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Alley Cat's tips to great photography

Landscapes can have landmarks in it, say a very famous bridge. Most landscape photos are meant to be beautiful but they also need some composition too. In this one there is reflection, motion, depth, and dominance of object. Photo by Alison Watkins.

ABOVE: Taken on vacation in South Tahoe, I used the snowy ground and the cloudy sky to frame the trees and the mountains. BELOW: I used rule of thirds to plant the horizon right on the bottom line in my imaginary tic-tac-toe lines. Photos by Alison Watkins

Follow this column for photography techniques and advice from Alison Watkins.

COLUMN
By ALISON WATKINS
fhspress.com Editor-in-Chief
Posted October 23, 2017

Chapter 7: Landscapes

Some of the most classic wallpapers on our electronic devices are vast landscapes. Our human brains live to see landscapes because most everyone does not see them on an everyday basis. Another quality our human brains see in landscapes is the feeling it can evoke, like purity or adventure. Not all landscapes have to have a purpose; some can simply be pretty shots to show where you went on vacation.

When taking landscapes, be sure to follow one rule ... use a small aperture! Aperture matters so much because it affects two things, the amount of light let in by the lens and the depth of field. The smaller apertures are F/22 and F/32. Adjust your other settings accordingly. Landscapes are vast photos and they are very deep, in a sense. Everything should be in clear focus, otherwise unfocused parts may be distracting to the viewer. Always keep in mind a small aperture is F/22-32 and a large aperture is F/1.4-3.5; small apetures are used for many other types of photos, but not landscapes.

Your lens choice is very important as well. By using a wide focal length you can get a lot of land and make the photo seem even more vast. A wide angle lens can be 18-55mm, 35-80mm, or 24-70mm. Rarely will you use a zoom lens for a landscape unless you need to zoom past an obscurity.

Just because the outcome is a landscape does not mean that composition and design do not play a roll in the photo. Horizons should be horizantal, hence, horizon.

As I’ve said before, a photo is a once-in-a-lifetime moment captured in a single frame. So if possible, visit the desired landscape multiple times because the light changes, the clouds change, and the seasons may change too. Try shooting at different times of the day, including sunrise, sunset and night.

Next week I will be discussing how to capture a long exposure photograph, which would be necessary for certain types of nighttime photos because of the lack of light, or certain effects.

Check back at the same Alley Cat time, same Alley Cat channel!

alison.watkins@fhspress.com

Alley Cat's
Photo Tips

CHAPTERS

  1 Start shooting
  2 Cameras
  3 Composition
  4 Sunrises and Sunsets
  5 Black and White
  6 Portraits
  7 Landscapes
  8 Long Exposure
  9 Light PART ONE
10 Light PART TWO
11 Shoot in RAW
12 Contests
13 Back Button Focusing
14 The Challenges of
      Sports Photography
15 Studio Photography
16 Lenses
17 FX and DX
18 Street Photography
19 Painting with Light
20 Filters
21 Bokeh vs. Blurry
22 Tripods and Mounts
23 File Naming and
      Organizing

UP NEXT

-Printing and Resolution

COMING SOON
-Flashes
-Paid Gigs
-Gadgets and Gizmos
-HDR
-Film Photography

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