5 Ways to Shoot Landscapes in Summer

Landscape photography in the summer can be frustrating, especially when shooting woodlands and forests. The forest is thick with green foliage, and parts of the bright blue sky shine through the canopy, creating hotspots in your image. But surely landscape photographers don't stow their cameras away for six months every year, so there must be an alternative?

First, we have to analyze the problem. Why are summer months not favorable to landscape photographers? Well, the answer is simple. There's a distinct lack of atmospheric texture. As temperatures rise, the early morning fog becomes scarcer. Woodlands and forests become almost monochromatic in bright green. There's also the issue of atmospheric heat haze, which softens landscapes when using a telephoto lens. The other issue is the length of days. The sun usually sets quite late in the summer months. For example, it sets around 9:30 here in the U.K., then rises again around 4:50 AM. This doesn't give you much of a window to capture any nighttime astro-landscapes. Furthermore, you end up being sleep-deprived due to the early mornings and late evenings.

But there is hope. Aside from the sleep deprivation and getting a sweaty back from carrying your backpack in the hot sun, there are other ways to make the summer months more bearable.

Capture the Milky Way

Astrophotography sure is challenging in the summer months, as you have an extremely short window to capture stars after sunset before the sun comes back up. In summer, it's often a couple of hours, if you're lucky. But if you manage to pull it off, it's an incredibly rewarding experience to capture the rise of the Milky Way above the horizon. If you want the best results, invest in a portable star tracker that lets you shoot longer exposures for greater detail. If you're heading somewhere remote and dark to shoot, tell someone where you're going, bring a headlamp and warm layers, and watch your footing on unfamiliar terrain in the dark.

Photograph Passing Storms

The start of summer often brings highly unstable weather patterns, depending on where you live. Late afternoon heat causes cumulonimbus clouds to form, which often bring lightning storms. Use a couple of weather-tracking apps to monitor where the storms are from a safe distance. Lightning is dangerous and can strike well ahead of a storm, so never position yourself in an exposed area, near tall isolated objects, or close to an active cell. The safest approach is to photograph from indoors or from inside your vehicle. Sometimes you'll be rewarded with incredible sunsets right after the storm passes, too.

Look Beyond the Visible Light Spectrum

If the midday sun is far too harsh but you need to scratch that itch to go out and shoot, slap on an infrared filter and try a few different scenes. Look for strong geometric shapes or minimalist scenes. If you're shooting in woodlands with an infrared filter, it will immediately turn the green, monotonous scene into an ethereal fantasy world where green foliage turns white and blue skies turn deep black.

Watch the Light Change

Using a 10-15-stop ND filter, you can create extremely long exposures at midday, often resulting in softer light as the sun moves across the sky or clouds pass in front of it. It turns choppy water, such as the ocean or a lake, into a smooth, glassy surface. You can often capture surreal-looking images this way, but it does require a bit of patience.

Experiment With Alternative Techniques

When you step out of your comfort zone and try something new, it often sparks inspiration and gets the creative juices flowing. If you've never tried techniques such as multiple exposures and ICM (intentional camera movement), the summer months are the perfect time to hone your skills. Most mirrorless cameras and some older DSLRs have multiple exposure modes built into the menu system. A good starting point is to set the number of images to around five and use the average blending mode in the multiple exposure mode settings menu. Choose your subjects and start shooting different compositions. Your camera will then combine the images into a single file for you to preview, or you can manually blend them in Photoshop for more creative control.

If multiple exposures aren't your cup of tea, you can try ICM instead. Set your camera to a slow shutter speed around half a second to a full second. Once you fire off the shutter, move your camera up or down to create a blurred, abstract photo. This technique is easily done handheld and doesn't require a tripod.

You can also combine both techniques for ultimate control and creativity. Mount your camera on a tripod, select your subject, and enable multiple exposures. Set the number of exposures to five again with an average blending mode. Instead of moving your camera while handheld, you can now use your tripod and adjust the head up or down in small increments between shots. Once blended, it creates a similar look to ICM, but you have more control now. Import the series of photos into Photoshop, set the opacity of four of the five photos to 20 percent, and use a Lighten blending mode. Ensure the background layer is on 100 percent opacity with no blending mode. The result is a painterly ICM-type photograph, but you can now take it a step further. Add layer masks to all layers except your background layer, then paint in your subject's details. This creates in-focus areas on your subject, while the background retains its painterly ICM feel. If you'd like to go deeper on techniques like this, Photographing the World 2: Cityscape, Astrophotography, and Advanced Post-Processing covers advanced post-processing in detail.

Photography is all about solving problems and getting a suitable outcome. Summer is also a great time of year to experiment with new techniques and gear you've never used before. So don't pack your camera away. Hopefully, these tips will inspire you to pick up the camera and go out and shoot this summer, rather than just use it as a season to catch up on sleep and admin.