Landscape Photography

You can never have enough tips to improve your work. This helpful video will give you 10 simple tips to not only improve your landscape photography, but to enjoy it more as well! 

One of the central principles we hear over and over in photography is the importance of pre-visualizing shots and planning one's work in advance. And while those are absolutely important, it's also just as beneficial to keep an open mind and to be willing to adjust to the conditions you've been given to come away with the best possible image.  

When you think of epic landscape images, the light you imagine is probably golden and dramatic, with arching shadows and radiant glow. And while that sort of light can certainly create beautiful, entrancing imagery, overcast skies can create their own sort of mood, and they're well worth embracing.

I may be a little biased having spent weeks in and around Death Valley, but it's one of my favorite places in the USA to travel to and an area that always shows you something new. Michael Shainblum and Nick Page give us a look behind the scenes of their trip to Death Valley, as well as a new set of images and time-lapses. 

Wildlife photographers have a gift of patience that isn't always required in other photography genres. The key to a great shot is always finding a great backdrop, which can be difficult when your subjects are on the move.  

When you talk about landscape photography, chances are, you associate it with wide angle lenses. Telephoto lenses are probably the least used in landscape photography, but they do have some fantastic qualities to them. 

How many of you have ever been to a national park or hiking trail only to find people disregarding the rules and trails all in pursuit of an ever better selfie or photo for Instagram? Then check out this Instagram account that's getting traction right now for calling out those very people and their bad behavior. 

When we think of epic landscape photography, we often think of dramatic golden light creating soaring rays and striking shadows, but unfortunately, the sky doesn't always cooperate to give us those results. This great video shows the possibilities we can achieve by embracing flat light.  

Every genre of photography comes with its own common problems, and landscape photography is no different. This great video examines three of the most common problems landscape photographers face and how you can overcome them. 

It has been gone since fall, but the galactic core of the Milky Way is back and rising up in the early morning. Spring is a great time to learn how to photograph the Milky Way in the Northern hemisphere, so you can have your process perfected and be ready when the galactic core reaches peak altitude in July and August. 

Landscape photography can be a tricky genre that requires a lot of patience and nuance. This great video details seven common mistakes landscape photographers make and how to fix them. 

I recently heard about three Puerto Rican photographers who would go out and shoot casually as friends. But, what made them unique was that these three photographers specialized in three completely different genres of photography.  

Why would you want to simplify your landscape compositions? And once you're convinced, how do you start?   Nailing a composition is one of the most important aspects of creating a strong image with a powerful story.

Common sense would suggest that drones aren’t equipped for astrophotography. The slightest wind can ruin the long exposure needed to capture the Milky Way center, never mind the challenge of flying relatively blind at night. A DSLR mounted on a tripod properly situated on the ground is the only way the capture the Milky Way in all its glory, right? Maybe not.

A few weeks ago, I beat Lee Morris in our Puerto Rico Landscape Challenge. With that victory, many of our readers said my edit in Photoshop was simply too over the top. Today, I try to re-edit my photo to see if I can create something a bit more realistic. 

Have you ever made a picture of a landscape? Sure you have. Everyone has. Making the photo is the easy part, but showing the landscape how you experienced it, is something else. Often the photo does not show the landscape from you perception. Finding a subject is often one of the solutions.

In a series of newly-released images, photographer Albert Dros is keen to exhibit the wonders of a 10mm lens and share tips for shooting. Based in the Netherlands, the wide-angled photos feature scenes from all around Europe.

 By his own admission, Dros loves to shoot with extreme wide angles.

Ever since I can remember I have been fascinated with photos, diagrams and rich visual communication. When I was at school I struggled massively with English, reading and writing and it was only in my 20s that I found out I was dyslexic. To this day I have only read three novels and that list includes Harry Potter (sorry!).

We planned a few days at the Opal Cast in France, a wonderful seaside area with rocky coasts, large tide differences, and a lot of remains of the Second World War, that has shaped the landscape many years ago. The forecast promised fantastic weather for landscape photography, so we had high expectations for impressive sunrise and sunset shots, and perhaps even a few star trails.

Here in the northern hemisphere, night photographers are starting to come out of their winter slumber and getting ready for the summer night photography season. If you’re looking for some quick tips on shooting star trails on your next over night photography excursion, today is your lucky day. 

You saw that wonderful long exposure image on the internet, with a smooth water surface and moving clouds in the sky, and you thought; I want to shoot images like that. So you invested in a dark neutral density filter that makes it possible to shoot with shutter times that are 1000x longer. Now you can start making those long exposure images.

I remember being nervous about putting them on. I stood there, thinking: "what if they don’t work, or what if I am scared to take them off?" With one deep breath, I slid them over my eyes, and a curtain of vivid color filled my vision. 

Late last year, one of Fstoppers’ favorite landscape photographers started exploring a topic that was completely new to his channel: buying a new camera. Four months later, an important lesson was learned: adventures are much more important than gear when it comes to improving your photography. 

Landscape photography, for most, is an incredibly rewarding pursuit. Those rewards, however, don't typically come without good preparation and use of proper techniques. 

