5 Best Ways to Improve Your Landscape Photography

Summary

In this video, the host explores five key areas to enhance landscape photography: understanding and operating your gear, the art of observation to find compelling scenes, the impact of light on mood and image type, the importance of composition to tell a story, and the significance of post-processing to finalize the image. Sponsored by Squarespace, the video also touches on how having a personal website can benefit photographers, offering a platform to display and share their work.

Takeaways

• 📷 Most photographers rated their own landscape photography at three stars, with only 8% fully satisfied with their work.
• 🏞️ The video covers five key areas to improve landscape photography, focusing on practical skills and techniques.
• 🔧 Gear doesn't matter as much as knowing how to operate it effectively, with emphasis on understanding camera settings.
• 🌅 Observation is crucial in landscape photography to notice elements, interactions, and the potential of a scene.
• 💡 Understanding light and how it interacts with the landscape helps create mood and enhances the impact of photos.
• 🗺️ Composition is key in telling a story through an image, guiding the viewer's eye and simplifying the scene.
• 🛠️ Post-processing plays a significant role, contributing 50% to the creation of a final landscape photo.
• 🌐 Having a website, especially through Squarespace, can help photographers share their work and build their brand.
• 📖 Practice is essential to improving photography skills, including understanding gear, composition, and post-processing.
• 🎥 The video links to several other helpful resources, like guides on composition, settings, and light, for further learning.

Q & A

What is the main focus of the video?

The main focus of the video is to cover five areas of landscape photography that have the biggest impact on improving the images one creates.

What does the video claim about the importance of gear in landscape photography?

The video suggests that while gear doesn't matter as much in some aspects of photography, it's not as crucial in landscape photography. What matters more is knowing how to operate the gear you have.

What are some tips for using gear effectively in landscape photography?

Tips include knowing the settings for different scenes, quickly dialing in those settings, understanding potential limitations of your gear, and becoming familiar with your lenses.

How does the video address the issue of having too much gear?

The video advises against having too much gear or constantly changing the gear used, as it can distract from the artistic side of photography.

What is the significance of observation in landscape photography as per the video?

Observation is significant as it helps in exploring a location, discovering photographic potential, and visualizing the image one wants to create.

What role does light play in landscape photography according to the video?

Light significantly impacts the type of image and mood captured. Understanding and predicting how light interacts with the landscape is crucial for improving landscape photos.

Why is composition considered the most impactful in landscape photography?

Composition is considered the most impactful because it simplifies a scene, guides the eye, engages the viewer, and helps in telling a story through the image.

What is the video's stance on post-processing in landscape photography?

The video encourages post-processing as it offers an opportunity to review and improve images, and it's considered the other 50% of creating the final landscape photo.

How does the video suggest improving one's skills in landscape photography?

The video suggests practicing the skills discussed, such as gear operation, observation, understanding light, composition, and post-processing.

What resource does the video recommend for further learning on landscape photography?

The video recommends watching the creator's other videos on specific aspects of landscape photography, which are compiled into a playlist for further learning.

Outlines

00:00

📷 Self-assessment in Landscape Photography

The speaker discusses a community survey where most photographers rated their landscape photography with three stars, indicating a desire for improvement. He emphasizes that this video will cover five key areas to enhance landscape photography skills. The video is sponsored by Squarespace, promoting their services for websites and online stores. The speaker stresses that gear doesn’t matter as much as knowing how to use it effectively, with particular focus on understanding camera settings and limitations.

05:01

🎛️ Mastering Camera Settings for Better Photos

The speaker details his camera setup for landscape photography, including the importance of settings such as ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. He highlights the need to understand how to adjust settings quickly and tailor them to different scenes, giving an example of adjusting the shutter speed to capture water movement. He also stresses the importance of knowing your lenses and the benefits of being able to operate your camera through muscle memory. This allows for greater focus on artistic aspects, such as composition.

