Landscape photography is beautiful and I think it should be described as portraits of our planet. Often the experience is just as fascinating as the photo, and that is why many photography enthusiasts choose this path. It isn’t as easy as it seems at first glance to photograph landscapes, especially if you are in your early days. Here are 7 tips to help you make sure you go home with beautiful pictures.

1. Shoot RAW

The advantages of shooting in RAW format are widely discussed over the Internet. Regarding landscape photography, it is all the more important. The RAW format allows for considerably more flexibility in editing. That means that you are able to make more adjustments to exposure, color temperature and detail. It is also more “resistant” to manipulation that standard JPG images.

2. Use a tripod

Besides the obvious advantage of long exposure, which is crucial to a landscape photographer because the interesting light is sometimes less bright, a tripod makes you look harder at the entire scene. By slowing down the process, it allows you to see things from a perspective you might have otherwise missed with a hand held camera.

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3. Be there before the magic happens

Beautiful light is one of the key elements of a good landscape photo. Make sure to arrive before the sun rises or sets. Last minute rushing is not something you want because this is a rather slow creative process that happens differently from other photography genres. You should have enough time to look for the best spot to set up your camera and be ready to capture the different stages of the sun coming up or going down.

Photo credit: Ciprian Bot

4. Use filters

Just as strobes are important in studio photography, filters are to landscapes. No matter how good the camera sensor or film is, filters always make the difference. The most commonly used are ND filters, circular polarizers, warming and cooling filters and soft focus filters, but there are of course other types for different purposes. Make sure you have a solid kit of filters and learn the best times to use them.

(Success Tip:Take better photos with this simple deck of cards )

5. Keep going back

If you find a great location and capture good photos, you should return. Even if the place looks the same, the light is different each day. Visit the location at sunrise in one day and at sunset in another. Things will look entirely different. The same goes go for seasons. A forest might look beautiful on a summer dawn, but you can bet it’ll be an entirely different picture in an autumn noon.

6. Use the most from a location

Once you have what you came for, don’t hesitate to look around for more interesting views. There is often a lot more worth photographing in a location than you first imagined. All it takes is a little bit of walking around with your camera and having an open mind.

7. Use bracketing

Going to a special location and capturing it in an amazing light is the goal of all landscape photographers, but some, especially rookies, tend to get over excited and rush things. By doing so, they forget about camera settings and return home disappointed with incorrect exposures of a great scene. Bracketing is a technique that involves taking multiple photographs of the same scene, at different exposures. For example, you take one photo with the sky properly exposed, and another one of the land. It is sort of HDR, but you will get better results by manually combining these different exposures using layer masks .It works particularly well with photos taken in broad daylight, when the contrast between the lower and upper part of an image is strong and a proper exposure of both areas is impossible in one photo.

Also Read: 23 THINGS YOU MUST KNOW TO BE SUCCESSFUL IN PHOTOGRAPHY

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