12/31/2023 0 Comments Landscape photo simpleHere are some of my favorite tips to use. The world around us is full of beautiful and interesting things, using simple landscape photography tips lets us capture that and share it with others. This will save you a lot of fiddling around with the tripod, especially if you’re rocking one of those flimsy box store tripods that belong in the recycling bin.Simple landscape photography is one of the more rewarding of all of the photographic genres. Once I’ve discovered that ideal balance of subjects along the vertical and horizontal planes, I’ll grab the tripod and take the shot. Yes, yes, I realize I’m a one man tripod enforcement unit but I’ll often start a shoot without the tripod so that I’ve got the freedom of movement to find the best compositions. If I’d moved lower (the Squat), that foreground rock would have obscured the footsteps in the sand that lead your eye towards El Capitan. If I’d moved just 12 inches left or right I would have lost that pleasing ‘equidistant’ position. My shot of Los Arcos Park in Cabo San Lucas (Mexico) is a prime example of how ‘doing the Cobra’ helped me to visualize the ideal composition for having El Capitan (the central sea stack) positioned so that it fits just right in that gap. There’s more to composition than your standard tripod setup. This sounds really obvious, but I notice a lot of photographers don’t bother with these two basic moves. If you see some bloke with a tripod on a cliff edge who looks like he’s doing some type of shamanic dance, that’s me setting up a shot. By doing this I can see how my foreground subjects move around the subjects in the distance. Rather than shuffling left to right, I often like to crack out my Cobra impersonation and move my head from side to side while trying to maintain the same height. Make it a habit and I can virtually guarantee* that you’ll see a better shot around 50% of the time. When you’re starting out however, this might require a bit of conscious thought, so here are two tips I always teach to my workshop students.Īfter you’ve taken a shot with your camera at normal height on the tripod, squat down for a few seconds and survey the scene from a lower perspective. I’ve done this so many times that I no longer think about doing it, something just clicks and I know the shot is in the bag. If I’d moved a little more to my right I would have lost the foreground tufa mound that you see in the lower left corner, which adds depth to the image. The ideal vertical position was at an agonizing semi crouch that had my quads screaming. With my image of Mono Lake above, I found that if I got too low to the ground, I lost some of the mass in the reflected clouds. Dropping down a few inches might bring it back. Moving one foot to the left might eliminate a pleasing mountain ridge in the distance. Perhaps you want to give more emphasis to the reflected elements? Movement from left to right, or up and down, can really place those elements exactly where they need to be. I like to invite my viewers to think about what’s in that space, drawing their eye to what at first appears to be nothing, but upon closer inspection reveals something interesting.īalancing subjects in images that feature reflections is really important. There may be times when you actually use interesting space to counterbalance your main subject, don’t assume that your spaces have to be filled with obvious subjects. By devoting the lower third of the frame to the mesa and the upper two thirds to the menacing clouds above, I balanced the subjects to my liking. With my image above ‘ Something Wicked’, I wanted the moody storm clouds to be the main subject but it was essential to capture it bearing down on the mesa. Simply plonking your interesting subject slap bang in the centre of your image might work, but there are times when you might get a better composition by placing it to one side of your image, and counter balancing that with something on the opposing side. I’m referring to how you balance subjects in your image on the horizontal and vertical planes.
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