How Light Influences Your Landscape Photography and How to Predict It

Light is the basic ingredient of all photos and predicting where it hits gives you a huge benefit as a landscape photographer.

Back in November, I visited Lofoten for the first time, which was a huge success from the perspective of landscape photography. I experienced the most incredible light on a mountain I have ever seen (I am from Denmark, we do not have mountains) and that specific light influenced my photography a great deal that day. We had glowing red morning light for hours, as the sun did not rise more than a few degrees above the horizon during daytime. A remarkable sight! While the sun moved over the lower part of the sky, the light obviously changed with it.

In mountain areas at these latitudes, even a few days dramatically change the position of the rising and setting sun and the direction of its light, as it might rise from behind a mountain it did not do only a few days earlier. Being able to predict these changes or directly see them beforehand is a great advantage to plan your location and position. In the above video I talk about how light influence your photography and I show how to use Google Earth to predict where and when the light will hit. I also mention if you are on an iOS device you are in luck as you have the advantage of using the Photographer’s Ephemeris 3D.