How to master landscape photography

Driving through the countryside you encounter an awe inspiring scene that just has to be captured on your camera! Stopping the car, you shoot a few shots. But the results disappoint. The haunted house on the horizon is a mere speck in the distance and the photograph looks ordinary. The scene has somehow lost the charm that drove you to capture it. What must you do to ensure that your landscape photographs portray as stunning a scene as the one that you saw?

Composition is one of the most important aspects of landscape photography. What you capture on camera is only a portion of what you see with your eye. Review the features of the landscape that will stand out and make your picture interesting. Identify a focal point, something that will draw the eye. Decide on a focal point and examine its relationship with the rest of the scene.

The classic rule of thirds provides an excellent guideline to get you started. Divide the picture into thirds both horizontally and vertically. Some digital cameras have a grid to help achieve this. The horizon should be placed upon either the upper or lower horizontal third. An interesting feature or focal point of the landscape may be placed on one of the intersections of a vertical and horizontal third. This technique works and results in a much more interesting picture than one where the point of interest is centred in the frame.

Many people include city photography and views of the sea as landscapes. Strictly speaking, a landscape is a scene of land, of scenery that may include hills, valleys, rivers and mountains. Seascapes are scenes that feature the sea while a cityscape features an urban scene. The rules and techniques that apply to one, apply to all.

One way to provide perspective and a sense of scale is to include objects in the foreground of the composition. These may include a nearby sand dune, a tree, a building, an animal or a person. Foreground features help to give a three dimensional feel to the picture and add a sense of perspective.

One of the classic mistakes made by tourists is to attempt to combine a portrait of a loved one with a landscape. The girlfriend stands smiling to the camera in front of the Tower of London. This simply doesn't work! Each is an object of beauty, so treat them as individuals.

Put some thought into your landscape photographs. Look for lines - vertical and horizontal and diagonal. These can help to make the picture interesting. Horizontal lines help to provide a feeling of tranquility while diagonals suggest movement. A winding path or meandering stream disappearing into the distance creates a hint of mystery. Vertical lines - such as trees at the edge of a forest give strength and frame the scenes around them.

Examine the relationships between near and distant objects. Explore the scene through the viewfinder while moving around to get the best vantage point.

Photographing a scene from a cliff stands the risk of losing the feeling of height. This can be countered by ensuring that part of the cliff itself is included in the frame.

Water provides a wonderful opportunity for photography. It provides reflections of the sky and surrounds, and that shimmering effect that can really add to a scene.

Light and colour can make or break a landscape. As the day progresses from morning through to might, the light changes. Viewed through the naked eye, the scene appears the same. Captured through a camera the difference is immense. The light at daybreak throws a golden hue across the world that changes the colours all around. The midday sun produces short shadows and a rather harsh light. The quality of light changes through the seasons as do the colours of the landscape. Light varies from one country to another. The harsh light of Africa may be contrasted against the more hazy and gentle light of Europe.

While contemplating your landscape consider what aspect of the landscape you want to portray.

The photographic equipment is often considered to be of prime importance in landscape photography. Indeed, a camera that is capable of capturing pictures at a high resolution can make a big difference. A good lens is important to ensure that detail is captured well. But great landscapes can be captured using even a simple camera.

A tripod can be very useful, especially when light conditions dictate either a slow shutter speed or a wide open aperture. The aperture should be as small as possible to maximise the depth of field captured, but a different effect can be created with a larger aperture to blur the foreground.

Many people automatically select a wide angle lens to shoot landscapes. While this will help to provide a panoramic view, there is no reason why a standard or telephoto lens should not be used to capture a specific scene to achieve a different effect.

Experimentation in photography is the name of the game. Bracket your photos to ensure you get the optimal exposure. Try photographing from close to the ground or from a high point. Experiment with different exposures to produce different effects. Impressionistic landscape photographers may use extreme underexposure to produce a silhouette, while abstract photographers look at the relationships between the shapes captured.

Great equipment will help. If you are planning a series of landscapes to use as publicity posters for an advertising campaign, you will need some serious equipment! In most cases, it is the photographer rather than the camera that produces great photographs.

Photography in the digital age

Digital photography represents freedom to the photographer. Freedom from film. Freedom to shoot whenever and wherever. Freedom to use your pictures instantly. Freedom from the Dark Room! The photographer can print directly from the digital camera to the printer. Photographs can be posted to an on-line gallery, distributed and shared with the world - all the the click of a mouse. Life, for the digital photographer, has become much simpler and much less expensive!

Photography remained very much the same for many years. The technology improved, light meters became more accurate and electronics began to play a major part with automatic exposure, auto-focus, and the ability to imprint a name or a date on a photograph.

Through all these changes, the basic principles remained the same. Film at the back of the camera captured the image that came through the lens when the shutter opened and shut. Film was developed through immersion in a series of chemical baths. The outcome was either positive images (slides) or negatives that had to be printed on special photographic paper. Processing was done in a dark - either in an automated machine or in the dark-room.

