If you are a landscape photographer looking to take more visually appealing, impactful photos, you aren’t alone. Every so often, everyone struggles with photography inspiration and finding new ways to make our photos stand out—even the professionals! And unfortunately, when stuck in these ruts, our images are the ones who pay the price.
Lucky for you, though, this landscape photography guide will share five keys to taking more impactful photos. We’ll touch on photography techniques such as lighting, isolating subjects, visual tension, composition, editing, and more!
With that in mind, keep reading to elevate your photography skills to new heights and take more impactful photos of landscapes!
Check out the video above by Michael Shainblum to learn his number one landscape photography tip to be more creative and take more impactful photos.
Table of Contents
- Impactful Photos Feature Beautiful Light
- Isolate Subjects in the Frame for More Impact
- Create Visual Tension in the Frame for Impactful Photos of Landscapes
- Help the Viewer Out by Leading Their Eye
- Create More Impactful Photos Through Editing and Presentation
Impactful Photos Feature Beautiful Light
Photo by sun ok via Shutterstock
Light can 100% make or break landscape photography. For example, you can completely transform a scene depending on how it’s illuminated and the sun’s position. Generally, the two best times for landscape photography are during the golden hour and the blue hour. Golden hour is right after sunrise and before sunset, while blue hour is right before sunrise and after sunset.
If you want to shoot during the middle of the day when the sun is high in the sky and at its brightest, it’s best to use ND filters. They let you control the amount of light that reaches the camera sensor, avoid overexposed images, and create soft backgrounds. ND filters are also an essential tool for long-exposure photography.
Another fun way to play with light is with shadows and silhouettes. Side lighting creates natural shadows in landscapes and adds depth to images. In contrast, you must use backlighting for silhouettes. To completely eliminate shadows, you need front lighting, usually from a bright artificial light source.
Isolate Subjects in the Frame for More Impact
Photo by EB Adventure Photography via Shutterstock
Try isolating the subject to take impactful photos and attract viewers’ attention to a specific subject in a landscape scene. There are many ways to isolate subjects in the frame—let’s take a closer look at some of them.
The most popular way is, without a doubt, using shallow depth of field (bokeh) effects. This technique blurs the background of your image while keeping your subject perfectly in focus. You want to use a high aperture (low f-stop number) to do this. Once you get the hang of how and when to shoot shallow depth-of-field photography, it’s also great for portraits!
Other ways to isolate subjects in your images include light and shadows, motion blur, color, focal length, and point of view.
Create Visual Tension in the Frame for Impactful Photos of Landscapes
Photo by Kedofoto via Shutterstock
Using visual tension in your landscape photography is another technique that leads to more impactful photos. What is visual tension? It’s a composition principle that arranges your subjects and background within the frame in a way that evokes a feeling of anticipation and unease.
A fun way to create visual tension in landscape photography is through the use of reflections. Reflections juxtapose a landscape in a unique way that immediately captures attention and draws viewers in for a second look. You can use mirrors, tiles, windows, and bodies of water for reflection photography.
More tips for visual tension are working with symmetry, using diagonal lines, rotating images, and experimenting with visual gravity.
Help the Viewer Out by Leading Their Eye
Photo by Andrew Mayovskyy via Shutterstock
Every once in a while, you must guide your viewers toward the primary subject in your landscape photography. A great way to accomplish this is by leading their eyes towards where you want them to look.
A simple way to create impactful photos and “push” people’s attention is to use leading lines. Leading lines are a photography technique that uses natural or artificial lines within the frame to direct the eyes to a specific spot. The photo of the island and pier above is a perfect example of how to use leading lines in landscape photography to take more impactful photos.
Other effective ways to lead the viewer’s eyes are vignetting, creating a “frame within a frame,” blur, and contrast.
Create More Impactful Photos Through Editing and Presentation
Photo by Yevhenii Chulovskyi via Shutterstock
Finally, don’t underestimate the importance of editing and properly presenting your photos. In the past, photo editing was primarily done only by professional photographers, but now, it’s a crucial step in the photography process for photographers of all skill levels. Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop are the two most popular photo editing programs today.
Two easy ways to enhance your images during editing are boosting colors and contrast. You can also reframe them, boost clarity, brighten/darken the exposure, and create artificial blur effects.
How you showcase your images also greatly impacts their visual impact. For example, the same image displayed on a small smartphone screen will have substantially less effect on people than a large photo print.
That said, we love transforming our impactful photos into gorgeous large-format metal prints from Large Metal Prints. These folks only use premium materials, and have printers with outstanding color accuracy. You can order a metal print in all manner of sizes up to 48″ x 84″. Talk about a large metal print!
Moreover, you can order your print from Large Metal Prints in a variety of ways. Get the print by itself, with a gallery mount or floating hanger, an easel, or a Euro frame, just to name a few. You can truly customize the sizing and presentation of your print to satisfy your personal tastes or the purpose of the print (e.g., a wow factor print on your wall or a small print on an easel to display on your desk).
Showcasing your work – even to yourself in your own home – is a great way to improve your skills even further. What better way to critique your photo than by examining it as a huge wall print?! Better still, it’s a fun way to share your photos with family and friends who can enjoy your skills and talents. You can even give your photos as gifts to loved ones! Who wouldn’t appreciate a gorgeous print like those shown above?
But, as they say, the proof is in the pudding…
In the video below, our very own Alex Schult takes you behind the curtain of a recent print he ordered from Large Metal Prints, and as you can see, the results are just WOW:
As you can see, Large Metal Prints knocked this one out of the park. Again, with loads of options for customizing your print and years of dedicated service to their customers, Large Metal Prints is a great option for showcasing your hard work behind the lens.
So, now all you need to do is go practice these tips! Great results come from hard work, so the sooner you get to it, the sooner you will see improved results!
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Learn More:
- Is a Zoom or a Prime the Best Lens for Landscape Photography?
- Photography Tips: Techniques for Beautiful Landscapes
Hero photo by Zhukova Valentyna via Shutterstock
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