Important Advice for Landscape Photographers

Whether you are a professional or a hobbyist, photography is a complicated craft that takes a wide range of skills in order to find success. While we spend a lot of time studying things like exposure settings and editing techniques, there are some other topics that do not get the attention they deserve. This fantastic video essay features an experienced landscape photographer offering a nice range of important advice that will help you improve your images. 

Coming to you from Mark Denney, this awesome video essay discusses a range of important advice that does not get discussed as often as it should. One bit that I found particularly important is not overlooking your local area. It can be easy to look at popular landscape photos and assume that worthwhile images can only be made at iconic locations, but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, learning to work your local area can make you a stronger photographer (because you're not relying on the drama of the scene to do the lifting), and it can help you break into a market that far fewer photographers know. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Denney. 

And if you really want to dive into landscape photography, check out our latest tutorial, "Photographing the World: Japan With Elia Locardi!" 

Alex Cooke's picture

Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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3 Comments

Video is private?

Mark Denny is the king of photography click bait. Basically useless. Also he's a Youtuber not a working photographer. Very little of his income has ever come from photography, as per a video he released a couple of years back.

Some are just jealous or want us to travel. The advice by Mark is solid! First you do not use the camera you forget many options you used to use, example Mark uses a tripod a lot and if you do you have to remember to turn off IBIS/OSS if you do not you get a fuzzy image. If you have recently bought a new lens that has a dial for aperture and it is on say f/8 and you go manual and the camera dial does not change to say f/4 you can stand there and not remember you have a new lens and it has to be on A or turned to f/4, new stuff can have somethings you are not used to. The thing about travel is also key a hobbyist may not afford it so you need to learn local places and can find new on the net for local places. I am a hobbyist but my camera and lenses go with me on a local errands in a teardrop bag or I may drive to a family in another state and only three lenses needed ultra wide 12-24, 24-240 and 200-600. As a hobbyist you become a weather person with a couple apps, you follow the sun and moon rise and set places every day,month of the year and the golden and blue hours as well as tides high and low times with Planit Pro which also can be used for panorama planing, then the camera app like PhotoPills for the planning. We do very little social chatting if any for nature it what a photographer follows like when fog may form or lighting storms or first snow. All of it is our news not following news network. Instead of going to Africa we go to the zoo and frame a closeup. Milky Ways go from SE in Feb to SW in Oct with ARC panoramas Apr, May, Jun and Jul but then there is the winter stars that form an arc in Nov to Jan. If you like fall colors they start early Sep to Nov where many travel together from Maine to north Ga. and you can take a different week off every year and plan for the colors for wet or dry years. The desert is home to many many flowers in spring great landscapes not of sand but colors. With today's LED 5500 temp lights bouncing off a few clouds like studio softbox you get great night color the human eye can not see in the dark and for flowing water there are settings that will get the blur look without filters
The Camera comes with a sheet of paper not a book and most camera books are now PDF's so you can read on a phone or pad while in a doctor's' office or waiting for a bus or plane. Know the tool read what it can do, you paid for it even auto will get the images who is going to know!
Yes, I am hobbyist and can capture any image I want whenever I plan to! Just a few of things I think about every minute,hour, day/night month all year long or wait years for it. Also I have many post processing programs I play with images of today and yesteryears for software just gets better with age!