4 Keys to Great Landscape Photography
- Invest in the Right Gear for Great Landscape Photography
- Composition is Key for Great Landscape Photography
- Don’t Forget to Edit for Great Landscape Photography
- Select a High-Quality Printer for Great Landscape Photography
- More Tips for Great Landscape Photography
- Recommended Photography Gear
- Tripod
- Lens filters
- Camera backpack
- Camera cleaning kit
- Peak Design Capture Clip
- Extra Batteries
- Power Bank
- Spare Memory Cards
- Portable SSD Hard Drive
- Master the exposure triangle (shutter speed, aperture, ISO).
- Lens filters are your friend.
- Be patient, and don’t be in a rush.
- Shoot during golden hour.
- Have fun and practice, practice, practice!
- The Benefits of Printing Your Photos: Why You Should Print Your Memories
- 3 Unique Photo Printing Options You Need to Try
Photo by Sam De Nike via iStock
Landscape photography is undoubtedly one of the most popular and visually impressive forms of photography. Many people get started in landscape photography to combine their passions for photography and the great outdoors, but much more goes into capturing beautiful landscape photos than meets the eye.
Having said that, if you are new to landscape photography and want to improve the quality of your images, this article is for you! Here, we’ll share our top four keys to great landscape photography and a handful of bonus tips and tricks at the end of the article. We cover everything from choosing the right gear to how to compose your images to editing them in post-production.
We also discuss the importance of selecting a high-quality printer when ordering prints and recommend one of our favorites. Now, without further ado, let’s dive in and discover how to take your landscape photography to the next level!
Check out the video above by SLR Lounge | Photography Tutorials for a beginner’s guide to landscape photography.
Table of Contents
Invest in the Right Gear for Great Landscape Photography
Photo by DieterMeyrl via iStock
First, you need the right equipment to capture great landscape photography. This starts with the camera and lenses. While some point-and-shoot cameras can do a decent job shooting landscapes, we highly recommend investing in an interchangeable lens camera like a DSLR or mirrorless camera. The Sony a7R V is the best camera for landscape photography.
Lenses also make a huge difference. Beginners should start with a high-quality standard-length 24-70mm zoom lens. Once comfortable shooting with that, you can invest and play around with some wide-angle, telephoto, and prime lenses.
Other must-own landscape photography gear includes:
Composition is Key for Great Landscape Photography
Photo by willard via iStock
Another key to great landscape photography is image composition. Whereas portrait photography has a clearly defined subject to catch people's attention and focus, landscape photography often doesn’t. That’s where composition comes in! And if done correctly, a beautiful (properly composed) landscape photo can be equally if not more captivating than any portrait.
Following the most basic rule in photography composition (the rule of thirds) is the easiest way to consistently capture great landscape photography. Other trendy techniques to practice are using leading lines, changing your point of view, and inserting a subject into your photos' foreground or background.
Learn More:
Don’t Forget to Edit for Great Landscape Photography
Photo by grinvalds via iStock
One of the most overlooked steps of landscape photography (and all photography, for that matter) is post-production. And by post-production, we mean editing. Today, editing your images is the industry standard in photography and something you need to get familiar with to create great landscape photography.
The best photo editing software currently available is the Adobe Photography Plan. It’s a monthly subscription plan that includes both Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop. Depending on your storage needs, you can choose either 20GB or 1TB of cloud storage.
An important thing to remember is that over-editing landscape images can often be worse than not editing them at all. Overediting can make photos look fake, artificial, or even computer-generated. That’s why it’s best practice to make your goal when editing photos “to display landscapes as closely as possible to how they look in real life,” not to enhance them.
Select a High-Quality Printer for Great Landscape Photography
The last key to great landscape photography is always partnering with a high-quality and dependable printer. That’s because even if you follow all the previous tips to a T, a bad print job will ruin your beautiful landscape photos. Unfortunately, it’s happened to us more than we would like to admit.
Lucky for you, you can avoid our past mistakes by working with Pure Art Printer. They are an innovative online printing company known for their premium products, expert staff, and unbeatable prices.
While Pure Art Printer is our go-to platform for all things printing-related, we want to show a little extra love to one of their products – their Pure Metal Prints. Metal prints are a trendy new art medium that looks great everywhere, from homes and offices to outdoor spaces. Moreover, thanks to their bright, vivid colors, they are ideal for landscape and nature photography.
For those of you who aren’t interested in metal prints, they also sell excellent canvas, acrylic, and paper prints. On top of that, they offer professional services like pro file enhancements, large file orders, and photographing paintings.
Check out the video above from our PhotographyTalk YouTube Channel to learn more about Pure Art Printer metal prints.
More Tips for Great Landscape Photography
Photo by Misha Kaminsky via iStock
As you can see, great landscape photography doesn’t take itself. Producing stunning landscape photos involves owning the right gear, having a creative vision, learning the proper technical skills, careful planning, and more.
However, following the four keys outlined in this landscape photography guide, you will be on your way to shooting like the pros in no time! Finally, as promised at the beginning of the article, here’s a short list of bonus landscape photography tips:
