We’ve all seen the photos, the great landscape photographers have taken and wondered how they managed to be so lucky to get that photo. You know the ones, the photo with the perfect blue water or the photo with a beautiful waterfall with a rainbow above it. Well guess what? Those photos have almost nothing to do with luck and all about persistence and hard work. So what do you need to do to make sure that you too get those great photos?
Step 1 – Research:
If you want fantastic shots you need to do lots of research. I spend more time each week researching new and existing locations than I do actually getting the money shots. Instead of going to a location that you’re thinking of photographing at exactly sunset, try getting there an hour and a half before the sunset and talk a good walk around the location. Take some test shots of the area and see how they look, lie down on the ground and climb up to a high point to see what it looks like from a different perspective.
Another great trick once you’ve decided on a location and are setup is to turn around and look behind you, there have been many times when the shot I actually ended up taking was actually behind me.
If you’ve though of a location to capture your landscape photograph and you want a different perspective on that location try finding how other people have shot the location of Flickr its a fantastic research tool as well. Remember don’t copy how others took the photo, but certainly use it to view how other people see it.
Talk to people who bushwalk, these guys are an absolutely amazing source of information and get to areas many of us would never think of.
When you get to an area that you think might be a great candidate work out if it’s a morning shoot or an evening shoot, then get out there and shoot it.
Remember weather always plays an important part in landscape photography and if you don’t get great conditions the first time around, keep going back until the magic happens. I’ve gone back to one spot for 2yrs trying to get the perfect shot of the area. I finally got it but it took persistence.
Step 2 – Persistence:
So many people go to a spot once or twice and give up if they don’t get the conditions they want. You have to keep going back and trying different angles and shooting it in different conditions until you get the photo you want to achieve, just don’t give up. Getting great landscape photographs is all about hard work and very little luck.
So start researching your locations and get out there and start shooting, you’ll be capturing awesome landscapes before you know it.
The effort is well worth it as you can see from some of my photos. I’ve been fortunate enough to capture some amazing scenery. However, landscape photographs like these don’t come easily, so just keep trying, soon you’ll find that you will be adding more and more great photographs to your portfolio.
