Scenery shooting skills

Landscape photography is an original work with the main theme of expressing the beauty of natural scenery, which belongs to a variety of photography categories. The following are the landscape shooting techniques I shared. Let's have a look.

1. Quan Jingshen

This is the first rule of landscape shooting. When taking landscape photos, people usually want to shoot the scene in front of them as clearly as possible. The simplest way is to deepen the depth of field with a thinner aperture and put more foreground and background into the lens clearly. It should be noted that reducing the aperture will reduce the amount of light entering the photosensitive component or negative. For example, shooting in sunny days, such as cloudy or dark days, is likely to need to improve ISO or take longer exposure time to make up for the loss of light.

Of course, you can also try to shoot a scene with a large aperture and a shallow depth of field, which may sometimes have unexpected effects.

Use a tripod

As mentioned above, when shooting with a fine aperture, it is necessary to cooperate with a slow shutter to make up for the amount of light entering. Reduce the chance of hand shock. But it is not easy to take a long exposure by hand. Therefore, it is necessary to use a tripod to stabilize the camera and reduce the vibration during long exposure. In addition to the tripod, you can also use other camera accessories, such as wired or wireless shutter remote control, to reduce the vibration caused by pressing the shutter by hand and ensure that the photos taken will not be loose. Another secret is to use the timer function in the camera to shoot, so just shake your hand when you press the shutter, but the phone will be stable after 10 seconds.

Find the focus

Every photo needs to have a focus, and landscape photography is no exception. Without focus, photos will become empty and boring, and it will be difficult for viewers to find a foothold. Finally, their eyes will fall on other photos.

The focus of landscape photography can be ever-changing, whether it is tall buildings, characteristic buildings, towering trees, delicate flowers, strange stones or beautiful silhouettes. After finding the ideal thing as the focus, we should think about where to put it in the scene frame. At this time, you can refer to the composition methods such as the golden section.

Consider the prospect

Prospects are important to people, but also to photos. Before taking pictures, you should first think about what interesting things can be put in the foreground to attract your attention. Good prospects can lead the audience into the world of photos and create a rich sense of hierarchy and space for photos.

Pay attention to the sky

The sky is very important for landscape photography, and most landscape photography will take the foreground or the sky as the theme. If there is only one of them, the photos will look boring. If the sky is gray on the day of shooting, it is best not to highlight the sky, but to place it above one third of the golden section. Of course, the big topic is to have outstanding prospects to catch the audience's eye. If you meet a beautiful sky, such as a magnificent sunset and a rainbow after rain, you can highlight the scenery of the sky and put the prospect in the next third. In addition, the use of some equipment, such as polarizers, or post-production, can strengthen the color of the sky and highlight key points.

6. Line

When shooting landscape photography, photographers should ask themselves a question, that is, how to lead the audience to appreciate the photos. In fact, there are many ways, the foreground mentioned above is one of them, and another good way is to use lines. Lines can construct the sense of space of photos, and strengthen the level and depth. Both the combination of lines and the shape of the lines themselves can be used as the focus of the photos.

Capture dynamics

When people think of landscape photography, they usually think of quiet and harmonious static pictures, but the scenery is rarely as quiet as a mirror. On the contrary, there are actually colorful dynamics, such as swaying trees, lapping waves, pouring waterfalls, birds flying with wings, stormy sky and so on. , can be the focus of attraction. In order to capture motion, you can generally use a slower shutter, and sometimes the exposure time may be as long as several seconds. However, note that the slower the shutter is, the more light is absorbed by the photosensitive element or negative film. At this time, you need to use a thinner aperture or filter to reduce the amount of light, or choose to shoot when the sun is soft, such as dusk or early morning.

8. Follow the weather

The scenery will be unpredictable with the weather, so choosing the right time to shoot is the first step to shoot your heart. Many beginners will think that sunny days are the best time to shoot scenery, but cloudy days can bring out a special atmosphere or shock from the coming rain. Storms, mist, rainbows, sunrises, sunsets, Jesus lights or discolored skies all have their own unique personalities, which are more shocking than the photos of clear skies in Wan Li, but when shooting bad weather, we must remember that safety is paramount.

9. Seize prime time (prime time)

Some people don't like taking pictures during the day, but prefer to go out at dawn or dusk, because the sunshine there can shed more vitality on a tree, so dawn and dusk are called prime time (also known as magic time). Prime time is popular for many reasons. First of all, the dazzling golden sunshine at that time could add color to the surrounding scenery. Second, the angle of sunset reflection on the scene can best set off the texture of the scene.

10. Watch the horizon.

It may be a cliche to say that we should pay attention to the horizon, but this is something that landscape photography has to pay attention to. First of all, of course, whether the horizon is straight or not. Of course, post-production can make up for the slight shortage of shooting. Second, pay attention to the position of the horizon in composition, whether to highlight the sky or the foreground. Whether to put the horizon above or below the golden section. Of course, the rules can be broken, but there are indeed many excellent landscape photography using the golden section method.

1 1.

Take a bus to the destination, get off and walk to the ideal place, pick up the camera, look around in the viewfinder, focus back and forth, press the shutter, pack up and rush to the next destination. Is this the usual action to shoot the scenery? But if you want to take amazing photos, you must take a few more steps. After you have a panoramic view of the ideal scenic spots, you may wish to look around and see if there are any novel and unique perspectives that can shoot the same scenery, such as bird's eye view from a high place or looking up from a low place. Practicing different perspectives may train a pair of keen photographic eyes and allow you to take more unique photos.