In collaboration with PhotoWeekly
With the temperatures also rises the desire to photograph - how about landscape shots? We have a few tips and ideas.
Table of contents
1. Foreground and composition
2. Go to special places
3. Photograph against the sun
4. Filters make the difference
5. Landscape at night
If there's one tip that every amateur photographer has probably read a hundred times, it's probably this: "Foreground makes picture healthy!" And why do we repeat it here for the hundredth time? Because it is, at the same time, a rule that is far too rarely heeded. We stand in an overwhelming landscape and photograph away - but without a foreground, unfortunately, it rarely succeeds in capturing the whole dimension and grandeur of what we see. So look for the line, the stone, the flower, the whatever that is placed in the foreground (mainly to one side). To make everything sharp, close the aperture (e.g. f/16) and focus on the first third of the image.
A great picture can also be taken in a mediocre location. But honestly, if you want to make things easy for yourself, you simply take pictures where it's already great. Sometimes that means traveling further, climbing a peak, waiting for the perfect weather ... - but all the effort is worth it when you come home with a great shot.
A favorite stylistic device of photographers who know how to close the aperture: Bringing the sun into the picture and, thanks to a small aperture, depicting it as a "sun star." This works best when the sun is really bright and not obscured by clouds, and depending on the lens, from an aperture of f/16. Just try out the effect with your lens - the camera automatically selects the appropriate exposure time in the aperture priority (A / Av). Newer models recognize the backlight situation quite well and expose correctly - otherwise an exposure correction (+/- button) by hand helps.
Two types of filters belong in the bag of a landscape photographer: polarizing filters, which are used for a stronger sky blue, and gray filters, which are used either to extend the exposure time (image above: soft water, moving clouds) or with a gray gradient to compensate for differences in brightness in the image. Yes, photography is more complex and almost always requires the use of a tripod, at least with gray filters. But it's worth it - because you'll get shots that are guaranteed to be different from your everyday cell phone snapshots.
Now that it's finally not too cold at night, taking pictures in the dark is more fun again. Landscapes are a great subject at night - but you should know quite well what you actually want to photograph, because composing a picture in the dark is not easy. After all, the camera sees more in the long exposure than we do with the naked eye. So it's best to try out the image detail during the day and come back in the evening.
