My 4 Most Important Tips to Learn how to Create Wonderful Landscape Photography

Interested in learning how to create awesome landscape imagery?  Here are 4 tips I recommend to propel you forward into the world of Landscape Photography (assuming you already understand a sturdy tripod and shooting in the red light of dawn and sunset are important factors).

1). Get your camera off of Program (P) mode and set it to either Aperture Priority (A) or Shutter Priority (S).  Aperture Priority lets you set the aperture and the camera will set the shutter speed.  Shutter Priority lets you set the shutter speed and the camera sets the aperture.  Because most images are taken on a tripod, shutter speed is less of an issue in my opinion (unless there is wind) so aperture priority would be my preference to start with.

2). Shoot in Raw format. Shooting in raw format gives you a huge amount of data in the file to work with, especially in the shadows and highlights of the photo.  The downside is images taken in raw look flat and won't impress anyone.  The colors, textures and light must be coaxed out of the image which can be done through an image processor like Lightroom, Photoshop, Luminar AI, Topaz, etc.  I use Lightroom and Photoshop.

3). Learn how to read the histogram on the back of your camera.  To ensure you are capturing all of the data you can, you need to understand the histogram.  Clipping occurs when you are leaving data out of the image either in the highlights or the shadows.  Use your +/- "Exposure" camera dial to move the data as far to the right as possible in the histogram without clipping any highlights. Shooting to the right creates less noise in the image which in some cases is hard to deal with.

4). Purchase Lightroom and Photoshop and learn how to use them manually.  I was told early on to never use presets, looks, or LUTs and it turned out to be the best piece of advice I ever received.  LUTs are buttons or sliders that allow you to select the "look" you like. You see, with the world moving to Artificial Intelligence (AI) in photo editing, many people are selling these one button solutions or sliders. The problem is your image will look like everyone else's because the AI will dictate how the photo should look within a few variations.  My advice is start with Lightroom, there are plenty of free lessons on Youtube and if you want to email me, I will forward you several names who have helped me over the years.  Then, once you are ready to move on, try your hand at Photoshop. 

Photoshop is a little more difficult, you create layers and each has the capacity to contain several corrections or enhancements to the image.  If you make a mistake, you can delete the layer and start over, leaving your original photo untouched.  I do all of my photo editing in a series of layers.  In the image above, there were 35 layers, each named with the specific enhancement. In a year or 2 from now, when I have increased my skills further, I may return to certain images, delete a particular layer(s) and create a new one using improved skills.  I believe understanding how to make manual adjustments in Lightroom and Photoshop is imperative, but however you decide to proceed, create your own style that will separate you from the pack and AI.

Good luck and good light to you.

About David Williams: I specialize in LDS Temples, Landscape Photography and Indigenous Cultural images of the Southwest. See my work at https://www.davidwilliamsphotography.com or follow on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/david_williams_photography_