Do These 5 Things Instead of Buying New Gear

We are bombarded with videos and articles talking about the latest and greatest gear. No wonder we, as photographers, start to think we need new or better gear to improve our photography. But instead of buying gear, start practicing these five things to really improve your landscape photography.

It Is Easy to Talk About Photography Gear

It is easy to talk about photography gear; it is what many of us do when we can’t get outside and practice our photography. How the latest-generation camera makes this or that easier, how this lens filter will make your life better, or how this camera bag carries everything you need and does it comfortably. While this may or may not be true, there are much better ways to improve your photography that don’t involve buying new gear.

Master Your Camera Settings

The camera is a tool, and once you learn how to use it, it should stay out of your way and help you. But to reach that point, you need to practice with it and become very familiar with how to change its settings, where things are in the menu, what it does well, and what it doesn’t do well so you can compensate for that.

First, familiarize yourself with the exposure triangle, the building block of photography. Read and watch videos to fully understand how shutter speed, aperture, and ISO interact to achieve a good exposure in the camera. Then, learn how the light meter works and how it sees light compared to the histogram and what it tells you.

With that in hand, practice with your camera so that changing those core settings is second nature. You know exactly which setting to change and why you are changing that setting. This involves understanding the exposure triangle and which dials and knobs on your camera let you change exactly what you want. This is the first step to the camera staying out of your way.

From there, learn some of the more advanced options on your camera. Learn to manually expose a high-dynamic-range scene and to use your camera’s automated options to capture this bracket. Know what setting options are available, where those settings are in the menus, and how to enable them.

The same applies to focus stacking. Learn when to use focus stacking, how to focus stack manually, and how your camera can help automate focus stacking. Experiment with its options to see which settings result in the sharpest photos from front to back.

As you continue, make your camera more efficient to use. Are there custom controls you should be mapping? For example, I map exposure delay to a button so I can easily enable or disable it without digging into the menus. Most cameras also have a quick menu system where you can customize it to include your frequently accessed settings.

All of this helps make your camera more efficient to use. You spend less time figuring out how to do something and more time knowing what your camera is capable of and how to adjust those settings quickly. This helps you focus more on the creative elements of photography than the technical aspects.

Learn Composition

With camera fundamentals in hand and turning it into a tool of efficiency, mastering composition is a key component of improving your photography. Some people have a natural eye, and others need a little more work to see and create interesting compositions. Even if you aren’t a natural, you can still learn this component of photography.

Start with the basics—the rule of thirds, leading lines, interesting foregrounds, simplicity, and so on. Although they are called rules, I prefer to think of them more as guidelines. When starting out, they are important to help you down the right path.

Using those guidelines, start adding other elements to your compositions. Stop walking up to a scene and photographing everything from chest height. Instead, play with high angles and low angles. Learn which angles work best for some scenes and better for others.

For example, a high angle can often give you more separation in midground or foreground elements. A low composition can help strengthen a leading line. But experiment with these camera angles to give you more tools to work with when creating your images.

I also recommend that people consume more photography—not just scroll through social media but deliberately study photos. Get a photography book, sit in a comfortable spot, and think about the images as you view them. Why do you like them? What stands out? What did the photographer do with their camera angle and distance to make this picture interesting? Take those insights and apply them to your own photography when practicing.

Museum exhibits of photography are a great way to study composition. You tend to have a more deliberate mindset at a museum, which lends itself to deeper thought. While at the museum, look at some paintings as well. Painters had complete freedom to create a scene. What elements did they use in their compositions? It can be very telling.

See the Light

Early in your photography journey, you learn that we see light differently than most people. At the very least, we are more in tune with it. We see how fast the light moves, start to learn what makes for a good sunrise or sunset, and the list goes on.

The best way to learn to see light is to get out and pay attention. When do things look good backlit? What makes a better subject on an overcast day? What looks good with sidelight?Over time, we learn more about how light moves and interacts with different environments. This allows us to be in the right place at the right time more often, increasing our odds of capturing stunning images.

Learning to see light doesn’t always require a camera. Watch the light as you drive or as you walk in your neighborhood. Simply being more observant day to day will pay off when you are out with your camera.

Refine Your Post-processing

The first three tips help maximize the quality of the images you bring home. Once home, the editing process plays a significant role in the final result. There is so much to learn with post-processing.

First, learn how your editing software of choice works and what options it has. Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop can be overwhelming the first time you open them—buttons, sliders, and terms you don’t fully understand. But start slowly and learn what each panel does.

Start building on those successes and add more tools to your kit. Learn why local adjustments are so important. Learn how your software lets you make local adjustments and what options it has to select those adjustments.

It is a building process. Start with a technique, learn how it works, and then add another. Over time, you will acquire a toolbox of editing techniques that will give you options as you refine your editing style.

This is not to say you need to over-edit your photos. But if we are photographing in raw, some general editing must be done to breathe life back into your final image. Mastering post-processing will help you create these stunning final images.

Get Out and Practice

Finally, get out and practice! This is the single most important thing to improve your photography. It is easy to watch video after video, read book after book, and think you are improving. But as soon as you get into the field, it is like your mind blanks and you forget everything.

Going outside to practice what you have watched or read is the key to making it second nature. Practice is what takes the information you have consumed and turns it into a tool you can use in your photography.

Mastering your camera takes practice in different conditions. Learning to compose interesting scenes requires getting outside and working through the whole process. Seeing the light and its interaction with the environment takes field practice. Post-processing is best learned by seeing how your images work with the techniques you have learned.

The five tips here will help you improve your photography more than buying new gear ever will. So remember, get out there and practice, practice, practice!