Tips for shooting natural weather and landscapes

Introduction: Rain, clear, snow and foggy days, rising sun and setting sun, each has its own beauty. Let’s take a look at how to shoot it.

1. Photographing clouds

Clouds are the condensation of moisture in the sky. They condense, move and dissipate in the sky as the weather changes. Clouds are indeed very beautiful, and they come in many different shapes. Common ones include floating clouds, Duo clouds, fish scale clouds, patch clouds, striped clouds, stratus clouds, fire clouds, etc.

People who like to take pictures of landscapes are particularly fond of clouds. A landscape photo will be more beautiful because of the clouds. Many good scenery often lack clouds in the sky, making the sky part of the picture too empty and lacking in beauty, which may even affect the structure and tonal balance of the picture.

Clouds can not only increase the beauty of the scenery and balance the picture, but also use different images of clouds to express the seasons and climate of the scenery. For example, light floating clouds in the spring morning, persistent stratus clouds in summer, beautiful fish scale clouds in autumn, sparse striped clouds in early winter; sea of ??clouds in the morning and colorful clouds in the evening, sunny clouds, burning clouds on the eve of a typhoon, Stormy clouds, etc. all represent different seasons, climates and times. Even if the scene itself has no obvious characteristics that indicate time, because there are clouds in the scene, you can know what season and climate it is from the image of the clouds.

There are many kinds of clouds with different images. We use white clouds to set off the scenery, and we must also pay attention to whether the image of the white clouds matches the scenery.

For example, for a scene with obvious horizontal stripes, you should not use horizontal stripes of clouds as a foil, otherwise it will produce more horizontal lines in the picture, resulting in a dull picture with no changes in the lines.

Another example is to use white clouds that are the same size as the main subject of the scene as accompaniment, which will also cause the subject and guest in the picture to be indistinguishable. Therefore, when using white clouds as a foil to the scenery, we must pay attention to its image and have a significantly different proportion from the main object in order to make the picture vivid and touching.

Secondly, white clouds without deep and shallow layers are not suitable as a foil for any scenery, let alone as the main subject. Generally, white clouds with more layers mostly occur in the morning or afternoon when the sun is slanting. Therefore, when shooting scenery under slanting sunlight, it is most suitable to use white clouds in the sky as a companion. The image of clouds is ever-changing with the wind. We must seize the opportunity and be patient to take good cloud scenery. However, you should pay attention to the use of color filters when shooting. Use polarizers for color photography, and yellow and orange filters for black and white photography.

2. Photographing fog and cloud scenery

Using various fog layers or cloud layers to shoot scenery can make the scenery change from near to far. It can also make the color tone of the scenery change from deep to light, giving the scenery rich layers. When the morning fog has not been evaporated and dissipated by the heat of the sun, and the peaks of each mountain range protrude above the morning fog, the backlit mountain scenery is taken. Since the mountains near and far have different thicknesses of morning fog, the fog layer illuminated by the backlight It is also very bright. As long as you use the main nearby mountain as the basis for exposure, the photos will naturally show rich and bright tones from deep to shallow.

Clouds and fog often move in the direction of the wind on the mountains, sometimes they stay on the mountainside or only expose the peaks. A layer of fog exists in the woods. The sun shines into the forest from the space with sparse branches and leaves, creating slanting rays of sunlight. This Different light rays change their projection direction and angle as the sun rises and falls, showing bright and dark light pillars. All these changes in natural scenery create excellent conditions for us to take pictures of mountain and forest scenery. As long as we are in the scene and grasp the natural changes of the scenery in time, we can take artistic and high-quality scenery photos.

The sunset glow occurs in the evening. Since there is less moisture in the space in the evening, the sunset glow is often lighter than the morning fog. If you use the sunset to shoot scenery, the atmosphere of the clouds will be expressed in the farther scenery. The scenery at a closer distance will appear as if there is no sunset. If you use backlighting to shoot the sunset scenery, the place with the sunset will be like the morning mist scenery. The light gradation of scenery. However, when the backlight shines on the sunset scene, the nearby scene will be easily affected by the brightness of the distant scene due to the lack of glow and will be underexposed. Therefore, when photographing a rosy scene, if the subject is a close-up scene, the close-up scene should be used as the metering standard. Sometimes when shooting distant sunset scenery, we need to use a long focal length lens of a digital camera to zoom in so that the scene occupies a larger area on the screen.

3. Photographing rain scenes

Rainy days are the weather that photographers dislike the most. Whether it is raining heavily or lightly, few people go outside with their cameras to take pictures of scenery. Even Some people think that it is impossible to take pictures of landscapes on rainy days.

Everyone knows that photography can be done with light. We can shoot night scenes at night, and of course we can shoot rain scenes during the day. We can also shoot dynamic rain scenes. Even on rainy nights, we can also shoot rainy night scenes. The scenery on a rainy day also has its own unique mood, not to mention that rainy days are also inevitable scenes in people's lives. In order to reflect more life scenes and enrich the content of scenery, rain scenes are also an indispensable shooting subject for us.

