Photo credit: wili_hybrid
If you have no experience but you're thinking of venturing into landscape photography and make it a career, even as a part-timer, there are a few steps you need to take to learn the ropes.
Basically, you need to read books, take a course and visit relevant websites.
There are many books in the market spotlighting digital landscape photography.
There are two books that I can recommend to open your eyes and broaden your views.
To get a good start, Digital Landscape Photography Step By Step, by Michelle Perkins, is a compact book but it is packed with great advice about composition, the technique behind photographing sunsets, night work, and creating black and white images.
The next book with a straightforward title, Step-By-Step Digital Landscape Photography, by renowned photographer Tim Gartside, provides detailed info about this subject.
Gartside's book includes topics such as software manipulation of images, but also guides the novice through composition and the basic techniques of digital landscape photography.
If you are serious about landscape photography, you should take a course.
It will be to your advantage to learn what film to use, how to work with sunlight or other natural light, how to achieve a sense of balance and scale, how to shoot running water and other landscape photography issues that you might face.
You can also find many groups and message boards on the Internet that are designed for landscape photographers to meet, share photos and tips and ideas.
Once you have gone through the beginner's stage, then it's time for you to practise your landscape picture-taking and build your portfolio.,
To see how much you have achieved, it will do you some good to send some of your best photos to photo contests or magazines. These are good ways of breaking into the world of professional photography when you have no experience.
Here are some tips on digital landscape photography that might help you to get started on the right footing:
1. Point your digital camera lens upwards, and capture more of the sky. This can signify openness, freedom, and wide expanses - the effect you are striving to achieve in digital landscape photography.
2. The best time to shoot landscape pictures is during the first 2 hours and last 2 hours of daylight.
3. For panoramas: Meter all scenes beforehand and use the one with the least exposure. Then take all scenes with that constant setting.
4. Shooting in below zero degrees? You should keep your batteries warm by alternating sets between the camera and your inner pocket. Below zero temperatures shorten battery life.
5. Setting White Balance: For nature photography set WB to daylight.
The wonderful thing about digital photography is that you can be anywhere to capture beautiful scenes whether in the country or in the city.
You can travel the world to take great pictures. Or you can find beautiful landscapes right where you live.
All you need is to have an eye for such scenes. As one photographer puts it: "If you can open your eyes to the beauty and see it, then other people can see it in your photography."
Digital photography is amazing, it's an art form, it's emotional, and it's great fun and joy to be able to capture memorable landscape scenes. It's an exciting,fullfilling career.
Photo Credit: Steve Webel
