What mistakes do you often make when taking landscape photos?

Many photographers are keen on landscape photography, and the mysterious nature is always full of temptations for them. But experienced landscape photographers sometimes fall into a misunderstanding. The following are some mistakes I carefully recommend to landscape photographers, hoping to help you.

Mistakes made in shooting scenery as usual.

horizontal line

Some people are very good at holding the camera horizontally, while others are completely opposite. When you shoot the scenery from an unusual angle, it is difficult to ensure that your photos are level with the horizon. If you can't get a photo horizontal to the horizon when shooting, you can only correct it by later rotation or cropping, which means you have to give up the original composition, so if you can avoid later cropping, try to avoid it.

depth of field

Except for a few creative landscape photographs, most landscape photographs need a large depth of field to ensure a clear foreground and field of vision. In most cases, a large depth of field can be obtained with a small aperture, a small focal length and a long distance.

In the past, traditional landscape photographers focused on hyperfocal distance. The so-called hyperfocal distance means that when the lens is focused at infinity, the objects in the photo from hyperfocal distance to infinity are clear, while the objects near hyperfocal distance are blurred. That is, when the lens is focused at infinity, the depth of field is from hyperfocal distance to infinity.

Although some lenses are engraved with Jing Shenbiao scale, now photographers are more keen to use mobile phone software to calculate the depth of field, and hyperfocal distance can simply and accurately obtain clear landscape photos by choosing lens focal length and aperture value.

prospect

When we see a scene, our eyes are always attracted by interesting details and automatically ignore those boring places. In any case, the ordinary and boring prospect is like a barrier, which makes people who look at the image feel that this photo has no bright spots, but it is actually easy to avoid. You can choose a sea of flowers or a few boulders and shells on the beach as the foreground, just like illustrations.

light

Professional photographers are willing to wait for a beam of light for days, weeks or even months. The quality of light will bring great difference to the image. Bright light can bring color to life and highlight the outline of the land. On the contrary, dim light will make the image look dull and boring. However, even the most enthusiastic photographer may not have time to put everything down and enjoy waiting for the light. Because many people can only shoot outside work, this naturally means that these photographers want to shoot as much as possible as long as they have time, but pay more attention to light and weather.

In the face of unsatisfactory light, you can try to switch to black and white mode to shoot. Make the photos more atmospheric by adjusting the contrast, brightening and deepening later.

White sky or black land

In shooting, we often encounter such a problem: the light difference between the sky and the ground is very large. It is difficult to take pictures of the sky and the ground at the same time with normal exposure. Often the sky is exposed accurately, and the ground will turn black due to underexposure; If the ground exposure is accurate, the sky will be overexposed and turn white.

The traditional way to solve this problem is to darken the sky appropriately through a medium gray gradient filter. Some photographers use HDR technology to combine multiple images with different exposures to obtain an image with relatively average overall exposure.

composition

When you want to press the shutter impulsively in the face of beautiful scenery, you'd better look around the scene first and find the ideal shooting angle. Here, I still want to mention the classic rule of three points, because people's eyes usually fall on one-third of the picture, whether from top to bottom or from left to right, the four intersections of Jiugongge are also called interest centers. When shooting, it is best to open the grid in the camera and try to put the scenery in the interesting center.

At the same time, avoid the horizon in the center of the picture. On the premise of keeping the horizon level, if the sky is more interesting, let the horizon be lower and give the sky more space. If the earth is more interesting, then raise the horizon and make people pay more attention to the ground.

Suggestions on landscape photography

First, the most important setting before using the camera: RAW format.

"To be a good photographer, your camera storage file format must be set to RAW format."

I believe many people have read this sentence. But today, there are still many people who have not set the RAW format, and even resist setting the RAW format. Summarize several reasons:

1, large file capacity * * * Now the memory card is getting bigger and bigger, faster and more affordable, which is no longer a problem * * *

2, the troubles in the later stage * * * In fact, the later stage of RAW is far simpler than JPG, and it is lossless. The most important thing is that the later space of RAW is not the same as JPG. ***

I don't understand the function of RAW format, and even think JPG has better color and sharpness. * * * figuratively speaking, RAW is the source film, which is an unprocessed digital negative, while JPG is the film, which is a lossy file processed in the camera * * *

Second, the horizon.

In landscape photography, this topic has become a commonplace topic. But what needs to be emphasized is that, because many times, whether beginners or experienced photographers, it is easy to ignore this problem.

Landscape photography, whether the field of vision is balanced is particularly important. Because it directly affects the look and feel of your photos. If you are not pursuing special effects, I suggest you straighten your eyes.

There are two kinds of horizon representations in the picture:

1. If you can see the horizon in the photo, foreign landscape photographers call it "Yuan Jing Feng Guang".

2. If you can't see the horizon in the picture, foreign landscape photographers call it "close-up scenery".

Matters needing attention in landscape photography

First, the problem of cutting.

In the digital age, cropping has become a very convenient way of secondary composition, and a large number of tutorials have been seen, calling people to try cropping. I even remember that once a so-called "master" taught a group of his students, and the exact words were as follows: Quan Huafu cut it out for you.

I don't object to cutting, but if you blindly rely on cutting, you will become more and more lazy about your previous composition, which means you will never make progress.

In addition, cropping not only changes the proportion of the picture, but also causes great loss of pixels, and also leads to a significant decline in image quality, clarity and sharpness. Do we really buy full-frame cameras just to cut them? For example, we bought a Nikon D800 with 3600 pixels, and you cut it into a picture with 1200 pixels. In this case, maybe I can reach the level of your 3600-pixel camera with 1200 pixels. Then why should we invest so much to buy a camera to cut?

We must do it as a last resort, not for the sake of cutting, let alone by cutting.

Second, the composition should follow a principle: simplicity.

Composition, one of the important factors of a photo's success, is ever-changing and has no theorem. But no matter how we change, there is one principle that we must follow: simplicity.

We can find any successful photos, and we can see that they all have one thing in common: simplicity.

Originally, landscape photography is a multiple-choice question. How to choose your subject and try to simplify the picture and highlight the subject. If we can simplify what we see in front of us, then we can choose a suitable subject, which can be a tree, a stone, a line, a person and so on. And then highlight the subject with colors, light and shadow, lines, etc. There is no doubt that our photos will get closer and closer to success.

5. Be careful with or without color filter.

There are many color filters on the market, such as sunset filter, yellow transition filter, green filter and so on. In fact, these filters are all for lazy people.

Landscape photography is a feast of colors. The diversity, transformation and purity of colors are all fascinating places for our landscape photographers. And all these require us to pay a lot of time to wait and capture. There is no transition or change in the color change changed by the color filter, and even your color will become a mess.

Sixth, photography skills and means should be diversified, not limited.

It is better to solve problems with gradual changes than with black cards. There is no need to use these complicated means. This has obviously reached a dead end. He thinks that the balance of light ratio can be solved by gradual change. As everyone knows, some large light ratios are not problems that can be solved by gradual change at all, but black cards.

To take a step back, in the digital age, gradual changes can be eliminated, and these problems can be completely solved with later gradual changes, which can be more perfect. Then why add a gradient mirror? But why do we have gradient mirrors? That's because some of them are irreplaceable in the later period, just like the slow door. Only by adding gradient can the light ratio be balanced, which can't be done in the later stage. So, don't resist any kind of photography technology. I can use a black card, and the gradient mirror is always in my bag for later use. I also used a lot of gradient solutions later. To achieve the image we want, any technology is just a means we use. Only by using it flexibly can we create excellent works.

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