Tutorial and Features: Landscape Photography

In the spirit of continuing to share insight and knowledge that I've learned from my experiences with photography, this will be my third tutorial on photographic subjects and techniques.  Previously I've submitted articles discussing digital camera noise (found HERE), and Neutral Density filters (found HERE).  I want to keep up with this, and hone it into a more helpful concept.  So this is the first one where I will try and provide a holistic coverage of a topic.  Today's topic is landscapes.

gilad

The most important factor of any landscape is focal range.  A landscape is characterized by a massive depth of field, that puts a vast and deep scene into sharp focus.  This is often overlooked by amateur photographers, who try to shoot landscapes where a very close foreground object is in focus and the sprawling distant background is softly blurred, but these are not true landscapes.  It isn't difficult to shoot a scene like the one just mentioned.  Landscapes on the other hand are actually quite challenging and difficult.  The most challenging technical factor is finding the exact focal range needed to get the best result, but even beyond that, finding a scene for a truly great landscape is a challenge that requires great patience and a keen eye.

Even Gilad Benari, who amazes photographers on dA time and time again, is an example of how difficult landscape photography can be.  He produces many beautiful landscapes, but very rarely do they really bring together all of the elements that create a true textbook landscape.  The Meeting Point by gilad above, is in my opinion, his best true landscape, and  a beautiful example of just what a landscape is all about.  It is composed of the worlds most raw and unmodified elements and achieves it's beauty without the flashy add-on of infra-red or long exposure times.  All of these can bring some real beauty to a scene, but a truly great landscape is great even at it's most basic level.  In The Meeting Point, gilad found a true mix of composition consisting of reflective balance, color and scenery, and captured all of it in perfect focus.  Reflective balance is what makes a great landscape, and it is displayed more than once in this image.  The scattered clouds of the evening sunset seem to perfectly reflect the scattered rocks and boulders that litter the beach.  Each side of the image also reflects the other, from the seawall on the right to the point jetting towards the horizon on the left.  Each of these is reflected further, by the tower in the background mocking the man standing in the foreground.  The composition was also split up wonderfuly, with the horizon resting 3/4ths way down, and the sunset about 3/4ths way from the right.

Proper focal range requires more than just setting your focus ring to infinite.  While this will bring the background into focus, much of your foreground will be out of focus.  Great photographers, like Ansel Adams, use a formula for finding the best focal range.  The result, is finding where to place your focal point, or point of most focus.  In a landscape, the best place for this, is slightly closer to you than the most distant point in the scene.  This can be confusing, but remember that the more wide angle you are shooting at, the wider the "focal range".  In these instances, more area between you and the focal point will be in focus, than beyond the focal point.  With this in mind, try and place your focal point slightly before the most distant point in the image, that way the entire image will be in the sharpest focus.  Before through-the-lense technology existed, like SLR's, photographers using rangefinder cameras had to do this for every scene, and were very good at finding the right point to focus on.  With SLR's allowing us to judge the focal point with our own eyes instead of mathematically in our heads, we tend to lag behind the old landscape photographers when it comes to the images we produce.  Keeping this rule in mind, we can get better focus throughout the image.

The less technical, but definitely most important part of a landscape, is the scene itself.  Without a beautiful scene that draws a viewer in, it doesn't matter how much of it you get in focus.  Likewise, a landscape with impact is more than just pointing your camera at some snow capped mountains.  A great landscape, like all great photography, will manage to capture some hidden forms of irony and relationships between the elements in the scene.  You will be surprised how often one element of nature will seem to almost intentionally, mock another element of nature around it.  Whether it's a mountain that appears to echo the shape of a cloud passing overhead, or the way the trees of two hills shape the sky to reflect the twist of a winding river beneath it, nature provides us with these almost mirror reflections all the time.  Again, gilad's image is a wonderful example of this.  The key, is that this is simply an ironic way to balance out the scene.  That being said, these ironic elements aren't imperative to a good landscape, but what is important, is finding a composition that is comfortably balanced in some way.  Another method that works wonderfully is finding a scene with a large mass on one side, and a vast open space on the other, such as the classic offset composure.  Be creative and the options are endless, but remember: there may be no real "rules" with photography, but there are certain guidelines that add a certain something to an image that consists of more than just a beautiful scene.