When taking pictures of rainy scenes, in order to show the rain streaks in the rainy scene in the photos, in addition to choosing heavy rain, you must also have a darker background as a foil. If the background of the scene in the rain is the sky, then the sky on a rainy day must be white dense clouds. Even if it rains very heavily, it will not appear because the background and rain strips are both white. The closer the background is, the easier it is for the rain strips to appear. The farther the background is, the larger the scene will be and the harder it is for the rain strips to appear clearly. Therefore, the range of the scene taken when shooting rain scenes should not be too large, and the white sky should not occupy most of the picture and affect the performance of the rain strips in the scene.

When it rains, the brightness of the scenery is generally relatively weak. Therefore, when shooting rain scenes, you generally need to use a larger aperture and a slower shutter speed so that the rain scene has enough light sensitivity. In order to show the rain strips that have not yet fallen to the ground in the scene space and to grasp the dynamics in the rain, you should stand at a relatively high angle. Shot from a high position. Generally, if you use a digital camera with a shutter speed of 1/60 second to shoot a rain scene, you can show the rain strips in the space that have not yet touched the ground. If you use a faster shutter speed to shoot a rain scene and the rain strips in the space become shorter, use a slower shutter speed. The speed can obtain a longer rain scene, but the dynamics in the scene may not be clear enough.

When shooting scenery in light rainy weather, rain streaks cannot be shown because the light rain is not visible enough in the scenery. However, when you use drizzle to shoot dark-toned woods or mountains, since there is no sunlight in the scenery and there are only colored objects in the scenery, the drizzle will act like a layer of fog between the dark-colored objects, showing distant objects. Light to dark tones. If the viewing range is not very large, using the brightness of nearby objects as the exposure tone can also show a misty scene like rain or fog in the scene.

Every summer, there will often be a sudden heavy rain under the sun. This is the best time to take pictures of rain scenes. When shooting scenes in heavy rain, the camera lens can easily get wet. You should consider this in advance and make rain-proof preparations before shooting.

4. Snow scene photography

Snow is a pure white crystal object. When it is scattered or accumulated on the scene, objects of different shades in the scene are covered by it and become white. Objects, so snow scenes are scenes with more white parts, which can give people a white and lovely feeling. Precisely because the white part of the snow scene occupies a larger area and is brighter than other scenes, it becomes even brighter when exposed to sunlight. It is also more sensitive to light on film than ordinary scenery. Snow is a transparent crystal, and its texture can only be clearly expressed in distant places.

Therefore, in order to show the light and dark levels of the snow scene and the transparent texture of the nearby snow particles, it is most suitable to use backlight or rear side light to shoot the snow scene. In this way, even distant views create a profound atmosphere due to backlighting or side backlighting. If you use front light or top light to shoot a snow scene, due to the flat or vertical light, not only will the fine snow-white crystal objects not be able to produce light and dark levels and texture, but the object will also lose its three-dimensional effect. However, when backlight or side light shines on a snow scene with a large white area, objects of other colors that are not covered by snow will inevitably become black objects.

In order to make the white snow and other tonal objects in the snow scene appear layered, soft sunlight must be used when shooting snow scenes.

Shooting snow scenes when it is raining is just like shooting in the rain. It must be set against a dark background to easily show the snowflakes flying in the sky. If you shoot a scene with a wide sky, you will only be able to see snowflakes in the space in front of some dark objects, and other parts of the snowflakes will not be visible.

When shooting snow scenes in the sun, in order to prevent the blue sky from being too white, you can use a color filter (polarizer) as needed.

In order to obtain a more concise snow scene picture and clearly express the layers and lines of objects in the snow, you can choose local scenes with beautiful lines and shoot with soft backlight or side backlight. In this way, you can The layered lines of objects in the snow can be fully displayed, thereby obtaining a more perfect snow scene.

5. Photographing sunrise and sunset

From the moment the sun just rises from the horizon or when the sun is about to set, there will be a certain amount of morning glow or sunset covering the sun scattering on the ground. The light will appear as a round sun without light scattering. This is the time to take photos of sunrise or sunset. When the sun just rises or sets, there are often some backlit colored clouds in the sky on the horizon. We can wait until there are no light scattering from the sun clouds to take pictures of the sunrise or sunset. In this way, it can not only prevent the sun from scattering and causing halos on the film, but also prevent the sun from being the only one in the sky part of the scene.

When the sun has just risen or is about to set, it shines on the mountains. Since there is no reflection from the water, the mountains become completely black in contrast to the sky with the sun. Therefore, when shooting sunrise or sunset scenes on mountains, only by covering part of the sun with clouds or increasing the exposure of the sky by zooming in can the tones of the sky and mountains be more balanced.

It is also common for the sky to be without clouds when the sun is just rising or about to set.

In order to avoid the sky being too monotonous, using some sparse leaves and branches as the foreground of the open sky can help balance the structure of the scene. However, if there are too many or too heavy branches and leaves, they will cover most of the sky and affect the balance of the picture.

There is not much difference in the image and color of the sun in the morning and evening. If you want to distinguish sunrise or sunset from photos, you should distinguish it through the scenery and color tone, because the sky at the horizon is generally clear in the morning, and the sun will quickly spread out the light when it rises. The sky is generally turbid on the horizon at dusk, and there is no scattered light when the sun is still far away from the horizon. In terms of color, the sky is reddish-yellow in the morning and magenta at dusk.

Therefore, when shooting sunrise, you should shoot as soon as the sun rises above the horizon and not miss it. When shooting sunset, you can start shooting when there is no light scattering until it reaches the horizon. You can shoot leisurely.