Greetings, dear readers! In touch with you, Timur Mustaev. Some amateur photographers consider landscape one of the most basic genres of photography. To some extent, I share their point of view: go wherever you like, and shoot whatever comes into your head.
Plus, unlike studio shooting, which requires considerable financial costs, nature will not disappear and will not demand anything in return except careful attitude to it, and the atmosphere changes depending on the time of year, giving scope for imagination.
But is the landscape really that simple? Let's figure it out together.
Let's start the debriefing, perhaps, with a definition of this genre and its place in human reality.
Landscape in photography
Scenery is a genre in which nature is the center of the image.
This trend originated in the era of the absence of cameras, when famous and not so famous artists went out into the open air and conveyed what they had seen with the help of brushes and paints.
That is why understanding the meaning of this genre should be learned from realist artists.
Paintings, like nothing else, allow you to experience all the beauty of nature; they are inextricably linked with inner world a person, with his feelings, mood and love for life in general.
And in photography, a landscape is not a thoroughly accurate redrawing of this or that corner of nature, but one’s own perception of the world.
Modern landscape photography is quite versatile. Exhibitions of such materials instill in the viewer an artistic taste and develop imagination by drawing associative parallels between real life and pictures.
The relationship between photographic art and life gave rise to a new direction - the urban landscape, in which the dominant element is not nature, but the brainchild of society - the city with its numerous streets, architectural objects, squares, as well as an endless stream of cars and pedestrians.
The urban and classical landscape captivates even the most stingy photographers! And there is an explanation for this: by shooting in this genre you can get excellent shots without using expensive equipment.
All you need is desire, patience, a tripod, an SLR camera, and some skills in using it.
Shooting in this genre, as in any other genre, is, first of all, creative process, accompanied by your own vision of what is happening, but, oddly enough, there are many rules, the observance of which will save you from failure.
Landscape photography
Close your eyes for a moment and imagine: in front of you are stretched out spaces of unprecedented beauty and it seems that as soon as you press the shutter, the most beautiful image that the world has never seen will appear on the camera display...
Capture this episode in your memory and open your eyes, your fantasy will remain a fantasy, and you will never learn how to photograph a landscape if you neglect the rules listed below.
- Maximum sharpness. Many photographers practice shooting landscapes with an open aperture, however, “many” is not an indicator of good work.
A classic technique for landscape photography is focusing on the entire image (shooting with a closed aperture).
Usually it is enough to make simple camera settings to get a sharp and moderately exposed photo: the slider is around f/11-16, but you can trust the automatic if you shoot at . However, to avoid movement, it is better to shoot landscapes using or.
- Having meaning. For any photo, it is important to have a semantic center of the composition, so that, as they say, the eye has something to catch on to. The center of attention can be anything: interesting shape building, tree, mountain, ship in the middle of a pestilence, etc.
- Rule of thirds in the overall composition of the frame. The location of the semantic center relative to all elements and details of the picture is as important as the presence of sharpness.
The reference says: a photo looks most advantageous when the objects being photographed are conventionally separated by lines that divide the image into three parts, both lengthwise and crosswise.
- Thoughtful foreground. Place the semantic centers on the front part of the photo, leaving “air space” in front, this way you will be able to create the effect of lightness and convey depth.
- Dominant element. The secret of successful nature photography has been revealed - either the sky or the foreground should dominate the picture.
If your photos don't fit this description, they'll likely be considered boring and ordinary.
If it happens that the sky during the photo shoot is uninteresting and monochromatic, move the horizon line to the upper third, so you will not allow it to prevail over the rest.
But if it seems that the airspace is about to explode or collapse on the ground with streams of lava, give it 2/3 of the frame and you will see how much the plot of what is happening can change.
- Lines. There are endless ways to capture the beauty of nature to its fullest. One of them is the technique of including active lines in the composition. With the help of lines, you can redirect the viewer’s gaze from one semantic point of the photo to another, while creating a certain enclosure of space.
Lines not only create patterns in a photo, but also add volume. This also applies to the horizon line, beyond which you constantly need an eye and an eye.
- Movement. Many people consider landscape photographs to be calm and passive. But this is not necessarily the case! You can add life to a photo with the help of water or wind, for example, use a DSLR camera to capture the violence of the ocean or a flowing waterfall, the blowing of the wind or the falling of leaves from a tree, the flight of birds or the movement of people.
The influence of weather and time on the quality of landscape photography
The Golden Rule of Landscape: “The scene and subject can change dramatically overnight, depending on weather conditions and time of year"
It is a mistake to believe that best time for natural shots - a sunny day.
In cloudy weather, in terms of lighting effects, it’s a pleasure to shoot: hail, sleet and thunderstorms can fill any landscape with an ominous, mysterious mood.
However, there is a side effect - the possibility of getting your feet wet, getting sick and saying goodbye to your DSLR forever, since moisture can have a devastating effect on all electronics.
To avoid this, plan your day in advance, take your preparations seriously: think about what to wear and what to wrap your camera in. For these purposes, it is best to purchase a waterproof case or at least one that protects the lens from drops getting on the lens.
Shooting in the rain doesn't have to be - it's just one way to achieve artistic images.
This creates a very soft diffused light, giving the pictures a lightness and a special sleepy look.
A forest covered in fog will look much more mysterious and attractive than on a sunny day.
Although if the shooting takes place in summer or autumn period, light shining through foliage can create an interesting look at an open aperture.
During sunset, using , you can photograph no less interesting landscapes, especially if the foreground is slightly backlit.
To avoid bunnies, use a lens hood or. This filter is simply irreplaceable in landscape photography.
Night photography is technically the most difficult. Taking pictures of nature in full nature is pointless due to the lack of light. Therefore, you need to go where there are artificial light sources - the city.
Uninterruptedly use the flash in in this case not worth it, raise the value to 800-1600 and go towards the city landscape!
A brief educational program on the topic of landscape photography has reached its point of no return! I hope this article was at least somewhat instructive and useful. I think that I have conveyed to you the meaning of how to photograph a landscape correctly in order to achieve the desired results.
If you are an aspiring photographer who wants to achieve positive success in photography, then everything is in your hands. The best place to start is with the concept of your DSLR camera. And one of the video courses below can become an assistant. Most beginning photographers, after studying this course, began to have a different attitude towards a SLR camera. The course will help you uncover all the important functions and settings of a DSLR, which is very important at the initial stage.
My first MIRROR- for owners of a CANON DSLR.
Digital SLR for a beginner 2.0- for owners of a NIKON DSLR.
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All the best to you, Timur Mustaev.
Arts. Photographing beautiful landscapes is prestigious and profitable, since the best representatives of this genre cost a lot of money. This article will discuss how to shoot landscapes and get beautiful photos. To obtain high-quality results, you must adhere to several simple rules in photography, know the basics of composition and use the right lenses. All this will be discussed in this article.
Key Features of Landscape Photography
An important feature of landscape photographs is the clarity of the image throughout the frame. The beauty of landscape photography lies in capturing nature in its entirety. Therefore, it is important to shoot landscapes with the narrowest aperture possible.
The quality of light is one of the components of good, beautiful landscape photography. There is a so-called Golden time photography when the lighting is most conducive to creating attractive shots. This is the time after dawn and at sunset. In the cold season, the sun is initially softer, so you can navigate according to the circumstances and take photographs when it is convenient. Despite the fact that golden time is considered to be the time immediately after dawn, you need to arrive at the shooting location itself at least an hour before the start of photography. With the time you have available, you will be able to find the best places to work.
To photograph a landscape, it is traditional to use a wide-angle lens; only with its help can you achieve the widest possible coverage of reality. Wide coverage can be achieved with a regular Kit lens (), but to get high-quality photographs you will need specialized optics that allow you to take high-quality shots. Aberrations, which appear in the form of colored halos, are more likely to occur when shooting with zoom lenses, so when shooting landscapes it is better to use a wide-angle prime.
How to shoot a landscape? – Camera settings
As already mentioned, in order to create a high-quality landscape shot, it is necessary to convey all the clarity of the image being depicted, for this it is necessary to shoot with a narrow aperture. Under narrow, an aperture of f/12 or narrower is assumed. Light conditions are not always conducive to photographing with a narrow aperture and fast shutter speed, so landscape photography often requires the use of a tripod or monopod for image clarity.
Most likely, you will have to work in manual or semi-automatic aperture priority mode. The cameras also have a special automatic landscape shooting mode, in which case the camera itself will set all the necessary parameters.
As for shutter speed, in aperture priority mode the camera will set it automatically, but in manual mode the correct setting falls on the shoulders of the photographer. In bright light, with an aperture of f/16, the shutter speed will be 1/100 sec., but since the lighting is not always ideal, the shutter speed can be significantly slower. For quality work You will most likely have to use a tripod, otherwise there is a risk of blurring the frame.
The sensitivity value should be minimal, otherwise noise and grain in the image will spoil the detail in the colors of the frame. To shoot a beautiful landscape, it is better to sacrifice the shutter speed, making it minimal. Try not to increase ISO under any circumstances.
Composition in landscape photography
The rule of thirds in composition was first used in painting, but is very popular today in photographic art. Precisely positioning the main components of a frame using this rule will produce outstanding results and beautiful images that your viewer will want to look at again and again.
I'm sure you've photographed landscapes two hundred times, and perhaps more, but most of these landscape photos probably didn't evoke any emotions in you. The human brain, when processing visual information received from your photo, is guided by certain rules, and only when these rules are met do emotions appear. Compliance with such rules depends not only on you: on the choice of composition, camera settings, but also on the time of shooting, as well as on the weather and other factors. This article will discuss compliance with such rules.
Features of landscape photography.
What is special about landscape photography? First of all, it is necessary to capture a large space, and for this you need a wide angle. If you have a digital compact, set the zoom to wide-angle and select the “landscape” preset. If you have a DSLR camera, use a wide angle on your lens. Both zoom lenses and fixed focal length lenses are suitable for this. If you have an amateur SLR camera, then use an equivalent focal length of no more than 24 mm. Of course, using a zoom is always convenient, especially if it covers long focal lengths. But in this case you have to sacrifice a little picture quality. The more expensive the zoom lens, the higher its quality, but still it cannot be compared with a prime lens in terms of image quality. The laws of optics cannot be abolished.
Some cameras and cheap budget lenses produce noticeable vignetting - darkening at the edges of the frame, as well as geometric distortion - barrel-shaped changes in proportions. This is also useful to take into account when shooting. Distortions can be corrected in a graphics editor. Sometimes geometric distortions give a photo more expressiveness.
Let's compose the frame correctly.
First, compose the frame and evaluate it, perhaps you need to add something or, conversely, remove it from the frame. This can be done using zoom, bringing the scene closer or further away. Perhaps if you move a little to the side, the scene will look much more advantageous from a new angle. If there are unnecessary details in the frame that absolutely do not fit with the landscape, then it is better to exclude them. Take the time to take a few steps to do this. See how the picture changes in the viewfinder. Sometimes for best composition try changing the angle of the camera, going up to a hill, or vice versa, sitting down and taking a picture from a lower point.
It is advisable that the frame is not divided horizontally exactly in the middle (except for those artistic techniques when you need to show the sky and the earth, or the sky and the sea, equally expressive). It is much better when the horizon line intersects 1/3 of the frame height.
Use the rule of thirds. Leave more of the part that has greater semantic and artistic value. For example, when shooting the sea and sky, you want to show clouds, which means the sky should occupy 2/3 of the frame height and vice versa, if you want to show the water surface, then let the water occupy 2/3 of the frame height. If there are large objects in the frame, for example a large stone or a lone tree, also position them according to the rule of thirds at the intersection of lines
In landscape photography there is another time-tested rule: the foreground should not be empty. Try to fill the foreground with something suitable. It can be anything that looks harmonious with the landscape: bushes, stones, flowers, fallen leaves, etc. The gaze should “catch” on the objects in the foreground.
It is ideal when landscape photography uses three plans: foreground, middle and distant. With this composition, your photo will acquire the necessary volume. It’s good if the foreground occupies a large part, the middle one less, and the background even less.
Landscape and depth of field.
A large depth of field for landscape photography has a very great importance. In a landscape photo, everything should be sharp, all the details from the foreground to the background. To increase the depth of field, you need to reduce the relative aperture opening, for this you need to increase its numerical value. For modern lenses, this value will be in the range from 7 to 14; which value is suitable depends on the lens. If you close the aperture further, then due to the characteristics of the matrices of amateur technology, the sharpness will begin to drop. Subsequently, you can increase the sharpness a little using Photoshop.
Shooting water landscapes
If you want to shoot a landscape with a stream or waterfall, then you will probably shoot it with a short shutter speed to freeze the movement of the water; indeed, in some cases you get excellent results, but in most cases the picture will turn out lifeless, frozen, but you remember that life is in motion. Therefore, increase the shutter speed to at least 1/30 of a second, thereby adding dynamics to the water, making it lively and a little viscous. As a rule, the most interesting results are obtained in the shutter speed range of 1/30 - 1/2 second. Unusual pictures can be taken with shutter speeds of 1 or 2 seconds or even longer. At long exposures, water can resemble a column of salt, a frozen “stone” stream, or a dense haze.
When shooting with long shutter speeds, it is necessary that the camera remains motionless while photographing, so that the “blur effect” only works for water, without blurring the details of the landscape. In this case, having a tripod makes life much easier. If you don’t have a tripod, you can fix the camera on a hard surface like a stone, stump, or fallen tree trunk. If this is not possible, you can try resting your hands on some stationary object.
When shooting seascapes near sunset, try increasing the shutter speed in the same range to achieve this effect. To get high-quality results, use a tripod.
Features of landscape photography on the beach.
For an automatic camera, “beach” conditions may be too difficult. You may end up with an underexposed, “gray” photo with a dark silhouette against a gloomy sky. In many digital cameras There is a “snow/beach” scene program that will set the necessary parameters, for example, introduce exposure compensation. If your camera has manual settings, you can adjust the exposure. When shooting on the beach, you can use a UV protective filter. The level of ultraviolet radiation is very high. It has a strong effect on the sensitive element. Photos taken with an ultraviolet or neutral density filter look more natural.
Backlighting in landscape photography.
Backlighting looks very impressive in photographs. In this case, the light source is behind the object. You can use backlighting to take a silhouette photograph. Backlighting produces an interesting effect when photographing the surface of the water. The light glides across the water surface and it seems that the water is shimmering.
Great photo come out in the backlight of the setting sun
Using filters
Light filters will significantly improve your photos. For landscape photography, it is best to use gradient and polarizing filters.
A gradient filter is a filter whose top part is dark and the bottom part is completely transparent. A gradient filter allows you to dim the brightness of a whitened, featureless sky or emphasize its texture in cloudy weather.
A polarizing filter is used in cases where you need to highlight the blue sky and clouds against its background. It also allows you to remove glare from the water making it transparent
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We devote the second part of our series to shooting on fresh air: our objects are landscapes and architecture. Whether you're going out for an evening walk or going on a hike in the mountains, you can find suitable scenes everywhere. But what should a photographer take into account, what camera settings to choose, what programs are best suited? Our five simple tips will help you.
How to Photograph Landscapes and Architecture: Your eyes travel through the photo until they stop at a church.
1. Use the right technique
In 90% of cases for good photos For landscapes, you'll need a wide-angle lens. Most wide-angle prime lenses and zoom lenses are between 14mm and 35mm film equivalent. Those who want more options with a single camera should choose either a standard 24-70mm zoom lens for full-frame cameras or an 18-55mm zoom lens for APS-C cameras.
What about the remaining 10%? Sometimes "normal" or telephoto lenses are required for landscape and architecture photography. But they are required if you are far from your subject. Professionals also use PC-E lenses or shift lenses, which can be shifted or rotated relative to the frame window. Why - we will explain in paragraph 4.
How to Photograph Landscapes and Architecture: At night, you'll need a tripod to get good photos. Or you will have to open the aperture too much and install high values ISO. 2. Set up your camera
As a rule, photographs of landscapes and buildings are still lifes. Therefore, you are most often free to choose the shutter speed. Shutter speed varies depending on the time of day: thousandths of a second during the day or a few seconds at night for magical long exposure photos.
What is more important is the aperture value. Our advice is to work in aperture priority mode (Av or A) and select an aperture value between F8 and F16. Larger or smaller values do not give optimal sharpness, the key word being diffraction.
Who wants to achieve best result and get the sharpest possible background even at a great distance, you should study such a concept as hyperfocal distance. It refers to the focusing distance you set on the lens to create a seemingly infinite depth of field. This criterion depends on the focal length, matrix size and aperture value; you will have to calculate it yourself, or an assistant program can do it for you.
How to photograph landscapes and architecture: Photomontage? No, just HDR. 3. Proper preparation
What should you pay attention to when photographing landscapes? Point and release the shutter - and you're done! Or? Not really: landscape photography is one of the most difficult areas of photography. Bright skies, deep shadows - all this requires a large dynamic range. Otherwise, you will have great grass in your photo, but the sky will be heavily overexposed, and the dark areas of the photo will fade into deep black. In any case, we recommend that you meter the exposure across the entire frame and turn on a dynamic optimizer, for example, “Active D-Lightning”.
If you have time, take photos in HDR or DRI format. Place the camera on a tripod and take several shots with different exposure values (bracketing). Take at least three, and preferably five, photos with exposure compensation values ranging from -2 to +2 EV, which you can combine into one photo on your computer. By underexposing the frame, you will get a bright, relief sky, and in the overexposed frame, details become clearly visible even in the shadows. The same advice applies to photographing in rooms with windows.
How to photograph landscapes and architecture: Two colors and nothing more. 4. Compose your shot correctly
When shooting landscapes, you need to remember a couple more useful things. Don’t overwhelm the horizon; for this you can use a level, analog or digital. To get a beautiful photo, do not forget about the rule of thirds: two-thirds is the sky, and one-third is the landscape, or vice versa. This will make your photo look natural. It’s good if your photo has some kind of semantic emphasis, for example, beautiful house or a pretty tree.
When photographing from behind, you will encounter the problem of falling lines. It seems as if the houses are falling back. This happens when you hold the camera tilted upward to take a photo of the entire building. After all, you can't override the laws of physics, so you'll have to use a program like Adobe Lightroom to "straighten" the image. In this case, part of your photo will have to be sacrificed for cropping. When taking photos, be sure to leave some space around the building. If you don't want to put up with this, use so-called shift lenses. By moving and rotating the lens you can even out this skew. But prices for such lenses start from a thousand euros.
How to photograph landscapes and architecture: Thanks to the RAW format, you can slightly adjust the dynamic range of your photo. In any case, we recommend that you shoot in RAW format and work with the dynamic optimizer. During subsequent processing, it is unlikely that under- and overexposed areas of the image will be pulled out well, so use a tripod, even if you think you can hold the camera still. Using it will help you create great pictures: for example, panoramas, long exposure photographs, HDR.
Landscape is probably the most popular genre that amateur photographers use to introduce themselves to artistic photography. There are many reasons for this.
Firstly, this genre is the most accessible. Unlike staged studio photography, in which you need to at least pay for renting a photo studio, nature will not escape you. If the photo is unsuccessful, then you can go to the same place again, but, for example, at a different time of day or in different weather.
Secondly, the landscape is not very demanding on the level of photographic equipment. Of course, it will be difficult to take high-quality photographs of a landscape with a cheap compact device or smartphone, but an amateur DSLR, mirrorless camera or a more or less advanced compact camera can provide quite acceptable results.
Thirdly, a landscape does not require haste, unlike, say, a reportage. It gives you the opportunity to experiment with camera settings and shooting point, try, and finally abandon the automatic mode in favor of manual. To some extent, this is filming “for the soul,” and some people find the filming process more enjoyable than watching the footage.
Based on this, one may get the opinion that landscape is a very simple genre, the lot of dummies and housewives (one “pretentious” wedding photographer put it this way, I won’t name the name). In my opinion, only those who have not tried to delve into the intricacies of landscape composition, limiting their creativity to views from the window of a house or car, can argue this way. How then to explain the fact that out of millions of landscape photographs published on the Internet, only a few evoke a feeling of admiration? So, the genre is not so simple...
What do you need to know to become good landscape photographers?
I hope you understand that the topic of landscape photography is very voluminous and it is simply impossible to fit it into a standard article on the site, so I will only talk about basic things. There are only two of these things - exposure and composition.
Exposition- this is the total light flux captured by the matrix during the opening of the shutter. This light flux is dosed using three parameters - shutter speed, aperture, ISO sensitivity. If you don’t know what this is, or have simply forgotten, I recommend pausing reading the article and going to the Photo Tutorial. In addition to text and pictures, at this link you will find a camera “simulator”, which can be used to track how exposure settings affect the resulting image. Correct exposure is the basis of technical image quality. More to technical quality sharpness can be attributed, but I think there is no need to explain in detail what it is :) Although, if you wish, you can use the chapter of the Photobook.
Composition- This mutual arrangement and the interaction of objects and light sources in the frame. To put it simply, if the viewer understands what the photographer wanted to tell and show with these photographs, they say that there is a composition. If a photograph is a jumble of objects that are not connected to each other in any way, interfere with each other and do not carry any special meaning, then there is no composition. Or is it so sophisticated that not everyone can understand what they wanted to show?
Let's not dig into the jungle of composition rules for now, but remember two simple rules:
- Simple compositions out of 1,2, a maximum of 3 key objects are created relatively easily, and are also easily perceived by the viewer. You shouldn’t try to fit everything you see into the frame - a road, a hill, a forest, a lonely tree, a cloud, a fence, a goat in a meadow, a bridge in the distance. Concentrate on the most important and important things. Any photograph, even landscape photography, must have a plot or motive. Try not to take into the frame those objects that have nothing to do with it.
- Equilibrium. Try to ensure that key objects are evenly distributed across the frame, do not interfere with each other, and do not obscure each other. It will help you with this rule of thirds. Mentally divide the frame into 3 parts horizontally and 3 parts vertically something like this:
For many cameras, you can even enable the display of such a grid on the screen. Try to “pull” large key objects to these lines, and small ones to their intersections. Intersections are also called visual centers.
If there is only one main subject in the frame, try to place it as close as possible to one of the visual centers, and so that more space remains in the direction where the subject is “looking”. Let me give you a specific example:
The house “looks” to the left in the photo, so we’ll give it more space on the left. But what if there are more key objects? Yes, everything is approximately the same - arrange them so that they “lie” on the line of thirds, and some of their prominent parts are combined with the visual centers:
However, the rule of thirds, no matter how good it is, cannot always be applied. If objects are not tied to the lines of thirds and visual centers in any way, simply position them so that there is some hint of symmetry between them relative to the center of the frame.
The above photo doesn't fit the rule of thirds by any stretch of the imagination, but it nevertheless has symmetry and balance. Take away at least one element, this balance will be disrupted.
Many people have a question - how to place the horizon line in the frame. In the middle? A little higher? A little lower? Let's take a closer look.
Example 1.
This is a composition with an “upper” horizon. It is used when you need to emphasize a small object in the foreground. In this case, it is a stone lying in water. It is located exactly in the “golden ratio” (plus or minus half a centimeter).
What will happen if in this case we use the “lower” horizon? Let's mentally lower the shooting point to the level of the height of the stone. It turns out that the stone will be against the backdrop of the dark distant shore, that is, it will be “lost.” The balance of the photo will also be lost - its bottom will be overloaded with details compared to the top.
That is, in a picture with an “upper” horizon, the foreground is key.
Example 2
And this is a composition with a “lower” horizon. It should be used if you need to emphasize distant or medium shot. In this case, there is a close-up shot (a meadow on the shore of a lake), but it carries virtually no semantic meaning.
But let's mentally remove the foreground - what do we get? Nothing good! The picture becomes flat - it loses depth and volume. Therefore, even with a “low” horizon, the presence of a foreground is very desirable.
However, there are situations when you have to deviate from the golden ratio rule. Rarely, but they do happen.
Example 3.
This is a shot with a "middle" horizon. This composition should be used when we are dealing with reflections of objects in water. In this case, the upper and lower parts of the photo complement each other perfectly. But you need to think seriously before using the “middle” horizon and avoid it if possible (except in cases where it is the only option for implementing the idea of the photo). Very often, the inept use of this compositional technique leads to the fact that the horizon “hurts the eyes.”
Pay attention to the picture on the right. This is a typical compositional mistake, try not to repeat it. The plot is completely devoid of dynamics - the viewer moves his eyes along the shore line (as if it attracts him with a magnet) from one edge of the picture to the other and is unable to understand the author’s idea. It’s not even clear which object is the main one in the frame. The shore is not suitable for this role, since it is too homogeneous and monotonous, there are practically no details visible on it. The only thing that can be regarded as the main object is the gaps between the clouds on the right side of the image. But then the role of the shore is not clear at all, it gets in the way, but you can’t get away from it... Whatever you say, the composition of the photo is simply not good! By the way, this is one of my first photos:)
Example 4
There is no horizon line! To be precise, this photo cannot be called fully landscape. It's something like minimalism. Beauty is in simplicity. But this “simplicity” must be carefully verified so that there is nothing superfluous other than what evokes some kind of emotion in the viewer. The title of the work is "Come back...".
This work benefits from its plot and internal dynamics. The diagonal composition, which emphasizes movement, plays a significant role in this. That is, a fisherman on a boat sails into the distance (to the upper left corner), and a blade of grass from the lower right reaches behind him, as if saying “where are you going???” By the way, this photo was quite highly appreciated by professional photographers.
The absence of a horizon can be used very effectively in “minimalist” photographs. Required condition- the presence of internal dynamics (that is, the photograph should direct the viewer’s attention in the direction intended by the author) and reducing objects to a minimum (there may even be only one object, but it must be positioned so that it is off-center, but the photograph does not lose balance) . In general, I think there will be a separate article about minimalism.
Tonal solution
The second one is very important feature photography is its tonal (color) solution. Since color affects the psyche, the tonal solution is one of the main components of the mood of the photo. The tonal solution can be of several types.
1. Photo in bright colors
Helps convey lightness, calmness, and tranquility. Subtle but pleasant colors were used. It is important that the plot be suitable for such a tonal decision. In this case, it is a quiet spring day. Very important technical point The main point is to ensure that when shooting (or processing) you do not “blend” light areas into whiteness (to prevent the loss of information about plutons).
2. Shot in dark tones
These are mainly night shots. To be fair, it is worth noting that photographing nature at night is a fool’s errand. The foreground will be completely black, and the background will have a fairly dark sky. For night shooting you need to go to the city with its lanterns and glowing windows. Night shots look very good in cool blue tones (which is achieved during processing). In this case, it is played on the contrast of the anxious mood associated with the overall cold tonality and the warm light in the windows, bringing peace. In general, yellow on blue almost always looks good (but not vice versa!).
3. High contrast
This is the case when the picture simultaneously contains both dark and bright hues, ranging from absolutely black to absolutely white. Such an aggressive tonal solution has an exciting effect on the psyche. The main problem in implementing this tonal solution is the transmission of halftones. The dynamic range of the camera is often not enough to correctly convey both highlights and shadows (the given example is no exception), so a significant part of the image field may be occupied by black or white areas (loss of information). But if you still manage to reduce these losses to a minimum, sometimes you can get some pretty spectacular pictures.
Perspective
When we stand on a railroad track and look into the distance, we see that parallel rails converge on the horizon to one point. This is what perspective is. In relation to photography, this concept can be formulated as follows: perspective is the ratio of the angular sizes of identical objects located at different distances from us.
The transfer of perspective depends on the focal length of the lens. Let me give you an example.
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f=80mm | f=200 mm |
If you look closely at these two photographs, you will notice that the foreground was shot at the same scale, but the background with a 200mm lens turned out to be larger. But there is one "BUT". The 200mm lens has a noticeably smaller angle of view than the fifty-kopeck lens, so I had to move very far from the subject to place it in the frame. In general, focal lengths up to 80 mm (equivalent) are considered the “landscape” range. The most commonly used focal lengths are from 28 to 35 mm. in this case we get a pronounced perspective and depth of the photo. When shooting at long focal lengths (with a telephoto lens), the perspective is very weak and the picture may seem flat.
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f=28 mm | f=460 mm |
As we can see, in the photograph taken with a wide-angle (28mm) in the field of the frame there is a space from 2 meters (sandy bottom) from us to infinity (far shore). The perspective is clearly expressed, the transfer of volume is noticeable. It is possible to say with some accuracy how far from us it is to the sand spit or to the far shore.
A photograph taken with a telephoto lens (460mm) has virtually no perspective. It is very difficult to judge by eye the distance from the trees in the foreground (at the bottom edge of the frame) to the cranes in the background. The photo looks completely flat. In fact, the distance between the foreground and background is more than a kilometer!!!
However, I must note that you can also shoot wonderful landscapes with a telephoto. But there is one caveat. Since the telephoto camera has virtually no geometric perspective, you should use tonal perspective. That is, when the separation of plans is observed due to the difference in their illumination (or visibility).
Here clear example, illustrating the concept of "tonal perspective". With the same focal length of 460mm, the image does not lose volume due to the pronounced separation of plans due to fog.
Lighting
The original definition of photography is “light painting”. Beautiful light turns a simple image of an object into a work of art. Oddly enough, the role of lighting is often undeservedly forgotten. And completely in vain.
In landscape photography, we only have one light source - the sun, and we need to adapt to it. Let's consider characteristics lighting in different time days.
1. MORNING
It is rightly believed that the most Better conditions illumination occurs in the early morning immediately after sunrise. The sun does not shine very brightly through the veil of morning fog and gives a very gentle and warm light. The fog itself, being a light diffuser, provides us with great opportunities to use tonal perspective.
Fog works wonders! Notice how perfectly it conveys the volume and depth of the image. And the backlight, generating diverging rays, gives the picture a special chic. Now imagine what a photo taken in the same place, but on a bright sunny day, will look like? Absolutely right - nothing special! Regular trees, ordinary grass. We've seen this thousands of times! And with morning light and fog, you can take very interesting pictures almost anywhere!
What to do if the sun is low and there is no fog (for example in the evening)? Use backlight.
Backlight can be used very successfully when there is something in the foreground that will be backlit (with the overall dark tone of the photo). For example leaves or flowers. However, when using backlighting we encounter two obstacles.
1. Camera dynamic range. As you can see, in the above photo it was not enough and the sky turned white. (shot by the way with the same Olympus 860 with which I took my first steps in photography)
We've dealt with backlighting, and now let's look at some examples of what good things can be seen in the morning hours. This is definitely heaven.
Very often on a summer morning in good weather there are very beautiful cirrus clouds in the sky, backlit by the sun. But to shoot them you need: 1. a wide-angle lens, 2. a polarizing filter is very desirable, which increases the contrast of the sky. (read more about what a polarizer does). The first photo was taken just after dawn. The second - after 1 hour. No processing was done in Photoshop. Notice how beautiful and unusual the clouds look when illuminated by the low sun (first frame). The second one looks more ordinary - almost the same as taken on a sunny day.
2. DAY
A sunny day is actually the worst time for artistic landscape photography. The only thing that can make a “daytime” landscape interesting is, first of all, a beautiful place combined with a well-thought-out composition. If morning photographs are more like paintings, then daytime ones are “postcards”. Yes, they are nice to look at, but they are unlikely to “hook us to the quick.”
Cloudy day - also not the best option, because the light is uninteresting. It takes a lot of effort to capture something truly worthwhile. Most of the photographs come out without mood - the same postcards, but “gloomy”. Very important role The sky plays a role in the artistic value of a photograph during daytime shooting. It is very difficult to photograph a normal landscape if the sky is completely clear or covered with a monotonous veil of clouds. Photographs in which clouds (cirrus or cumulus) play some role in the composition look much more interesting.
As already mentioned, a polarizing filter is used to make the sky more expressive. Cirrus clouds are interesting because they usually occur at some interval, which can be advantageously used as a basis for realizing the rhythm and dynamics of the image.
It should also be mentioned that a lot of interesting things can be seen in unstable weather, when dark thunderclouds can be present at the same time and the sun is shining. And if you're lucky, you can see absolutely creepy, but very beautiful phenomena such as, for example, atmospheric fronts.
If you notice that something is wrong with the weather, don’t rush to hide!It is quite possible that “Armageddon” will be very beautiful!:) By the way, this phenomenon is very fleeting - no more than 1-2 minutes. Therefore, try to take a good shooting point in advance (and one that has somewhere to hide from the rain:)
3. EVENING, SUNSET
The main thing that is most often photographed in the evening is sunsets. Absolutely everyone takes them off and many times! But for some reason, most sunset pictures sent to photo sites receive a very average rating.) . And no wonder! Spectators have already seen so many sunsets that it is difficult to surprise them with anything.
So, in order to capture a quality sunset (from an artistic point of view), you need to carefully consider the idea of the photo. Point-and-click photography is doomed to fail because it's a cliché idea. So, the main components of success:
- Colors and shapes. Keep in mind that very interesting color combinations sunsets occur during weather changes. Sometimes oddly shaped clouds appear on the horizon. The color of the sky is usually very beautiful and unusual.
- Dynamics. Avoid static subjects at all costs. Remember, the idea itself is terribly hackneyed, so look for something that can give the photo a “zest.”
Since there is very little light in the evening, the ground tends to be very dark. That's why sunsets are most often filmed over water.
This is one of my few sunset landscapes that I consider more or less successful. For a better understanding, I recommend viewing the enlarged version. What do I think makes this photo successful?
- Contrast between a cold overall tone and a warm stripe on the horizon
- The rhythm that is formed by the waves on the lake and the clouds in the sky.
- Image depth. There is also a clearly defined foreground (reflection of clouds in the water), middle (forest) and distant (horizon).
- Conciseness. Nothing extra. By and large, there are only 2 clearly identified main objects in the frame - the sun (with reflection) and the forest on the shore on the right.
One more example. A photo that received quite a high rating.
This was already taken after sunset. Beauty is in simplicity! There is only one object in the picture, but it is well located relative to the background (which, by the way, forms a diagonal) and the “golden ratio”. The color scheme of the image played a big role (again, the contrast between the cold tones in the upper left corner (LWU) with the warm ones in the right bottom corner(PNU).
But let's not focus on sunsets, but turn our gaze in the other direction and I'm sure that we can see something quite worthy there.
But for such filming you already need a tripod. Pictures taken closer to night are distinguished by a special and sometimes very pronounced mood, which is due to the predominance of cold tones. For originality, I recommend placing small objects in the frame that somehow contrast with the overall tonality.
4. NIGHT
Night photography is one of the most difficult in terms of technicality. As already mentioned, it is useless to photograph nature at night. Since there are no natural light sources (the moon doesn’t count - it’s too weak). Therefore, for night shooting you need to go where there is artificial light. A tripod is required. General recommendations are:
- Concise photographs look better
- Don't overuse long shutter speeds. It is still night and the photo should be in a dark tone.
- If you want to do tinting in Photoshop, for drawing general plan use cool tones, for light key objects - closer to warm ones.
- Some photographs in black and white look more interesting than in color. Keep this in mind.
Examples:
So what do we have?
Shot 1. Played on the contrast of warm tones given by the light source and the overall cold atmosphere.
Photo 2. Laconic composition. Nothing to add, nothing to take away. Clouds illuminated by the moon play a very important role - they seem to compositionally connect the moon with a dried tree. That is, they are openwork like tree branches and at the same time “repeat” the moonlight.
Pictures 3 and 4. Agree that without the fog they would be much less interesting!
A few technical points
WHY SHOOT RAW?
RAW- this is nothing more than information taken directly from the camera’s matrix and recorded on a flash drive without processing. Digital SLRs typically use 36-bit color (12 bits per channel), compacts use 8-10 bits per channel. At the same time, in the format JPEG (both DSLRs and compacts) use a color depth of 8 bits/channel. That is, when processing information by the device’s processor, we inevitably lose information. Which one? That's another question. Let's look at an example.
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Pictures taken by the device Canon 300D. Left - JPEG , shot automatically. On right - RAW , filmed under exactly the same conditions, processed with a converter from the composition Adobe Photoshop CS. By JPEG we see that the device made an error in measuring the exposure (part of the sky fell into whiteness) and in the white balance (the colors turned out cooler than necessary). Correct these errors with only JPEG quite difficult - information about the color of the sky is lost, it is impossible to restore it in its original form.
And here those additional 4 bits per channel come to the rescue (in the 300D RAW 36-bit - R+G+B), which were lost when processing information by the camera processor, which "brought" the representation of color to the form R, G, B. Using this information, we can correct the white balance, tighten up the shadows, and even save “burnt out” highlights. (if the overexposure is not very strong).
In addition, RAW The converter allows you to set an arbitrary level of brightness, contrast, saturation, and image clarity, correct noise reduction and even chromatic aberration (and these operations are performed with a 36-bit image). And when shooting in JPG These parameters in the device can only be changed in steps (usually for each parameter there are 5 gradations - -2..-1..0..1..2), and not all settings are available. During processing JPEG in the editor program we are no longer dealing with a 36-bit, but with a 24-bit image, that is, one way or another we cannot use all the information that we could have using shooting in RAW.
WHAT TO DO IF THE DEVICE DOES NOT ALLOW YOU TO REMOVE RAW?
The most important thing is not to trust the machine. If in simple conditions illumination (for example, a sunny day) it will probably cope with the task, then in the morning or evening (and even more so at night) you will have to manually specify the white balance and/or enter exposure compensation. It’s better to take a photo a little darker than overexpose it - “pulling out” shadows is much easier than correcting highlights that have fallen into whiteness. The easiest way is to use a tool Shadows/Highlights , which is present in Photoshop CS (Image/Adjustments/Shadows-highlights)
Here is a clear example of the capabilities of this tool. To extend the shadows, use the "group" controls Shadows". Amount and Tonal Width (switch to the advanced mode of the tool) set the degree of shadow correction, and Radius- "span" of the tool (it's easier to see how it works than to explain in words:). Default Radius=30px and around dark areas, light halos may form. I recommend increasing the radius.
So...
I'm not finished yet! Everything that has been said here is nothing more than my subjective opinion. I'm sure that after some time I will want to change a lot. But for now, this is my current view of landscape as a genre of artistic photography - so simple at first glance and so complex if you dig deeper!:)If you have any questions or suggestions, please send them by email, I will be happy to answer.