How to Deal With Flat Light in Landscape Photography

If you hop on Instagram and scroll through any landscape photography page, you will likely see a lot of images with cascading rays of dramatic golden light casting warm glows over their frames. And while that look is popular for a good reason, you can absolutely create equally compelling landscape photos in flat light, and this fantastic video tutorial will show you how. 

Coming to you from Alister Benn of Expressive Photography, this excellent video discusses shooting landscape photos in flat light. Flat light can feel a bit disappointing when you have an exciting location or perfect composition in mind, but if you are willing to adjust your approach a bit, you can still come away with good results. I actually love flat light, as it gives you a much more neutral frame with which to work in post, allowing you to dodge and burn more easily. The downside is that flat light normally happens because of overcast skies, so you need to adjust your compositions a bit. If I normally let the sky have the upper half or two thirds of an image, I'll reduce that to just the upper third or so in such situations. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Benn. 

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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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