You don't take a photograph, you make it. - Ansel Adams

In order to take a great landscape photograph I believe you have to capture the spirit of a location. But in order to do that you have to use different techniques to truly achieve this.

I always say that nature is rarely perfect. Your images need a helping hand and with the right technique you give yourself the best chance of taking one of those shots you want to show off to the world.

The landscape photography tips below will help you make more of the photo opportunities that you'll come across when you are in search of that perfect landscape photograph.

1. If you have a DSLR camera that gives you control over settings such as shutter speed, aperture and exposure values “EV”, set your camera on “Aperture Priority” and use a small aperture of f/16 or f/20. This will let you keep everything in focus and the camera will set your shutter speed automatically. For the advanced photographer, use your manual settings and adjust your EV setting to achieve proper exposure after you set your aperture and desired shutter speed.

2. Early morning and late evening are the best times for shooting landscapes. Blue hour photography and golden hour photography are the only time I venture out to take my landscape images. The reasons; the sun is not as harsh as a stronger high sun and the low angle of the sun reveals shadows and textures.

3. The best landscapes are rarely found at the side of the road. So be prepared to go for a hike with a map or a GPS Unit in an effort to seek out the most interesting locations that not everyone takes a photo of. You can also download Photographers Ephemeris and do some pre-planning before you leave home.

4. Wide angle lenses are commonly used for landscapes because they will allow you to include more in the frame and open up the vertical perspective. But, the wide angle lens pushes the scene away… you can also consider using a longer focal length lens and compressing the depth of just a part of the entire scene.

5. If shooting the entire scene before you, whenever possible, place something of interest in the foreground of the shot to create a sense of depth. At the same time, ensure that you use that small aperture to keep everything in focus.
If you do not have something to ground the scene, focus one third up from the bottom of the image. This way you will maximize focus of the entire scene.

6. Another great but simple landscape photography tip is to anchor your camera to a tripod to slow down your pace of working when shooting landscapes. This means you'll take fewer but better pictures.
Also, if you are shooting in low light your exposure times will be elongated, forcing you to mount the camera to eliminate camera shake.

7. Carry a cable release. The timer function on the camera is no substitute for a cable release, BTW. The cable allows you the release the shutter when YOU want to release the shutter, not 2 sec or 10 sec or 15 sec from when you want to release. The release makes it so you don't have to touch the camera at all which will definitely minimize camera shake...especially important for those longer exposure shots. As an aside, if your camera allows it, use the mirror lock up function.

8. Keep on the lookout for scenes that will let you crop the top and bottom of the image to produce a more dramatic panoramic composition.

9. Use a circular polarizing filter to darken the sky and saturate the colors in the landscape (this is the one must-have filter for landscape photographers).

10. Meter your scene and use graduated grey or neutral density filters to darken the sky and reduce the contrast between the landscape and the sky. Polarizing filters aren't much use for bright cloudy skies but graduated filters are. Frequently, the sky looks burned out in photos because your digital sensors don't have the range to record the brightness differences between it and darker foreground scenery.

11. Use color correction filters to change the color of light on a landscape. These filters can either warm up the landscape or cool it down, depending on the filter color used. In this image, a sepia graduated filter was used upside-down to color the foreground rocks only.
You can either do this in the camera or you can do this in Photoshop later.

12. Try using a soft focus filter to add an ethereal quality to the scene. These filters blur the bright areas of a scene into the shadows to give the image a glow.
Again, you can do this in the camera or apply the soft focus after with gaussian blur in Photoshop

13. If you’re up for experimentation, try making your own filters. There's never a guarantee you'll get good results, but your photos will certainly look different. You can make a filter out of anything that's at least partially transparent - a bit of old stocking, Vaseline rubbed on an old filter (don't ever rub Vaseline directly onto a lens - you'll ruin it permanently!) Or you could try breathing gently on your lens (in cool conditions) to get a soft-focus effect.

14. Use the Hyperfocal distance to obtain the fastest shutter speed with greatest depth of field. Hyperfocal allows you to get everything sharp, from things close up to the camera to those far away. It's more reliable than just setting the focus at infinity. You will need a camera that allows manual focusing though. Click here to learn what Hyperfocal distance is.

15. Shoot RAW images rather than JPGs. The RAW image will take up more room on your memory card but the RAW image will give you greater latitude for image manipulation in post processing. This is a “Must Do” in my opinion. I shoot all my images in RAW.

16. Be original! Develop your own style and unique vision. Any competent photographer can duplicate someone else’s work. Truly great photographers produce unique images and avoid cliché photography. Go for non-standard viewpoints, say from ground-level rather than eye-level. Imagine the world as seen from an animal's viewpoint rather than a human's! Think what the scene would look like to a flying bird or a ground dwelling squirrel.

17. Tell a Story! People who look at pictures will enjoy looking at a story over a snapshot any day. Telling stories with your camera forces you to slow down and think about what you are doing. What is it about this scene that makes you want to make a photograph? What moves you or attracts your eye? Is there a theme, a phrase or a point of view that you want to capture and preserve? Where is the beginning, the middle and the end?

Happy Shooting!

Photographing Water

Whether you’re a seasoned photographer or a novice venturing into the world of photography, taking your time to research the best viewpoint to photograph something is one of the first and most important steps.

If it’s a body of water you want to capture, Ontario has the benefit of being close to the largest body of fresh water in the world, one-fifth of the world's fresh surface water and has close to 10,000 miles of shoreline and rivers. Needless to say, there are lots of locations to choose from.

My personal preference is to take my waterscape images during early morning or later evening. This will reduce the amount of glare and reflections on the waters surface and allow you to play with shutter speeds and create emotion… something that I promise will separates your image from the novice photographer.

My method is to scope out a location ahead of time, identify sun and moon locations using “photographers ephemeris” and then show up two hours before a sun rise or sunset. My personal preference is to show up in the morning, shoot the blue hour before the sun comes up. You will bear the solar winds and boat traffic before they kick up the waves.

When I am choosing a viewpoint for photographing water, I first look for a focal point of interest. This can be a lighthouse, rock formation, an interesting structure or high tide. Any interesting landmark or formations of nature are great to use as focal points. I sometimes follow the rule of thirds and place the focal point to either the left or right side of the image. But then again, sometimes the balance of the image demands that a focal point is in the foreground, smack center in the lower half of the image.

Simple adjustments to your position can also change the viewpoint and increase the beauty of the image. Experiment with moving the camera a few inches up by standing on a rock or chair. Try kneeling down for another viewpoint. You can also alter your position by taking steps to the side of steps forward or backwards.

Don’t accept that the image that you see before you is the image you should be taking. Most of us are shooting digital, take numerous shots from different angles and watch how the subtle change can have a huge impact of the composition.

Tips for photographing water
Water seems like such a simple thing to photograph. We see images everywhere that depict incredible photographic scenes. It has many faces; it can be as large as an ocean, a river or a waterfall to as small as a droplet on a flower petal. Frozen or free flowing, it can be both dramatic and interesting.

The following are some tips and thoughts to get you thinking of capturing water. Not only out in nature, but in your kitchen or bathroom too.

Long Exposure waterscapes
This generally is taken early in the morning or later in the day. The time of day therefore demands a long shutter speed. The result will be flattened water of glass that will give off some reflections.

I suggest that you use a tripod, shutter release cable and set your camera on aperture priority and let the shutter speed be determined by the camera. The smaller the iris opening (larger the f-stop number) the longer the shutter speed will be.

Stopping the motion of water
Some examples are when your kids are splashing in the water or a wave is hitting the rocks. My suggestion here is to use fairly fast shutter speed and/or flash in order to freeze the action. Use a tripod and a multi/continuous shot mode is advised as you will want to capture a series of shots of the water moving before selecting your favorite one when you see them on a larger screen at home.

Water drops
Water drops can be extremely hard to photograph. The best way to capture droplets is to put your camera on a tripod and attach a shutter release cable or use a remote control to eliminate camera shake. I would set my camera to burst mode so you can take a series of images at once. Use a macro lens, a cable release and have a light source handy to light the drop as it rests or rolls.

Another way to photograph a droplet of water is to do it indoors. You capture the water dropping in a pool of water. What you do is fill a bowl with water then let a droplet fall into the water. At the same time, let the shutter start so it takes a series of images and one should capture the moment the droplet hits the surface. With this technique, practice makes perfect! I make it sound simple here, but its rather difficult. Some people go as far as using a set up with multiple lights, colored dye and a contraption to fix the water collision point. Google the process and get some ideas.

Reflections
Look out for interesting details when you are shooting reflections. There’s no point shooting something dull and uninteresting. I like to capture people or animals in reflections on the other side of the body of water.

I would not use a flash as this will leave a ‘hot spot’ in the water, I would rater see you use a polarizer filter as this reduces glare from the sun that may be present in the water. Choose a reasonable shutter speed so there is no blurring, especially if the water is moving a little.

You will want to wait for fairly calm conditions when shooting reflections in the water.

Waterfalls
In order to capture silky smooth water flows use a long shutter speed. You will need to experiment to find the perfect timing but starting from two seconds is a good point. You must place your camera on a tripod and never use flash. You can also choose a small depth of field of f/16 to f/22 so that the image looks sharp.

Moving water on bright days?
On a bright day, you may find choosing a long shutter speed problematic. So what you need to do is to use a neutral density filter. This is attached on the end of your lens and blocks out the amount of light entering it, meaning you can choose a longer shutter speed. You can also use a polarizer at the same time. Another option is to choose a low ISO of 100 or even 50 if your camera allows it. The lower the ISO the more light the camera needs to capture an image so this may force the camera to give you a slower shutter speed and as a bonus, you will have a very fine grained image.

