picture.

The horizon is usually an important element in landscape photographs and should, if possible, be shown horizontally in order to avoid plunging lines and to prevent the picture from looking unnatural. A good landscape shot depends on its impression of depth, often by dividing your picture into a foreground and a background. Clouds in the sky usually make a picture more dynamic. A cloudless sky, in contrast, looks peaceful and does not have to take up too much space in the picture. Classic landscape photos tend to be as evenly sharp as possible, but it is also a good idea to play around with the sharpness and, for example, deliberately allow the foreground to blur.

Like the seasons, light plays an important role in landscape photography, because the changes and different shadows can make the same picture look boring, exciting, chaotic or peaceful. Experts here like to use the early hours or dusk, but a slightly cloudy sky can also throw fascinating shadows onto the landscape.

If you have usually relied upon your camera's autofocus, now is the time to move into manual photography. After all, with the abundance of information in a large-area photo, the automatic mechanism cannot guess which detail you want to focus upon. To start off, you could zoom in on an object, make it sharp automatically, and then switch off the automatic mechanism in order to look at the picture as a whole without the zoom and then readjust the sharpness yourself if necessary.

Many effects can now be simply added afterwards in Photoshop or other programmes, but there are also three very useful filters - the effects of which are very handy while taking photographs. The polarising filter prevents reflections and makes the colours of the sky look more vivid, for example. A gradual filter allows light through in different levels of brightness, while the neutral grey filter darkens the entire area. The latter allows longer exposure times in bright daylight, meaning you can create some stunning effects - for example with a waterfall. It's also worth mentioning that many landscape photos gain intensity and expressiveness in black and white. Instead of only photographing in black and white, you can simply switch the colour mode afterwards in postprocessing.

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