This issue, I thought I'd share some tips from staff photographer, Gayle Drakes. I hope you find them helpful.
Landscape Photography
The last time I did a post about the upcoming deadline for Village Square submissions, I encouraged you to try your hand at mobile phone photography, with a few tips for getting good images.
This time around, I thought it might be nice to chat a bit about landscape photography. For the purposes of this post, I am going to describe this as the sub-genre of photography that focuses on the natural world around us; it includes seascapes and coastal environments. I use the term "landscape" in a general sense to make a distinction from other areas of photography such as portraiture or food or architecture. Think brilliant sunsets, soaring mountains, flowering meadows, the cold beauty of snow-blanketed lands or the fascinating emptiness of desert terrain.
Landscape photography is my first love in photography. I get impatient trying to figure out the artificial lighting and posing required for taking good shots of people. But I will spend hours photographing a rock on the coast!
Below I will share three ideas that I have found personally helpful over the years of puttering about with my camera. Then I will suggest a little exercise that you can do to challenge yourself and perhaps get some interesting and different shots.
1. Pay Attention to the Light
Most of the time in landscape photography you are relying on the natural light that is around at the time. Sometimes you will see a photographer hanging about with their camera, seeming to do nothing but all the while looking up at the sky. Then the sun breaks through the clouds and they begin snapping away madly. They were waiting for the sun to come out. I believe that photography is ultimately about all light (but that is a discussion for another time). Light helps to give the subject definition and draws your eye around the photograph because we tend to look at the brightest parts of the photo first. If you find your shots look a bit dull, take it from a different angle that allows the available light to fall on the subject, or parts of the subject- or wait for the clouds to clear.
2. Zoom In
Close-ups aren't just for portraits. This may seem strange advice for taking pictures of big, beautiful landscapes. A wide-angle shot, i.e. zooming out, is a defining characteristic of landscape photography. It takes in as much of the scene as possible. But sometimes there are interesting shots in tucked away in the great expanse. Experiment with zooming-in a bit to select smaller parts of a scene and see what interesting shots you find there.
3. Make sure the horizon is straight!
An old photography tutor of mine had a pet peeve about slanted horizons. If your scene has the horizon in it, take a little more time to frame your shot and try to get the horizon area as straight as possible. Your camera or phone may also have an optional, overlay grid that appears on the screen as you shoot (check the settings menu). You can line up the horizon with one of the horizontal lines on the grid to help you straighten it. If you can use photo editing programs, many have a ruler feature that you can use to rotate and crop to straighten the horizon.
It can be a bit challenging to see when the horizon has uneven shapes like peaks and trees, but what you are aiming for is an even distribution of shapes and lines along the horizontal, the way your eye would see it. Sometimes photographers will experiment with tilting the horizon for a particular effect, but generally, the straight horizon will be more pleasing to the eye.
Exercise
Select a spot you think you know well, like a park. Pick a random spot, or have someone pick it for you, and mark it. This is your base. You are allowed to take shots only from there or any point within ten paces of that spot. Try to find 6 - 10 shots. The photos can be wide views of the scene or they can be close-up shots.
I did this exercise at the beach on the east coast of my island some years ago and I have attached several of the shots I got that day. Not all were successful (“Bathsheba Evening”, for example, has technical issues) but I thought these shots showed the variety you can get with this exercise. My favorite is, of course, the rocks!
Most importantly, focus on having fun. Choose the best shot you get and submit it to The Village Square for our October issue!
Bio: Gayle Drakes lives in her native Barbados and spends her spare time on writing, photography, and gaming. She recently joined the MFA program and is working toward the Fiction MFA. She is working on several novels in the science fiction and fantasy genres but has not yet published.