Learn About Digital Photography - Take Better Digital Landscape Images

Want to add landscape images to your portfolio? Here are a few hints about how to improve your landscapes.

Perhaps the very best time for taking the most dramatic photos of landscapes is either at dawn or at dusk. So sleeping in is not one of the benefits for serious landscape photographers.

The more you learn about digital photography, the more you will realize how much is involved. It is much more than pointing and shooting. And timing is part of the process.

If you ever attend a workshop, the first thing the instructor will tell you is that in order to take better pictures, you need to shoot at the right time. That is before 9 am or after 4 pm to get the good light. In the middle part of the day, there is just too much light for your camera’s image sensor to handle without losing valuable pixel information. There is just something special about the light during those really early or late times that makes your images much more pleasing to look at.

Aside from those hours during which you get the “sweet light”, there are some other times when color and lighting really stand out. One of those times is just before a storm. If a storm is a-brewin’, get outside with your camera and tripod, because the colors really “pop” during an impending storm. However, if there is lightning associated with the clouds, be very careful.

You will also want to have the right equipment on hand to take better pictures of the landscape. Equipment for landscapes would include your camera and tripod, of course. You will want to put your widest lens on you camera. Lenses as wide as 12mm or 18mm work best for these types of images. However, if your widest lens is 24mm, don’t let that stop you.

One other piece of equipment that may be helpful is a neutral density filter. The job of this filter is to close the gap in the range of light your camera captures. Basically, that means that there will be part of the picture that is shaded to reduce the brightest area so that the pixel information is not lost. Truth is that there is not an image sensor in existence that can see the same dynamic light range that the human eye can detect, so we have to trick the image sensor.

If you don’t have a neutral density filter, you can do essentially the same thing by taking more than one shot of the same scene using something called “bracketing”. This is where you allow more or less light into the camera by changing either the shutter speed or the aperture. You then take those images and combine them using your photo editing software, getting something called an HDR (high dynamic range) image. This is a technique used by many advanced hobbyists and professionals, but it is not difficult with the right software. Yes, using software to edit your images is just one more thing you need to learn about digital photography.

Still one more technique you can put into your bag of tricks is the use of a panorama of the landscape. To do this, set your camera on a sturdy tripod that is level. Take a series of two or more images that you will later combine in your photo editing software so that you show an entire horizon in one image. It is a very dramatic technique.

Well done landscapes are a joy to behold, whether it is mountains, valleys, plains, or cityscapes. Using the proper techniques will get you many ooh’s and aah’s from your fans and friends.

Take the time to learn about digital photography and you will soon take better pictures and get much more satisfaction out of your images, not to mention the confidence and comfort you will experience from knowing how to effectively use your equipment. Visit http://www.betterphotos123.com for more help.

Happy Shooting!