10:01

👀 The Importance of Observation in Landscape Photography

Observation is highlighted as a key skill for capturing better landscape images. The speaker discusses how observing elements like waves and rocks can reveal unique features and photographic potential. He encourages photographers to take their time exploring a location and observing interactions between elements. Through observation, photographers can start to develop a narrative and visualize the image they want to capture.

🌅 Understanding and Using Light in Landscape Photography

The speaker explains the critical role that light plays in shaping the mood and impact of landscape photographs. He describes how the direction and quality of light, such as gaps in clouds during sunset, can significantly influence the final image. Photographers should learn to read light to predict its behavior and understand how to use it to enhance their shots. The speaker references a previous video where he discussed different types of light and their effects on landscape photography.

🖼️ The Power of Composition in Landscape Photography

The speaker highlights composition as one of the most important factors in creating impactful landscape images. He explains how he composes a shot with rocks in the foreground leading to cliffs in the background, aiming for balance and symmetry. Composition helps simplify the scene, guide the viewer's eye, and tell a story, which are essential for connecting with the viewer. He encourages photographers to learn and practice composition techniques to improve their photography.

💻 How a Website Can Improve Your Photography Journey

Sponsored by Squarespace, the speaker promotes the advantages of having a personal photography website. A website offers a controlled space to showcase work, share photography experiences through blogs, and attract an audience via SEO. Squarespace is recommended for its ease of use, responsive designs, and 24/7 customer service, helping photographers focus more on their craft rather than website maintenance.

🖌️ The Role of Post-Processing in Landscape Photography

Post-processing is emphasized as a crucial step, contributing as much as 50% to the final landscape image. While not all photographers enjoy editing, it provides an opportunity to enhance and refine images, revealing their full potential. The speaker encourages practicing editing to improve photography skills and mentions a previous video on editing myths. He stresses that understanding editing can help photographers better visualize their images while still in the field.

🎄 Wrapping Up the Year with Tips for Continuous Improvement

The speaker concludes by summarizing the five areas covered—camera operation, observation, light, composition, and post-processing—as essential skills for improving landscape photography. He references multiple videos he has made on these topics, providing links for further learning. The speaker wishes viewers a happy holiday season and encourages them to keep practicing photography during his break, suggesting they explore a playlist of his previous videos for a free photography mini-course.

Keywords

💡Landscape Photography

Landscape photography involves capturing images of natural scenes such as mountains, forests, beaches, and waterfalls. The video emphasizes that improving landscape photography is less about gear and more about developing core skills like composition, light observation, and storytelling through images.

💡Gear

Gear refers to the equipment used in photography, including cameras, lenses, and accessories like polarizers. The video highlights that while gear is important, knowing how to operate it efficiently is what truly matters in capturing compelling landscape photographs. The presenter uses his GFX100S camera and explains his choice of lens and polarizer to deal with lighting and reflections.

💡ISO

ISO is a camera setting that controls the sensitivity of the sensor to light. In the video, the presenter sets his camera to ISO 100 to ensure that his landscape images are sharp and free of noise, especially in bright daylight. It illustrates the importance of understanding and managing camera settings to achieve the best results in landscape photography.

💡Aperture

Aperture controls the amount of light entering the camera and affects the depth of field. In the video, the presenter uses an aperture of f/16 to ensure a wide depth of field, allowing both the foreground and background to be in sharp focus. Aperture is a key factor in landscape photography for controlling the sharpness and focus of different elements in a scene.

💡Shutter Speed

Shutter speed determines how long the camera sensor is exposed to light. In the video, the presenter adjusts his shutter speed to a quarter of a second to control how much motion blur is captured in a waterfall. Adjusting shutter speed based on the scene's dynamics is crucial in landscape photography, especially when capturing moving elements like water or clouds.

