SHOP WINDOW
This picture is all about colour – it is of course what attracted me to take the picture in the first place. 1/200 second at f5.6, 20mm, 400 ISO. GH
ASSESSING MONOCHROME
There are colour subjects that don’t work in black and white and this is one of them. If I had been walking around taking black and white pictures I wouldn’t have given the shop window a second look. As your experience increases with monochrome you will learn to recognize the colours and light that will translate into strong black and white images.
SUMMER AT THE COAST
In colour, this seascape is like a pleasant watercolour painting. The boats and clouds have merged into the blue, giving a soft, summery look. 1/750 second at f6.7, 85mm, 400 ISO. GH
CHANGING THE MOOD
Translated into black and white, the picture has gained a dramatic atmosphere. The boats and sky now become the subject, which in the colour picture was the wall.
THE OUTBACK
Late afternoon in the Australian outback, and a huge storm was gathering. A shaft of light burst through the black clouds and lit the ghost gum trees; five minutes later I was running for the car in torrential rain. Many great landscapes have been taken just before a storm, so it’s worth getting wet. I underexposed by –2 stops to make sure that the picture was not too bright. 1/500 second at f11, 100mm, 400 ISO. JG
THE GREAT OUTDOORS
Landscape is a huge subject, and although it’s one of the most popular areas for photographers you may find it the most difficult in the book – partly because you have no control over the weather and the elements in the landscape, but also because of that popularity.
In these days of easy-to-use digital cameras, photo-sharing websites and microstock agencies that accept work from amateurs, the proliferation of photographic images has been staggering. The result is that most people now look at pictures with a more sophisticated eye, and a pleasant landscape shot among thousands competing for attention isn’t enough to satisfy a photographer who wants to be truly creative.
So this chapter is about learning ways to make your pictures stand out from the everyday shots. We shall demonstrate how landscapes are dramatically affected by changes in the light, and how you can use depth of field and filters to make your images powerful. Most importantly, we shall teach you how to isolate beautiful pictures from the great outdoors. When we first start out on our landscape journey, the majority of us take wide scenic views; it’s only when we learn to focus on sections of those views that our images start to become meaningful.
As with anything you want to shoot, understanding how to make the most of what’s in front of your lens will improve your pictures by leaps and bounds. This chapter will help you to make that big step up from just taking nice pictures of nice scenes to creating genuine photographic landscapes.
FINDING INTEREST IN FLAT LIGHT
The day was overcast and misty, so the light was flat – not at all my usual landscape light, but I decided to try out a roll of Ilford infra-red film I had with me. This cut through the haze and gave an almost etched look that amazed me, given that the situation had looked so unpromising. I added a sepia tone in Lightroom to give an antique feel. For a similar look, try infra-red film, the IR setting in the menu of your camera or the infra-red preset in the Lightroom Develop module. 1/125 second at f16, 35mm, 125 ISO film. JG
USING A FILTER TO ADD PUNCH
This crazy little atomic-looking cloud drifted past when I was sitting on a beach in Brittany. I had my camera with me, wrapped in a freezer bag to keep it sand-free, and thought the cloud so cute I had to photograph it. I used a polarizing filter to darken the blue sky and make the cloud stand out. Keeping your camera with you at all times means you don’t have that awful ‘if only’ feeling when something picture-worthy crops up. 1/1000 second at f11, 180mm, 200 ISO. JG
PROJECT 1: FINDING A FOCAL POINT
Unless a landscape has a dominant feature or a very strong pattern that can hold the eye in the picture it will tend to be just an ordinary scene that doesn’t detain the viewer for long.
Most landscape photographs benefit from a focal point such as a white farmhouse, a lone tree or, as shown here, a small boat – in this case added with Photoshop, in the absence of a focal point in the landscape itself. For a landscape with a natural focal point, check out the opening spread for this chapter – your eye goes straight to the white ghost gums because they are so much brighter than the surrounding landscape.
For this assignment we want you to go out and find a landscape with a prominent focal point. You don’t need a magnificent sweep of mountain or moorland – part of the business of being a photographer is finding visual interest in subjects that a casual observer might pass without a glance. The viewer’s eye is always drawn to signs of human activity, so a deserted tractor in a field, a barn or a house will usually work well, but you might choose to use a natural feature instead.
SEARCHING FOR THE LIGHT
Think about the possibilities of the angle of light in relation to your focal point, and whether you could make it more important in the picture at a different time of day. If the answer to that is yes, plan to come back rather than just settling for second-best. A compass is invaluable to a landscape photographer – they are not expensive, and you may even have one on a smartphone. On a sunny day, it’s not hard to work out that if your focal point is lit from the front in the morning sun and you want it backlit you need to come back in the evening, for example, but if the weather is dull you’ll be glad of a compass to tell you which way the light will fall when the sun is out.
Once you have begun to think about focal points you will soon look for one as second nature. However, while you should always search for the perfect photograph, a little digital help can be the answer where you have a lovely scene but the crucial point of focus is missing. So, for the second part of this project, shoot a landscape that needs a focal point, then find one in your archive and put it in; you’ll find details on how to do this in Combining Images. Again, remember the light – if your photograph is taken on a sunny day with strong shadows, a house, boat or tree with the light coming from a different direction will be an obvious fake.
EVENING SEASCAPE
I shot this seascape very late in the evening in the Highlands of Scotland. I like the warm light and the composition and I underexposed it by –1 stop to make it more dramatic. At