In the words of the great John McEnroe: "you cannot be serious". This is how I respond when people ask me if I'd like to swap landscapes for portrait work. Here's why. 

Last week, we continued our exploration of Puerto Rico with our second shootout challenge. This time, we mixed it up a little bit with a guest photographer, and the results were pretty interesting. 

Sometimes, less is more, and even the simplest tip can make a huge difference. 

If you spend a lot of time under the night sky, you already understand the challenges: weather, setting up in the dark, and processing. Astro Panel 2.0 is a nifty Photoshop Plug-in that can automatically ease a lot of processing challenges and greatly improve your night sky photos. 

A photographer has switched to the Nikon Z 7 and taken to Antarctica in order to test the new equipment’s capabilities in extreme weather. He discusses his findings exclusively with Fstoppers. 

This week we continue our Puerto Rican Photo Challenge. In our second challenge, two photographers explore the elaborate cave systems hidden deep within the central hills of Puerto Rico. In the full article, you can vote which image was the best and later this week we will reveal the winning image.

If you've often been shooting in what seems like dramatic light only to get back to your computer and realize that the images are kind of so so, then you're not alone. However, in certain situations, what seems like a dull and unimpressive image might just need a little tweaking to take it to another level.

The Cantor Arts Center at Stanford and The Capital Group Foundation have announced that The Center has been gifted a collection of photographs by some of the most esteemed photographers working in the United States throughout the 20th century: Ansel Adams, Edward Curtis, John Gutmann, Helen Levitt, Wright Morris, Gordon Parks, and Edward Weston. 

Spring is one of the harder seasons to pull off landscape and nature photography. There is ways to get around it and here is some inspiration. 

How often do you think about either being deceived by or deceiving the viewer when you think about landscape photography? It's a topic worth talking about, as depending on how strongly you feel, it's a potentially polarizing subject. 

Many creators hold originality to be one of the biggest values in their art, whether it is music, painting, photography or any other subject. Concerning photography, what is even original when billions of photos are taken and uploaded each day? 

This is a really good idea, and as far as I know it's an original one. The folks at Skylum, who have given us the Luminar and Aurora image editors, are today offering AirMagic, a Mac or PC app designed to apply AI (artificial intelligence) to any drone or aerial-based image you drop into the app, either a single image or a bunch of images.

I'm a sucker for a good time-lapse video and this one featuring magical winter scenes of Norway is a stunner. 

Seascapes are one of the most imaginative sub-genres of landscape photography. It’s challenging enough to create a compelling landscape image when “what you see is what you get,” but with the energetic waves constantly changing a sizable portion of the composition, seascapes can be incredibly difficult. 

As a genre, landscape photography is pretty broad, full of niches and sub-niches that become specializations of their own. In this short video, photographer Brendan van Son attempts to create seven different types of landscape images in as short a period as possible, and just about pulls it off. 

With March comes the return of the Milky Way, the zodiacal light, and other great astrophotography subjects. Alyn Wallace breaks down a number of the key events in the night's sky for the upcoming month. 

With endless dunes stretching for hundreds of kilometers, abandoned houses, rocky mountains, and soils that look like the Martian surface, Namibia should put some wind in your photography sails. Check out the full list of the best photography locations in Namibia, as well as advice about appropriate gear and shooting times for each of them. 

Why are we doing landscape photography? There can be many reasons. 

As your immersion in landscape photography grows, you probably find yourself having a deeper connection with the world around us. In this inspirational video, photographer Simon Baxter talks to world-renowned landscape legend Joe Cornish about what it means to have such an intense relationship, and what it should mean to all of us. 

Once you find a great location, do you share it or keep it secret? If you keep it secret, why? Are you doing it to protect a fragile location or to protect your investment in searching it out? Do you have other reasons?

If you are into landscape photography, you likely use a wide angle lens for most of your shots, and when you work with that range of focal lengths, there are special considerations to be aware of. This great video talks about the importance of using foreground in your landscape compositions and how it can lead to better photos.  

Winter can produce some of the most awe-inspiring landscapes of the year, bringing with it snow, ice, and more than a few challenges peculiar to winter landscapes. Iceland is no exception, and in his latest vlog, Nigel Danson shares tips for getting the most out of the white stuff. 

The world of landscape photography has grown exponentially since the transition from film to digital and even more recently with a large social movement to get outdoors. What would your feed look like in 1943? 

Landscape photography can be a strange pursuit, isolating yourself for hours or even days at a time in pursuit of a technically perfect capture of a beautiful scene. But is that enough? This great video talks about finding deeper meaning in landscape photography. 

What's the point of your photography? And how do you engage viewers with your images more? I reached a stage where I struggled to clearly answer these questions but then I implemented a few very helpful techniques evident in these images that really helped me define my photography. 

“Let’s go to New Zealand!” Ka-ching, that’s a pretty chunk of change to shell out, but travel has become comparatively more affordable than ever before. If you are considering extended travel to invest in your landscape photography, you can save a ton of money without turning vagabond.