The Essence of Landscape Photography

Photography is the ability to capture moments, views and scenes to the human civilization. It offers us a whole new dimension of documenting and archiving the things that we see, the views we admire and the life that we live. Landscape photography, is the genre of photography where the photographer captures a view of a landscape. Most often, these landscapes are majestic sceneries from the nature such as mountains, fields, and meadows, horizons at the sky, rivers, and beaches. They have all been the common object of landscape photography.

The genre of modern landscape photography has evolved to include views and scenes less majestic than a sunset or a mighty river. Photographers are now taking pictures of beautiful manmade landscapes such as city skylines, buildings, gardens, parks, rooms, and even furniture. Different terms have surfaced recently such as urban landscape photography, cityscape photography and seascape photography and so on.

Traditionally, it is believed that landscape photography captures the view of nature as we see it. So usually no animals or humans appear in landscape photography. Landscape photography captures the enormity of a view, its continuation and its indefiniteness. Professional landscape photographers tend to use high tech cameras that could capture much more detail to recreate that vastness and the feeling that overwhelms the human eye. But the big question is, how do you capture that enormous view exactly as it appears to you?

Story Telling: The first thing that you need to capture a breathtaking landscape photo is the vision to realize what makes a great photo. A great photograph, even if it is a landscape with little or no living object in it, tells a story. In case of classical nature photography, this story could be the beauty of the enormity of the landscape itself.
Take Stock: Once you have identified a great scene to capture, the next thing you need is the equipment. Landscape photography is different than other genres of photography. If you want to take a picture like the true professionals, then you need the professional equipment too. Thanks to the recent advancements in technology, compact digital cameras have become a household item. These common digital cameras are probably not the best equipment to take a photograph of a landscape, but sometimes they can be sufficient to satisfy the thirst of a hobbyist. Remember that landscape photography is about capturing the vastness of a scene. To recreate the overwhelming hugeness of the scene, you need a camera that can capture as much detail as possible and maybe even the details beyond the human eye.
More Stock: Apart from a camera, a landscape photographer needs other equipment such as a tripod to hold your camera still, a laptop if you want to see your photo in larger view right on the spot, and spare batteries for your camera or laptop. Depending on how you are going to capture the photograph, handle travel requirements, and other logistic factors you might need more accessories to accomplish these tasks. However, you can end up with a great picture of a landscape that is mesmerizing to the human eye.

It is true that most modern landscape photographers, whether they are amateurs or professionals, use image editing software such as Photoshop to enhance the details of their landscapes. However, it is not entirely true that you can't have all those details without using the Photoshop. As Antony Spencer, Guardian's 2010 Landscape photographer award winner said:

"People always say landscape photographers heavily Photoshop their work, but it's not true. I return to the same location 20, maybe even 30-40 times just to get the perfect image, it's just a case of waiting for the perfect light - the beautiful image you have in your mind"

This brings us to the next thing that you need to capture a great landscape photo, the light. The word photography itself is derived by combining the Greek words for light and drawing lines. Having the perfect light takes you halfway towards capturing a great photograph. But what exactly is the perfect lighting?

Light: Some professional landscape photographers even argue that when you are capturing a landscape, the light itself becomes the object that you need to capture. So basically, the light is the time when it becomes the most majestic and brings out the details that you want to capture. This light is the moment when you have the perfect balance of lights, reflections, enhancing the colors and shades, the shadows and the overall effect of the whole scene the way the photographer has imagined capturing it. In fact, light can be so crucial and defining that the pictures of the same landscape with the same angle, but in different lights can create a whole new view and a totally different scene.
Angle: The angle is the next thing that you need to improvise while taking a landscape photograph. Even though, a particular moment or scene might strike you as divine and perfect. But most professionals would tell you that exploring other angles can do magical things to a photograph. Moving your camera to a slightly different position can bring a huge difference to your photograph. Finding the right angle is also the practice of cutting out the stuff that you don't want to capture by deciding your focal point of view. This angle is the direction where the storyteller is gazing. This tells the viewers of a photograph what the photographer saw and wanted to capture.

Landscape photography is adventurous, fun and you can even make money out of it if you are good enough. However, unlike other genres, landscape photography requires traveling, self-control, patience and lots of dedication to the art of photography. Most people who start as amateurs and begin from taking pictures of their children, often find themselves mesmerized and tempted to capture nature. Anyone can take a good photograph of a landscape, but in order to make a photograph outstanding, one needs some photography training courses to understand the complexity of the genre and how to master it with practice and time.

Great Landscape Photography: