Six Tips To Improve Your Landscape Photography

If your horizons are wonky and your skies are washed out, our top tips on how to improve your landscape photography are exactly what you need.

With our help, you’ll soon be producing the kind of images that deserve pride of place on the wall, so let’s dive in and change your landscapes for the better!

Landscape photography is easy if you’re prepared

Like any discipline, landscapes require certain elements to be in place, but once you have them down it’s relatively easy.

Use the correct gear – if you seriously want to improve your landscape photography, you have to invest in the correct gear. You can take decent images with almost any camera, but a good quality tripod and range of lenses that cover 10mm to 80mm are essential.

Watch your horizons – try to ensure that your horizons are as level as possible in camera. Yes, you can correct this in post-production, but if the horizon is way off you’ll lose quite a lot of the edges of your image in the correcting crop which is very annoying!

Use enough depth of field – it’s not essential that your depth of field covers the entire image, but that should be a creative choice rather than an accident. We recommend using the widest aperture you can comfortably get away with instead of going straight to f/16 because diffraction can affect image quality. Just make sure your shots are sharp front to back. A good rule of thumb is to focus 1/3rd of the way into the scene.

Find a focal point – eyes need somewhere to land in an image, so pick a focal point – whether that’s a rock on the beach, a lone tree, or a huge mountain – and build your composition around it.

Composition is crucial – consider where you place your focal point, by utilising the rule of thirds and leading lines. The foreground of an image is often neglected, but in a landscape it’s super important because it can amount to a third of the image. Use paths, roads and other natural lines to lead the viewer into the shot from the foreground.

Use the golden hours – the first and last hours of the day are amazing for landscapes because the light is often warm and inviting and the sky has drama, colour and wow factor, so use those golden hours wisely!

Great images of the natural world make brilliant canvas prints, so follow these tips to improve your landscape photography and you’ll soon have a wall full of spectacular shots!