Your Comprehensive Guide To Producing Stellar Landscape Photos

Landscape photography is rewarding, but it’s difficult, especially for those of us who are just starting out. What subjects should you photograph? What settings matter the most on your camera? Do you really need lens filters? These are the questions every photographer has asked themselves at some point.

I could write a book on landscape photography – and, coincidentally, there are plenty of books out there that will help you take your photography career to the next level. But you don’t need to read an entire book to start taking better photos.

As a matter of fact, you can create stellar landscape photos by following just a handful of basic principles and rules. This comprehensive landscape photography guide has been written to help you learn the ropes and avoid common mistakes.

Every artist needs a subject – and that means you need a landscape to shoot. I recommend scouting out a few locations before you begin the process of photographing the landscape.

Find a few different sites that are visually interesting, and choose the one you like the most. Try to find a dynamic landscape that offers different textures, colors, and clear sight lines.

When you’re just starting out, it can be hard to figure out what landscapes will make great photos. Ask yourself the following questions to determine if you’re shooting the right subject:

It takes time and experience to choose the right subjects, so don’t be afraid to experiment, and shoot in many different places until you’ve found your favorite. Some folks like mountains, some like waterfalls, others love prairies and grasslands – and all of these landscapes can look absolutely gorgeous when photographed properly!

The light is your biggest ally – and worst enemy – when it comes to landscape photography. Once you’ve got a subject for your photos, it’s time to check it out in different light conditions, to determine what conditions may be the best for your photos. The way the sun shines at different times of day will have a huge effect on things like:

It’s up to you to experiment, and find out what lighting conditions are going to be the best for your subject.

A stark cliffside, for example, may provide a gorgeous contrast between light and dark during the sunset or sunrise – with sharp lines that accentuate the jagged cliffs.

On the other hand, a flower-filled meadow may be best photographed during the day, when the sun will bring out its bright, beautiful colors. Further still, you may wish to shoot just before sunrise if you’re looking to capture a sharp, clear, and glare-free reflection, such as a mountain captured in the reflection of a small lake or pond.

Visualize what your scene will look like during different times of day, and decide when the best time is to shoot your photos. Consider taking a few test trips, too, just to capture some images and explore your composition options.

Naturally, you’ll need the proper gear to take landscape photos. A DSLR is usually the best choice for landscape photography, but some modern mirrorless cameras offer nearly the same quality in a more compact package.

A tripod will be essential if you’re planning on any longer exposures, and to ensure consistency between multiple landscape shots. When it comes to lenses, I recommend bringing a total of three along:

Depending on your subject, you may also need some filters for your lenses. A circular polarizer can reduce water glare and enhance the contrast of the sky. ND filters are darkened glass filters that can be placed on your DSLR to lengthen shutter speeds and are also a favorite among landscape photographers. However, I do not consider these accessories to be absolutely essential – they’re just nice to have in some situations.

Beyond this, make sure you’ve got plenty of spare batteries, memory cards, and a microfiber cloth to clean your lenses.

RAW files are superior to JPEG files in every way. Unlike JPEGs, RAW files are not compressed or modified. As the name suggests, they contain the raw data from the image – in a completely uncompressed format.

Because of this, RAW images are much larger than JPEGs – usually by about 5x. However, you should always be shooting in RAW, as it will make post-production much easier, and preserve more of the details of the photograph.

Most DSLRs allow you to shoot both JPEG+RAW at the same time. This is a “best of both worlds” solution. You’ll benefit from the small size and portability of a JPEG image, which can be easily shared and uploaded online, while still being able to view and edit the RAW files using a post-processing software if desired.

It can be difficult to know how to properly adjust your camera if you’re a novice photographer – or even if you have several years of experience. Modern high-quality DSLR`s have innumerable sensor settings. Combined with the filters and different lenses available, things get complicated – fast.

That’s why I recommend always focusing on the “Three Fundamentals” above all else when adjusting your camera. The three fundamentals consist of:

By focusing on these three fundamentals, overexposure and underexposure can both be avoided.

Once you’ve scouted your location, prepared your gear, adjusted your camera, and snapped your photos, you’re done, right? Well, not quite. To really take your images to the next level, you’ll want to do some post-production editing.

I understand that, among landscape photographers, post-processing can be a bit controversial. There are those who believe that, when properly taken, a great landscape photo does not need any post-processing. And that’s completely fine!

Post-production is 100% your decision – and if you don’t want to use a tool like Adobe Lightroom to edit your images, that’s completely fine. However, post-processing is easier than ever before – and if it’s done right, it’s a great way to take your images to the next level.

In fact, I would argue that post-processing is just as important as capturing a properly lit landscape photo. It’s the little things that make a photo really “pop,” and even simple automatic filtering and processing using Adobe Lightroom can correct colors and saturation, brighten dark spots, and enhance your photos. Just about every professional landscape photographer uses a post-production software suite to make minor adjustments to their images, and make them look their best.

Adobe Lightroom is definitely our top choice for photographers. Not only can it be used to correct and modify your RAW images, it also functions as a photo library, which makes it easier to organize your collection of photographs. Those looking for more powerful editing tools may also want to look into Adobe Photoshop, which has more powerful – but complex – editing capabilities.

I’m so glad that you’ve read through the whole guide – I hope that you’ve learned something from it. Of course, the best way to make sure you’ve learned something is to practice it – so go ahead and apply this guide the next time you’re out taking the photographs.

If you feel intimidated by the post-processing software, your best course of action is to learn the very basics of Lightroom – one the most popular photo processing software – so that you could handle trivial tasks with confidence and explore the more complicated areas of it without feeling blind and helpless.

I’m sure that you have seen and tried dozens of tutorials at this point – just like I have back in the day. But what most tutorials lacked (and I still see this being an issue today) was the focus and specificity of what I wanted to do – landscape photography.

Most tutorials are either teaching you some tricks (making you a one-trick pony when it comes to editing) or only have a general overview of the software, leaving you to fend for yourself when it comes to actually apply what you’ve learned to get the result you want.

This is different in my video course. I created and recorded it with one goal in mind, which is to provide a granular yet comprehensive walkthrough of what Lightroom has to offer for editing landscape and nature photographs specifically, and how to consciously get the results you want, over and over again. And the overwhelmingly positive feedback I get from my customers makes me believe that I’ve succeeded in that.

My Lightroom Video Course contains more than 50 narrated videos that walk you through the program in baby steps – from the very basic interface breakdowns to complete, start-to-finish photo processing guides.

Here’s a peek into what’s included:

Going through the complete course will allow you to revisit your old photos and make them better than you ever expected them to be – imagine what’s going to be possible when you apply the guidelines above AND the course material!

Don’t take just my word for it. Mike, who tried a handful of learning resources before, gave my course a shot. Here’s what he said to me:

Sounds good enough to try? If I were you, I would definitely give this a shot. Going through this course will make you know Lightroom well enough to produce any result you want – all while focusing specifically on the subject of landscape and nature.