5 Things Successful Photographers Do When Shooting Landscapes

We all know landscape photography is hugely popular among enthusiasts as well as professionals. Even the high end people who shoot a completely different kind of photography for a living photograph landscapes because it fuels their passion. Professionally, landscape photography isn’t doing as good as it used to in the old days, but that’s not to say there aren’t successful landscape photographers who portray nature and the beauty of our planet for a living.

To be a successful landscape photographer, one must acquire more than technical skills and a willingness to do a good job. Here are some of the things that seasoned landscape photographers, be they hobbyists or professionals, do while they are at work.

1. Wait

Landscape photography is a waiting game. There is very little you can do to interfere with your subject. Other than finding the best position, the right focal length and exposure, you have to wait for the right light. Sometimes it takes a few hours, but often it is a matter of days. Just like it does with portraits or subjects of another nature, light makes a tremendous difference in landscape photography. I’m sure you know what the best times to photograph are, in theory, and that at midday you should do something completely different, without a camera, because the light is dreadful. But the thing is, no sunrise or sunset is anything like yesterday’s and the real pros know when it’s time to wait for something better or, if a certain moment is the best it gets at a certain location.

2. Use the right filters

From a technical point of view, landscape photography is where filters are probably most important. A beautiful, blue, summer sky might look amazing, but it is so much more visually appealing once you use a circular polarizer or a neutral density filter. Filters are something that experienced landscape photographers turn to because they know post-processing can’t do the same job, or not as good anyway. When you buy a wide angle lens for landscapes, the filters are just as important, so make sure to cover this investment.

3. Feel the location

This might sound cheesy or sentimental, but the truth is landscapes photographs bring out a lot of emotion. You would probably feel in a certain way to witness a sunrise in Alaska or a sunset in Tuscany wouldn’t leave you ignorant either. The key to good landscape photography is to capture that emotion and make it part of your images. That means waiting for the right light among other things, but also finding the passion and the connection with nature that allows you to see it differently from, let’s say, a scientist who knows that each blue sky and sunset is a combination of how the Earth spins and how gases in the atmosphere react.

4. Be prepared for failure

As bad as it sounds, the prospect of failure is never off the table with landscape photography. Unless you have a full month to dedicate to a single photograph, no matter what weather forecasts you follow or if you dedicate a week to a project, there is still a slight chance it will rain the entire time, or that it will be foggy and so on, you get the idea. You must accept that very little is up to you in the whole equation and what’s most important is that you keep your hopes and ambition high so that you may seek the perfect image another day.

5. Keep going back

The thing about a wonderful place is that it has four faces, so to speak, according to each season. Each location looks best at a certain time of the year, and if you get a good shot of it in spring, it doesn’t mean it won’t look better in autumn. Of course, some locations are hard to reach and it might take a few good hours to get there. That’s why you should develop a selection criteria in order to avoid the locations that are bound to be swarming with photographers, or the ones that are less interesting but easy to get to . Spend time doing proper research and do not be discouraged by the fact that a certain location has been photographed by known photographers in the past. You are going there to do your own thing and even if the landscape is the same, the light, and most importantly, the way you record things are always different.

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