Photography Tips - Top 10

Landscape Photography skills explained by Tony Howell

Get up early - The light at dawn (and a few hours afterwards) is often the best of the day, so if you want your landscapes to have that magical look, you have to be prepared to wake up early. Before the sun heats up the land there is usually far less wind, so less chance of camera shake. There are fewer people around if you don't want them in your landscapes. Also, there is often mist (or frost in winter), which can add another dimension to your pictures. A few hours after dawn, contrast becomes a real problem and makes some shots harder to achieve, so set your alarm clock and get out there!
I usually have my trip well planned beforehand, so that I can be in the right place at the right time. On dull days I may scout for locations, then return in more favourable conditions. I carry a compass and a sun compass, then I can work out where the sun will rise and set at different times of the year. Some of my best images have been planned several months beforehand.

It's always a good idea to be prepared for any situation. To learn more about preparing for emergency situations, you could take classes in fire service administration

Devon Photography
Dawn Light example

Use Lower ISO settings on your Digital Camera - To get the lowest noise, most digital cameras work best at ISO100, so use this setting and a tripod for best results. You don't want to take a great image, only to find the noise unacceptable - especially if you want to try and sell your images, or get them published.

However, be very careful of camera shake if you're hand-holding your images. It's better to use higher ISO than risk camera-shake - noise is preferable to a lack of sharpness in most pictures. Even on a tripod, if it's windy or your tripod is set up on sand, don't risk low ISO as you may still get camera shake. If you have time, take one shot at high ISO and one at low, then compare the two images later by viewing at 100% zoom on your computer. Doing these comparisons for most techniques will improve your photography immensely, and make future decisions second nature, so that when you have to work quickly, you'll know what to do.

Choose the correct shutter speed - this will help to keep your pictures sharper if you're not using a tripod. For a rough guide, use a shutter speed at least as fast as the focal length of the lens - e.g. 100mm lens setting = 1/100th second, 500mm lens setting = 1/500th second. Wider lenses don't show camera shake so much, however don't use less than 1/60th second handheld ideally. With lenses and cameras with Image Stabilisation, do your own tests to see when camera shake starts to happen and avoid those low shutter speeds like the plague! For best results use a tripod if you can

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Balancing Skies and Foregrounds
With Landscape photography in particular, there is usually too much contrast between the sky and the foreground. Neither film or Digital cameras can cope with this contrast range like the human eye can. If you leave it to your camera's meter, it will often expose correctly for the sky, but this means the foreground will be too dark, or vice versa.

1) Digital Blending Great technique for advanced digital camera users - see Digital Blending I use this technique for a lot of my images, it saves carrying filters around
but you need to use a tripod. See example images below

2) Graduated Filters - The best ones are ND (Neutral Density) grads or Grey grads, which don't affect the natural colours in the image. Experiment with bracketing exposures (see below), so that you learn how the filter affects your images.
However, I rarely bother to use grads anymore since I went digital, now I just use
Digital Blending but if there's a lot of moving elements in a scene, or if you're hand-holding, graduated filters may be the best choice

		Fig 1a One shot = sky burned out
		Fig 1b Two shots combined, one correctly exposed for the sky, one for the foreground = dramatic sky

Bracket Exposures - your camera meter can be fooled by certain situations, like shooting into the light (as in the boat images above) or by dark subjects against light backgrounds. The answer is to bracket your exposures. This usually means taking one shot at the meter's recommended exposure, then one above and one below the recommended exposure. Try it at first with one stop over, and one stop below the reading, then repeat this in different situations. When you get the hang of what your camera's doing, you can just do one at the correct exposure, then one under or one over, depending on the situation. If you're shooting Jpegs, you should try half a stop each way. Shooting RAW you have more leeway for tweaking the exposure later on in processing. This kind of practice will make judging a scene easier and more intuitive, so that you'll know what adjustments are needed. See also Digital Blending

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Shoot in RAW mode - I often come across digital photographers who shoot all their images in Jpeg. This makes it easy to process the images, sure, but also means that you're throwing away valuable image quality every time you take a shot. Raw files are like a digital negative. You can work on them without impairing quality much, whereas working on a Jpeg, you lose quality with each adjustment. Always shoot Raw, then convert to Jpeg back home if you want, but keep the Raw file intact. As your processing skills improve over the years, you'll be able to go back to the Raw file and create much better images from it, and print those images larger than you would a Jpeg, without much quality loss. Jpeg's compress the image by throwing away information.