Now that we have the perfect scene before us and the understanding to get it into perfect focus, we have to make sure the sun is 'on our side'.  Another thing that makes landscape photography such a challenging and rewarding hobby or profession, is that natural lighting is the only lighting that we have at our disposal.  We can't prepare the scene before hand with strobes and diffusers and reflectors.  Knowing what type of lighting we need, and what time of day we can expect to get it, is just as important as anything else.  Direct sunlight is rarely ever beneficial to a landscape because it creates a scene with hight contrast and lots of dark shadows and burnt out highlights.  A cloudy day where the sun is diffused provides an excellent opportunity to find a scene where the lighting is even and all of the small details can be captured with clarity.  Another great time is within an hour on either side of sunrise and sunset.  This usually renders the most beautiful scenes, with all of the colorful vivid skyscapes that make for great landscape photographs.  Be prepared to bring a tripod along, always, but especially on the latter instance.  A tripod will allow you to get the best composition possible, and keep it.  Of course it will also give you the stability for longer exposures when the sun is on it's way up or down.  Lighting is key with landscapes as in any other form of photography.  You want to find a lighting situation where there aren't any harsh shadows.  Cameras, especially digital, get the best color rendition and detail when the lighting is as even as possible throughout the scene.

Sometimes though, you'll find a scene where the sky is bright and colorful, but the ground and/or water is no longer getting much of that light.  It would be impossible to capture this scene without a special filter.  A Graduated Neutral Density filter would allow you to get both elements of the scene with the best clarity, by darkening the sky.  That way your camera will properly record both the ground and sky, without over exposing one or under exposing the other.  A lot of companies make these filters across a wide range of prices, and in my opinion, they are an essential tool for any serious photographer.  You will find that they come in handy in many situations besides landscapes.  You can check out an in-depth tutorial that I wrote on ND filters HERE.

The most important thing to remember when looking for the perfect landscape scene, is to make sure you find a unique vantage point.  The beauty of nature and the world is endless, and there is always a new and unique way of looking at it.  If you see an interesting scene from the side of the road, be patient, and spend some time exploring different view points of the scene before you set up to take the picture.  It can make all the difference in the world between getting a shot a dozen other photographers have already gotten, and getting a shot of a scene from an angle that no one has ever thought of.  You can make an interesting scene become a beautiful scene if you simply spend some time exploring the different ways of looking at it.  This is also a key to getting the 'cleanest' shot.  You can easily isolate a gorgeous scene away from distracting power lines or buildings by simply changing your vantage point.  You can also get several completely unique photographs from almost the same scene, and each one would appear new and unique, by simply getting it from different sides.  The best landscapes are the ones that result from at least a little preparatory thinking and consideration ahead of time.  Don't be lazy!

This just covers some of the basics to consider when heading out to shoot a landscape.  If you follow simple guidelines like these, it can save you much frustration from trying to figure out why you can't quite get the shots you're looking for.  Landscape photography, like all forms, is an art, and is best approached from a fresh new angle.  Great artists produce great pictures time and time again because they have the patience and understanding to approach things differently.  The most mundane scene to the average person often extends a unique and beautiful opportunity to the honed photographer.  Keep your eyes open and your minds thinking, and you can produce landscapes with the best of them.  Experiment with all of the points I've mentioned, and practice finding "scenes within scenes", to give your audience fresh views that they would otherwise never notice.  I hope this helps at least a few people in trying out landscape photography for the first time, or bettering their approach to an already enjoyed hobby.  Let me know if this was any value to you, and thank you for taking the time to read with me!  Cheers!