As the digital age dawned, it became possible to scan the photographs onto a computer. Images could be manipulated on a computer screen using a number of editing techniques. Exposure errors could be corrected, colours could be changed, and pictures could be cropped, enlarged and touched up. Share photo's over the Internet or sending them by email became popular. Instead of printing pictures, they could be scanned directly to a CD. Photo sharing had arrived.

Digital cameras seemed a long time coming. The earliest of these had low resolution, and an annoying delay between pressing the shutter and the picture being captured. These rather primitive devices produced poor to average results at a high initial cost. Far superior film cameras were still available at a much lower price. But not for long! As with all things digital, as the quality has improved, the price has dropped. The range of digital cameras available today rivals - probably exceeds - the traditional film camera.

Before long, almost every cell-phone included a digital camera. Initially these were low resolution - great for snap-shots but not much else.

Today, each new camera offers more for less. Digital cameras are available with resolutions that match the resolution of film.

My Canon SLR is capable of taking some very good photos. But, it uses film! This has become my reserve camera, only for use for special events. For most purposes it has become obsolete.

The camera that I use the most doubles up as a cell phone! The 5 mega pixel resolution is good enough for most purposes. It can do almost anything - compensate for exposure, change the medium to black and white, adjust the colour balance and so on. With 1 GB of memory, hundreds of photographs can be taken before the space is used up. Of course it has limitations. The Carl Zeiss lens is a high quality lens but is rather small. There is no optical zoom, which means that zooming-in loses resolution.

Digital photography has given us a new freedom with photography. Not restricted by film size, we can shoot until we get it right. We can experiment without any cost penalty. Photography in low light conditions is easy with or without a flash.

Of course the camera is always with me. If I spot something I want to shoot, then I shoot! There is no cost for shooting more. Apart from the cost of the camera, photographs are free. Most are loaded onto the computer and shared on the Web. A select few are printed at minimal cost. There is no developing charge and no cost of film.

Digital photography has freed me! The dark room is gone, and my old enlarger gathers more and more dust as the years pass.

But there is a down side. Everyone has a digital camera. Many take dozens of pictures at every event. These near identical pictures are shared on Face Book. The same 150 identical pictures are emailed to all and sundry. The ease of point-and-shoot has led to some rather sloppy photography. Blurred pictures, red-eye and camera shake don't worry the photographers. Every picture is posted and shared.

Digital photography is both a blessing and a curse. For me it is mostly a blessing. Cell-phone photography is in its infancy, but with five mega-pixels, I have little need for anything else. Apart from printing a few enlargements for an artist's portfolio, I rarely need to spend money on a hobby that used to be very expensive!

Tips for better holiday photographs

Holidays are over all too soon leaving only memories memories that can be re-awakened by great photos! To make the most of your holiday snaps, follow a few simple rules.

Carry a camera with you at all times! Opportunities for pictures present themselves unexpectedly. A simple cell-phone camera is extremely mobile and can do the job. Keep the SLR for special occasions. The Nokia N95 comes with a 5 mega pixel camera that can produce excellent results.

Look after your camera and remember to protect it from sand and sea water at all times! The last thing you want is to lose the camera and your precious pictures.

Ensure that you have enough memory (or film) to take as many pictures as you want, and don't forget to charge the batteries. An extra memory card may be the answer.

Before you go, spend time with your camera. Get to know what it can do. Many cameras have special settings for landscapes, portraits, close-ups and night scenes. These can help produce great results.

A common holiday maker mistake is to try to capture people and landscapes in one shot - for instance the spouse or kids posing in front of the Eiffel Tower. Both lose out! A good rule of thumb is that people photos should focus on people. The person should be the main object. The pyramids make a great backdrop, but don't try to do both. Spontaneous people pictures are often the most memorable. Children caught at play, people admiring an unusual scene and people celebrating. If you have a zoom option, then keep your distance and zoom in on unsuspecting subjects and capture the moment!

Children can be photographed in almost any lighting conditions, but older people benefit from indirect lighting. Back lighting only works if you adjust the exposure to suit the portrait or use a fill-in flash.

Holidays are often spent in beautiful - perhaps spectacular surroundings. Look through the camera to find interesting shots. Experiment with different angles. If your friends or family are with you let them explore the scene and capture them as part of the shot. A person near a pyramid provides a sense of perspective. The time of day can make a huge difference to the results. Look at the lighting, and try to avoid huge contrasts. Our eyes adjust easily from strong sunshine to a dark shadow. Cameras don't manage these that well. Your camera will respond differently to the same scene at different times of day.

Events and celebrations benefit from lots of photographs. Too many is better than too few. More is more! Most modern digital cameras perform well in at night with or without a flash.

Back at home, touch-up you pictures. Red-eye reduction, changing the brightness, contrast and colour saturation can enhance them. Crop photos to focus in on an interesting detail. Great holiday shots make calendars, key-holders or table mats. Print some enlargements and laminate them for stunning results!