Introduction skills of mountain photography

Lead: Friends who like hiking and traveling will take beautiful photos with their cameras most of the time, but how can they take beautiful and moving photos when walking in the mountains? Let's take a look at this series of "introduction skills of mountain photography" and refer to the tips inside!

The shooting theme of mountain photography

Mountains under blue sky and white clouds

The happiest thing about hiking in the mountains is to enjoy it under the blue sky and white clouds! If you want to shoot the blue sky, remember to find the right angle. The other direction towards the sun is often the bluest! If you want the sky to be darker, you can use a polarizer (CPL).

(2) a cloudy sky.

There are unexpected events in the sky. If you encounter dark clouds all over the sky, you can also consider shooting the momentum of the mountain under the dark clouds with a super wide-angle lens! However, in order to preserve the level of dark clouds in the sky and the brightness of the ground, it is suggested to use GND gradient gray filter.

(3) When there are clouds.

This can be said to be the best gift after a hard climb! The sea of clouds is not always there. Most of them are produced at sunrise or dusk in the early morning after rain, and can only be seen in places higher than the sea of clouds. And when water vapor tightly accumulates in the air and surrounds you, it forms a cloud! When shooting clouds, you can shoot a daze effect, which is very mysterious!

(4) capture interesting light.

Of course, interesting light includes sunrise, sunset and the time when illusion occurs, but sometimes the sun shines through the clouds to form scattered light, and even the phenomenon of "Jesus light" appears. When it shines on the majestic mountain, you can take very beautiful photos, but it really depends on luck to see the "light of Jesus", which may appear in a short time, so you should seize the opportunity to take pictures!

(5) shoot the sun star.

If the sun is fierce at noon, try to turn down the aperture and include the sun in the photo, and you can take a beautiful sun star. However, because you are shooting facing the sun, you should be careful of underexposure. Please +EV if necessary.

(6) Starry sky/orbit

One of the important shooting themes is to use hills to set off the starry sky or the star track, whether it is an ordinary hill or two, a snowy mountain or even some famous scenic spots.

Basic camera settings

(A) Make good use of the aperture prerequisite mode (A mode)

When taking mountain scenery photos, except for night photos and starry sky/orbit photos, aperture priority (A mode)+average photometry can generally be used for shooting. First determine the required aperture /ISO (as described below), and then shoot after focusing, which is very easy! In fact, mode A is also the most commonly used mode by the author, so photographers must make good use of it!

(2) Aperture selection

When taking mountain scenery photos, there is no specific range of aperture, mainly depending on the subject matter to be taken. Here are some references:

(3) ISO calibration

ISO tuning is very simple, just remember the following points:

Using ISO 100 plus a 20-second slow shutter can make the sea of clouds more poetic.

(4) setting of white balance

The function of white balance is to adjust the color temperature and color of the photo, so that the photo can show the feeling at that time. For example, when shooting the sunrise and sunset of mountain scenery, we can adjust the white balance to a high k number, so that the photos will be warmer; In normal sunlight, you can shoot the color of a normal month by adjusting the white balance of sunlight.

(5) Adjust the exposure value (+/-EV) at an appropriate time.

If you use aperture priority mode, you must learn to use the "exposure compensation" button, because when you shoot a lot of white things such as clouds, the camera's metering may be wrong. At this time, you should increase the exposure with +EV to avoid underexposure. The larger the white area, the stronger the increase.