How to Use a Wide Angle Lens for Landscape Photography

Wide angle lenses are the tool of choice of countless landscape photographers, but they can be particularly tricky to work with, especially when it comes to composition. If you are new to landscape photography and hoping to improve, check out this fantastic video tutorial that will show you how to use a wide angle lens for creating effective and compelling landscape images. 

Coming to you from Christian Irmler - Landscape Photography, this great video tutorial will show you some useful advice and techniques for working with wide angle lenses for landscape photos. Perhaps the most common mistake photographers make when working with wide angle lenses is not including a foreground element. Wider focal lengths tend to push the background away, and without something visually interesting near the lens, the image can end up looking empty and two-dimensional. Adding a foreground element can bring depth back to the image and give the viewer an easy entry point into the shot, and it really doesn't take much to make a significant difference. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Irmler. 

And if you really want to dive into landscape photography, check out "Photographing The World 1: Landscape Photography and Post-Processing 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

What focal length was the image that's the thumbnail on the homepage shot with?

I get it, but the hyperfocal-aim-just-in-front-of-your-shoes-and-still-get-your-mountains-as-well-as-your-foreground-in-front-of-your-toes is way
overdone, and unrealistically distorted. The scene literally looks "bent" and that's not a very pleasing rendition, it's just ignoring obvious wide angle distortion. View cameras avoid this via shifting, with much more pleasing results.

Exactly. One of the main reasons i still use the Fuji gx680. Granted, it doesn't have the full range of tilt, shift, rise and fall, but it does the techniques you mentioned. Used to use 4x5, but sold that one....like an idiot would.