Summer scenery photography composition skills introduction

Lead: What season is most suitable for landscape photography? I don't think anyone will choose summer. Most filmmakers will say that this season's scenery is too dull and the light is too direct. Except for the high-profile scenery, it hasn't changed at all. Indeed, summer rarely provides natural exciting scenes for landscape photographers, and you are tired of blue sky and white clouds, colorful flowers and green waves. The coming of wind and rain, thunder and lightning, and dark clouds make people not in the mood to pick up the camera and go out to shoot. But summer still has its charm. Let's have a look!

What are the most common lighting problems? Overexposure (composition technique)

How to shoot the scenery in summer has become a big problem. What is the difference between equipment selection, exposure and composition skills and other seasons? How to understand what the photographer said? Summer is the best season to take strong scenery photos? And then what? This summer, let's make full use of the light, overcome the exposure problem and record the taste of summer.

Equipment items

Wide-angle lens VS telephoto lens

How to choose the lens for summer scenery photography? Many people think that it is so hot that two zoom heads are enough to shoot. From the point of view of convenience, such a lens configuration is both convenient to carry and practical. Compared with the fixed-focus lens of the same level, the image quality loss will not be too much, but it can cope with different scenes, which is definitely a good choice.

Shooting Summer Scenery with Wide-angle Lens (Composition Skills)

Shooting Summer Scenery with Wide-angle Lens (Composition Skills)

Shooting Summer Scenery with Wide-angle Lens (Composition Skills)

Shooting Summer Scenery with Wide-angle Lens (Composition Skills)

So how to choose a wide-angle lens and a telephoto lens? Wide-angle lens is the first choice for landscape photography, which can not only meet the photographer's requirements for depth of field, but also make the picture more visually impactful. Using a wide-angle lens can also make the composition more vivid, rather than simply simplifying the picture to meet our needs for composition.

Exposed articles

With the continuous improvement of the camera automatic metering system, the probability of setting the corresponding exposure parameters incorrectly gradually decreases, but the light characteristics in summer are different from other seasons, and there will still be thorny exposure problems. However, with the characteristics of lighting conditions, it also increases the possibility of shooting rare images.

Prevent overexposure

Reading histogram

Judging exposure by histogram

The most common exposure problem in summer scenery shooting is the dead white sky caused by overexposure. In summer, except rainy weather, most of them are in the weather with sufficient lighting conditions, so the selection of metering points will directly affect the exposure results. If you don't have much experience and grasp in the selection of metering points, there is also a small skill to solve the problem of sky overexposure. Using the medium gray gradient mirror can effectively darken the bright part of the sky, so that the performance of dark details can be guaranteed and the sky will not die white.

Silhouette effect processing (composition skills)

Treatment effect of medium gray gradient mirror (composition skill)

In addition to darkening the sky with a medium gray gradient lens, we can also reduce the exposure difficulty by changing the final image effect. You can choose to use silhouette effect to deal with the dark field, just use aperture priority mode to expose and shoot directly.

Sharp weapon attachment

Polarizer can effectively increase the visual impact of summer scenery photography. The first is to remove the negative interference caused by light on the image, such as large-area reflection on the water surface and glare in the backlight state. Secondly, you can adjust the color of the picture to make it more vivid and rich.

Comparing the above and below pictures, we can clearly see the function of polarizer.

However, the use of polarizer will change the luminous flux of lens, so we should pay attention to the corresponding adjustment of exposure and shutter speed. If you want to shoot the water in the summer when the light is very abundant, the antireflection mirror can also help you, but don't use it with other polarizers.

hyperfocal distance

When the lens is focused at infinity, the nearest limit of the depth of field near the camera is called hyperfocal distance. When the lens focuses on hyperfocal distance with a certain aperture, the depth of field ranges from 1/2 to infinity. Hyperfocal distance is the fastest way to get the maximum depth of field or control the clear range of an image.

Hyperfocal distance's video works (composition skills)

Hyperfocal distance's video works (composition skills)

Hyperfocal distance's implementation method

Hyperfocal distance's video works (composition skills)

Manual focusing method

Autofocus will interfere with your search for hyperfocal distance points. You need to find a focus position with the largest depth of field by manual focusing. At this time, you need to pay more attention to the focal length scale on the lens.

Aperture value method

Set the small aperture from f/ 1 1 to f/ 16 to ensure sufficient depth of field.

Auxiliary method

You can see the real depth of field by using the preview function of depth of field, and you can observe the picture more carefully by using the live view function of the camera.

Characteristics of summer light

For landscape photography, sunrise and sunset are the most abundant moments of light and color in a day, and they are also the necessary themes of landscape photography.

It is best to shoot the afterglow of sunset in summer (composition skills)

Due to the characteristics of the season, the sunrise time in summer is about 4: 30 in the morning, so it is definitely a challenge for photographers, but the shooting of sunset will be relatively simple, because the sunset period will be extended, and the midsummer can even be extended to around 8: 00 in the evening. Therefore, it is suggested that you shoot the scenery at sunset, you can have enough time to prepare, choose the scene and design the composition in advance, and wait for the best light state before pressing the shutter.

Design the scene in advance (composition skills)

Color capture is very important (composition skills)

Over time, the light is the most dazzling from 2 pm to 3 pm, which also makes the shadow part lack of layering and eroded by dark tones. Too strong contrast will make the light in the image very dull, so try to avoid shooting at this time.

Light characteristics of special weather

Compared with other seasons, there are also dramatic weather in summer, which is recognized as bad weather. But if you observe carefully and patiently, you will find that there are many scenes worth capturing in typical bad weather.

Waiting for a miracle in bad weather (composition skills)

After the storm, it was calm.

Record the moment when the sun clears the dark clouds (composition skills)

Compared with the rain in other seasons, the rain in summer is the cleanest and most thorough, especially after the heavy rain, everything is completely new, and the colors after the light irradiation become extraordinarily rich. But the most wonderful thing is that when the sun passes through the dark clouds and returns to the earth, the light has the most colorful state, but it is often ignored by photographers because of its unpredictability. Be sure to observe and make sure that the camera is always ready to capture the most wonderful moment, which also greatly confirms that sentence. Good photos are waiting? .

Capture? The light of Jesus? (composition skills)

If you touch it? Sun rain? You can also see beautiful rainbows. At this time, you can record the whole rainbow with a wide-angle lens, or enlarge the charming brilliance of the rainbow with a telephoto lens.