💡Composition

Composition is the arrangement of visual elements within a photograph. The presenter emphasizes that composition has the biggest impact on creating better and more impactful landscape images. He explains how he positions rocks in the foreground to lead the viewer’s eye toward the cliffs in the background, illustrating the importance of thoughtful composition.

💡Light

Light plays a critical role in photography by setting the mood and highlighting textures. The video discusses how reading and understanding natural light can help predict its behavior and improve the quality of landscape photos. The presenter explains how he uses direct sunlight and anticipates golden hour light to enhance the colors and mood in his landscape shots.

💡Polarizer

A polarizer is a lens filter that reduces glare and reflections from surfaces like water or wet rocks. The presenter uses a polarizer to manage the glare from wet rocks in his landscape scene, demonstrating how polarizers can improve image clarity by enhancing contrast and saturation.

💡Observation

Observation refers to the skill of closely examining a location and its elements to identify photographic potential. The presenter stresses that taking the time to observe interactions in nature, such as the way water fills and drains from a small pool, can lead to discovering unique compositions and stories within a landscape.

💡Post-Processing

Post-processing is the editing phase where photographers enhance their images using software. The video emphasizes that half of creating a compelling landscape photo happens during post-processing. The presenter encourages photographers to embrace editing as a way to review their work, make improvements, and develop a creative vision for future shoots.

Highlights

Most respondents rated their own landscape photography at three stars, with only 8% being fully satisfied with their work.

The speaker emphasizes that gear is less important than knowing how to operate the equipment effectively to improve landscape photography.

The speaker discusses camera settings, such as using ISO 100, aperture at f/16, and adjusting the shutter speed to capture water movement correctly in a landscape shot.

Understanding the limitations and benefits of different lenses and camera sensors can help photographers quickly select the best gear for each scene.

Knowing your camera settings so well that they become second nature allows photographers to focus more on creativity and composition.

The skill of observation is crucial for discovering potential photographic scenes, allowing photographers to visualize images by closely watching the elements in a landscape.

Taking time to explore a location thoroughly can reveal hidden photographic opportunities and unique compositions.

Understanding how natural light interacts with the landscape is key to capturing mood and improving image quality, and predicting lighting changes enhances results.

Composition has the most significant impact on creating powerful landscape images, and photographers should aim to simplify scenes and guide the viewer’s eye.

Telling a story through composition is vital in connecting with viewers, making landscape photography more than just capturing beautiful scenes.

Post-processing is just as important as capturing the photo in the field, with 50% of the final image being developed through editing.

The speaker encourages photographers to practice editing, as it improves their ability to see enhancements and envision potential images while in the field.

The speaker references a previous video debunking common editing myths, emphasizing the importance of post-processing in the creative process.

Squarespace is recommended for photographers needing a website, offering easy-to-use tools for creating galleries, blogs, and showcasing images online.

Practice and experience are key themes in improving skills across all five areas: camera operation, observation, lighting, composition, and post-processing.