Composition Rules - we all dislike rules, but the rule of thirds is one worth learning. Lots of images look better when following this rule. Imagine the image you're composing split into three segments horizontally, and three vertically. The grid image below illustrates the point; the horizon line is roughly a third of the way up the frame. The sky fills the other two thirds. The lighthouse is also a third of the way in (roughly) from the edge of the frame. I deliberately place my subjects where the lines intersect if I can. Roll your mouse over the image to lose the grid: -

^ Roll your mouse over the image to lose the grid

Most beginners in photography place their subjects in the center of the frame. This is fine if you're filling the frame with a face or a flower, but can look boring if the subject is further away. Here's the same image cropped with the lighthouse in the centre - get ready to yawn: -

Placing the horizon line half way up the frame is generally not good - it makes for a dull image. Don't ask me why, it just is, right! Of course there are exceptions, like if the foreground and the sky are both equally interesting, so once you've learned the rule of thirds, try to break it - the image below doesn't conform to the rule, but it still works because the sky and the foreground are equally compelling: -

If the sky wasn't so good, I'd have pointed the camera down and stuck to the rule of thirds. If the foreground wasn't so interesting, I'd have pointed the camera up and stuck to the rule of thirds

Take fewer photographs- some digital photographers seem to take far too many pictures 'it doesn't cost anything' they say. What it does is make you 'snap-happy'.
Spend more time concentrating on one shot is my advice. Treat your composition as a painter would, look around every part of the frame. Do you really want that distracting branch in the corner? Move your tripod, or move the branch if it's loose (much quicker than doing it later on computer). Is this image expressing what you see in the best possible way? Would a lower/higher viewpoint be better? Would it work better with a slower shutter speed or a wider aperture? Is the foreground really interesting enough? These are the sort of questions I ask myself while I'm framing up my subject. Then once you've got a great composition, sure, take several at different exposures to make sure it's in the bag, but don't snap away without thinking.
Taking snaps is like going fishing for tiddlers - wouldn't you rather catch a big fish?

If I come home with one good image from a photoshoot I'm happy

Get better lenses -the glass you use makes a lot of difference to the quality of your images. Of course, good lenses are more expensive, but well worth it if you're serious about your images. I mainly use zoom lenses, which are not quite as good quality as 'prime' (fixed focal length) lenses, but they give you more control over the composition, something I consider more important than ultimate quality

Use a tripod - Especially for Landscapes and Macro shots, it's best to use a tripod whenever possible. It reduces camera shake obviously, but it also slows down the picture-taking process, which means you have more time to concentrate on the composition. Have a good look through the viewfinder. What message are you trying to express? What story are you telling, and how could you tell it better? Hand-holding tends to make you skip over the important stuff.

With landscapes, you have to get the horizon straight, which isn't easy hand-held. I use a tripod 99% of the time, and my pictures are much better because of it.

Why do you think all professional landscape photographers use a tripod? Or are you happy with your photographs being average like so many other photographers?

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Use your depth-of-field preview button - If you're learning about photography, use a small aperture (large number like f16-f22) if you want everything in focus. If your camera has a depth-of-field preview button, use this to check. Use a large aperture (small number like f4-f5.6) to avoid fussy, distracting backgrounds. The Kaffir Lily pictures below are an example. Using the depth of field preview button is the best way to ensure that you've blurred the background - and still got enough of the subject in focus.
Keep in mind though, that most lenses are sharpest when used at mid-range apertures (called the 'sweet spot' usually f8). So, if quality is paramount, use these settings. I think getting the shot is the most important thing though, so don't let this fact get in the way of a good composition.

As you become more advanced, you'll probably want to use the sweet spot more and more as I do, so I often combine two exposures, one focused on the foreground and one focused on the background, then combine the two exposures later in processing. This is called 'focus stacking', and can be done in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements


Small Aperture - f16 Lot's in focus, but if you don't want that......	Large Aperture - f5.6 Makes the subject stand out, background is out of focus

How Tony Howell took the following images: -


Castlerigg #4571	Severn Crossing #4340	Cathedral #4487	Haldon Belvedere #4490	Derwent Water #4569


Rock #4444	#4336


Quies #4257	Cheddar Gorge #4196	Lake District #4579

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See also: - Flower photography tips

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