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Digital Landscape Photography

Tips by Masters of Photography

If you want to improve your digital landscape photography and create exquisite images of landscapes, it helps to take note of what professional landscape photographers do.

Photo of a Landscape with Trees

Top Tip for Landscape Photography

You will often encounter locations that require a unique composition to make a relatively plain landscape look fantastic. Get creative and use all the elements in your frame to showcase the natural beauty of a location - as well as your own impressive compositional skills. Choose your timing well, including the time of day and the season. After all, a tree might just be a tree, but shoot it in the golden hours of the day in all its autumnal glory in front of a lake and you have a completely different story to tell.

More Tips for Landscape Photography

1. To develop a classic landscape style it is imperative to study the work of Edward Weston, Morley Baer, Philip Hyde, Eliot Porter, Ernst Haas, and of course Ansel Adams. The idea is not to copy them but to develop a feel for what works in landscape photography and what doesn’t. You can then work on developing your own unique style.

2. Invest in landscape photography workshops and courses. It can save you years of trying to master basic principles of digital landscape photography through trial and error. Seek out people that were at the very top in their fields in photography to train you. It is amazing that the very finest people in their fields are often very accessible to interested beginners who are willing to ask questions and incorporate the principles the masters are teaching in workshops and courses.

3. Be prepared to explore locations in depth to find objects in the landscape that are visually interesting. Look for patterns and compositional elements that will make a great image, and then refine your visual ideas until you arrive at a final solution. The best landscape images are the result of opportunity meeting careful planning.

4. Use the absolute best equipment you can afford, especially when it comes to lenses. Make sure that you have an assortment of filters in your camera bag, including a yellow, dark orange, red and green, as well as a UV15 and polarizer, cable releases, lens cleaning tissue and fluid, and a flashlight and level. A tripod is essential.

5. Try to get as much as possible right in the field, but be prepared to do a fair amount of post-processing on computer. That’s where digital photography landscape masterpieces are born.

In the end there is no substitute for knowledge and excellent technique. Creating art is not about convenience or speed. Take your time, take lots of photos and enjoy the process!

If you enjoyed this page on landscape photography tips, feel free to browse the following articles too:

* All about Photography

* Digital Photography Free Tutorials

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SBI!