Transcripts

g'day there recently i asked a question

in the communities tab about how you

felt about your own landscape

photography the results were interesting

most people who responded gave

themselves three stars with only eight

percent completely happy with the images

they're creating naturally we're all

striving to improve so in this video i'm

going to cover the five areas of

landscape photography that have the

biggest impact in improving the images

you create this video is sponsored by

squarespace so if you need a website a

domain or an online store make your next

move with squarespace and use the

discount code andrew i'm sure you've

heard before that gear doesn't matter

and while in some aspects of photography

it does when it comes to improving your

landscape photography it doesn't

what does matter though is knowing how

to operate the gear you have

so i'm at iso 100

i've got the

gfx100s here of course with the

32-64 mil lens

um i've got the nifty version 6 on the

front and i've got the polarizer on as

well of course i need a polarizer

because that wet rock when the sun comes

out i get all this glare and stuff like

that so that

that polarizer pretty much deals with

that

that glare which is good knocks down the

light just a few stops but i've got

heaps of light here

i haven't got a

six stop or a three stop or a 10 stop on

just using the natural light

my aperture is at 16

and

with iso 100 at the moment i've got a

shutter speed of a quarter of a second

now i've just taken a shot at a third of

a second and i just felt like there was

just a little bit too much water

coming coming down that that waterfall

so it captured it too much well there

was too much water for the

third of a second

shutter speed so i just quickened it up

to a quarter of a second

this is about knowing the settings to

use for different scenes knowing how to

quickly dial in those settings into your

camera and understanding potential

limitations for example the dynamic

range of some smaller sensors or the

narrower depth of field you can get with

larger sensors

knowing your lenses is equally important

lenses tend to be a little simpler to

operate but being familiar with the

field of view or the look that you can

achieve with each lens means you can

quickly grab the right lens for the

right scene you're shooting i've seen

this a fair bit in the workshops that

i've run where photographers are having

to spend a bit of time changing a

setting or a particular mode on their

camera the less you have to concentrate

on selecting and operating your gear

the more time you can dedicate to the

artistic side of landscape photography

like exploring the scene

working compositions and creating

compelling images in the end you don't

want your gear to get in the way of

capturing awesome photos in fact you

eventually want to get to the point

where you can rely on muscle memory for

the placements of dials and controlling

your camera settings becomes second

nature there's two things you can do to

get to know your gear better

lots of practice and don't fall into the

trap of having too much gear or

constantly changing the gear you use if

you want help with understanding how

best to set up your camera and the

settings to use you can check out my

video on the best settings for landscape

photography i've also done a video on

how to get the most out of your

wide-angle lens so i'll put a link to

both of those in the description below

so you can check them out

this next area i think is often

overlooked but it's pretty important

when looking for better landscape images

in a location and that's the skill of

observation just behind me you might be

able to see just how it's cut away the

sand along the beach and it's quite a

big drop that's around about two two and

a half meters just that there and then

it's course uncovering all of these

rocks

in the foreground

but that's not going to be my foreground

i'm going to continue walking up here

just to see what's what's there a little

bit further back there's this little

pool of water

that's been created up on top of the

beach

and the waves every now and then push

enough water up

and it fills that little pool and then

it trickles off

back down to the ocean

and i just love watching the elements

interact with each other it's the sort

of thing that really interests me

and makes potentially

a a really good feature

in a photo this is about what to look

for when you're exploring a location

giving yourself enough time to properly

observe an area

taking note of the elements and the

interactions that you see

to discover the photographic potential

of a scene

it's through observation that you start

to work out the story that you're going

to capture and begin to visualize the

image you want to create if you struggle

a little bit with finding compelling

compositions or being able to see images

within the landscape this is probably an

area you may want to work on i've done a

whole video on composition skills

where i break it down into three stages

and suggest a whole range of things you

can do to improve in this area so i'll

add a link to that video in the

description

now the light that you get on a scene is

going to significantly impact the type

of image you shoot as well as the mood

that you capture

so you can see the sun on my face that's

a pretty good sign

what i was hoping for

was i had some

high cloud that kind of went off pretty

close to the horizon and i can see a

bank of cloud again on the horizon but

the fact that you can see some of my

face means that there is a gap

so i'm getting some direct light at the

moment

i

was going to shoot back towards where i

came from and get some side light

against some of these rocks

this gap is not going to last for too

long then the sun is going to go behind

the cloud

right on the horizon and we're

effectively going to have had

sunset a little bit early

but the gap hopefully some