Pull up Google, look at some images, and get inspired. Then, get out and enjoy what water can offer… and keep the camera dry. :-)

Kev

Painting with Light

I was exposed to this type of photography many years ago. The photograph I saw did not have a moving flashlight, or a spinning orb like they do today, but it did show the moon trail across the sky. I remember asking one of the photography teachers how this was done, his simple response, “with a long exposure, but you should figure out this technique on your own”.

Determined to understand this technique, I went right to the LIFE books my dad had at home. All 18 volumes, I poured through the pages, trying to find the technique... finally, a photo of car lights trailing through a winding road on a mountain. The photographer’s name was there, and down to the library I went to research the photographer.

I found a book with his images in it. If contained a few tutorials on how he achieved his images, mostly portraits, nude at that, a little distracting for a teenage boy, but I stayed the course and kept looking for the long exposure images (no really, I did, REALLY!). All that I found about streaking light images in one of the captions under a photo were, “camera type, lens type, aperture of f/8, a 30 second exposure, ISO-100 film”. SO, I had to try it, and learn it on my own...

What I learned was the following... with a long exposure photograph, a few simple light sources and some creativity on your part, the opportunities for this type of photography are endless.

Tools of the trade

A Camera
You will have to use a camera that allows you to take long exposures, preferably a camera with a “Bulb Mode” setting.
When setting the camera up to take these images I set my aperture to anywhere between f/5.6 to f8.0.
I manually focus on my image and adjust my EV settings as appropriate.
My shutter is controlled by my trigger release and I play with exposure times to varying degrees.

A sturdy Tripod
This is essential for shake-free images.

A trigger release
This will help ensure you have a shake free image. If you do not have a shutter release cable you can use the timer delay on your camera.

Glow Sticks
Use one around the neck of the tripod and if you are out with other people, it is a good idea for everyone to wear one around their necks or wrists. This way you know where everyone is in the dark (Note: if you are painting in the scene when exposing your image, take off the glow stick)

Light source
These can vary. Go to a hardware store or dollar store and pick up LED flashlights, kids toys, glow sticks, or any other light source you want to use. The variety of the light source is both endless and is different depending on the type of light painting you are doing. I will explain that more later.

Exposure Times
This is difficult to judge, so you really have to figure this one out on your own by trying a few different exposure times at the location you choose. Again, depending on the type of light painting you are doing, these will vary. Practice will make perfect and as you look at the images in my article I will attempt to give you as much information as I can about each image.

If you have a lot of light painting to do in a scene, you may find that the illuminated areas come out too dark to make an impact. To get around this you'll need to divide your scene up into sections and take multiple images. These images can later be combined in photoshop. To combine images of light painting scenes, simply open up multiple images and then overlay one on top of each other, but select “screen” as the blending mode for each image.

Types of “Light Painting”

A lot of articles that you may read only talk about two types of light painting. I believe there are three.

The first type is the “Illumination” technique

This technique works well when there's very little natural light available, and involves using a light source with a beam to illuminate specific areas of your scene.

Open the shutter of your camera and then go into your scene, stopping to shine your torch on the objects or areas that you want illuminated for a few seconds at a time. Or stand off camera and illuminate with a stronger candle watt light. You might need to take a few exposures to help you judge exactly how long to shine the torch for, but try to give each object in the scene roughly the same illumination time so that they all show up well.

For this image I stood off camera with the camera set to Bulb. I painted the wood object with the flashlight to make it pop out of the scene.















Also remember to stay out of the line of sight of the camera when you've got the torch on or you'll leave a silhouette in front of the object you're illuminating. You should also try to wear a dark colour. Wearing a light colour increases your chances of being picked up by the camera.

The photo above was taken in the middle of the night or an abandoned bus in the forest. I took it with the help form my uncle. We set our cameras up, timed the exposure for 30 seconds after some trial and error. He painted the inside with an LED light and I painted the outside of the bus with another flashlight as I stood off camera.











The second type is the “Light Streaks” technique

For this type of painting with light you'll need a small bulb such as an LED light or exposed torch bulb.

This time, rather than shining your light at objects, you want to keep it angled so that it is always visible by the camera. Keep it moving through your scene and be careful with the speed you move at because that will affect the light's brightness in the final image.

This is where you can spell letters, draw images or just run around randomly and draw lines in the image.

You may have also seen orbs and domes on different photo sharing sites... these are done with LED lights to draw the circles or domes.

The third type is a variation of the “Light Streaks technique, but it uses existing lights in a scene.

For this type of photography you would use light sources like break lights of a car, streaking vehicles on a downtown street, even the lights of a carnival ride at night. You can stick with the streaking lights like I have in this photograph.

I stood beside the street and waited for the bus to pass by. I manually focused on the street before the bus came and used a shutter release. When the bus got to me I pressed the shutter release for a few seconds. The result was the streaking lights left behind by the bus.















Or you can blend multiple techniques together as I did here. I used the streaking lights of the carnival ride and then used an external flash to freeze the image on the scene...

As with all types of different photography, just get out there and try it. You might just like it.

Contact me if you have any questions. You can contact me through my website, www.kpepphotography or at Twitter, @kpepphotography.

Happy Shooting!

Kevin