some orange and pink light will come

through that gap once the sun is set

and

it hits this beautiful cloud while in

nature you don't really have much

control over the light beyond selecting

the time of day you're going to shoot it

is helpful to understand

what the light is doing the type of

light that is falling on a scene and how

the light is interacting with the

landscape

being able to read the light in a scene

means you have a better chance of

predicting what the light is going to do

and understanding how to use that light

in your image is going to go a long way

to improving the landscape photos you

take a couple of months ago i did a

video on the different types of light

you can get in the natural landscape

and what the best type of light is for

landscape photography which i'll link in

the description

now if you're familiar at all with my

channel you've probably picked up over

the years that i think composition

has the makes the biggest difference

when it comes to

creating better and more impactful

images of the landscape so what i've

done here is i've positioned the camera

with these three rocks and i'm pretty

much looking

at the face of these just amazing

amazing red cliffs

so i've positioned it so that the

three rocks in front of me

there's some symmetry there we've got

the smaller one down at the front and

then there's two slightly larger ones at

the back there

that's some foreground interest and of

course your eye is then immediately

drawn

along with the the veins in the sand

up to the red cliffs in the background

if you want to improve the images you

take your composition skills is the best

thing to work on

now composition can be quite daunting

but starting off with some composition

rules and approaches is a great place to

start but after a while

understanding what you should be trying

to achieve with your composition is

going to be key to creating better

images your composition should be trying

to simplify a scene

guide the eye and engage and connect

with the viewer

telling a story through your image is

fundamental to engaging the viewer and

helping them connect to the landscape if

you just think landscape photography is

about taking pretty pictures

honestly you're missing the point

a well-composed story of the landscape

builds a connection with the viewer

i've created a series of videos over the

years covering the many aspects of

composition which i'll share in the

description

now before we get to the last area i

want to thank squarespace for sponsoring

this video there are actually lots of

ways having your own website can improve

your photography

it's a place that you own where you can

share your images in a way that you want

them to be displayed

with squarespace in just a couple of

clicks you can add a blog that allows

you to document your photography journey

and helps others discover your site

through seo

you can create galleries for your images

and photography projects on a

squarespace site that helps you keep you

focused and motivated but most of all

squarespace makes the task of setting up

and maintaining a website very quick and

easy because they handle all the hosting

all of the updates to the platform and

the responsive design through their

beautiful templates so you don't have to

worry about any of that as a result

you'll end up with more time to enjoy

your landscape photography

if you ever find yourself needing some

help you can rely on their award-winning

24 7 customer service so head on over to

squarespace.com for a free trial that'll

give you heaps of time to get your

website set up and then when you're

ready to launch make sure you go to

squarespace.com forward slash andrew mar

to get 10 off your first purchase so far

the areas that i've discussed here are

to do with the process of either finding

or capturing an image

but when it comes to creating that final

landscape photo fifty percent of it is

with the capturing of it out in the

field and the remaining fifty percent is

in the post processing i know editing

images is not everybody's favorite part

of landscape photography

while i don't mind editing i'd much

rather be out shooting photos but i

encourage you to do as much editing as

you can because there are so many

benefits it's an opportunity to review

the images that you've taken and work

out ways in which they can be improved

you can get a better understanding of

how far images can be enhanced in

post-processing

and if you're familiar with how images

can be edited you can develop a better

vision for an image when you're out in

the field at the beginning of the year i

discussed in a video the three biggest

editing myths that highlights the

importance of post-processing and i

explain the impact it can have on the

rest of your creative process

i'll add a link to that video in the

description so you can check it out i

hope you found the breakdown of these

areas helpful i think each of these

areas are important to work on if you're

looking at improving your landscape

photography as you can see i've created

at least one video on each of these

areas throughout the year to help you

out i've put all of the videos that i've

mentioned here together in one playlist

that i'll link below

you can treat it like a free mini

landscape photography course there's a

common theme across all of these five

areas each one is a skill so if you want

to develop your skill level not only

will the videos help but you'll need to

find opportunities to practice if you

found this helpful please give the video

a like and share with your friends this

is probably the last video from me for

this year as i'm going to take a short

break so i hope you have a great

christmas and new years and i hope you

have the chance to get out for some

landscape photography thanks very much

for watching and i'll see you in the

next one

[Music]

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