Landscape Photography tips

Landscape photography captures the awe-inspiring beauty of the natural world, from sweeping panoramic vistas of mountains to tranquil lakes and endless deserts. This genre invites photographers to explore the interplay of light, color, and composition to create images that convey the majesty and serenity of the great outdoors.

In this article, we’ll dive into the essentials of landscape photography, offering tips about techniques, composition guidelines, gear and more to help you craft stunning images that showcase the breathtaking landscapes around us. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced photographer, you'll find inspiration to elevate your work and deepen your connection with nature.

Rain storm at Masai Mara with Acacia tree | Tomer Razabi

landscape photography topics

Landscape photography is a very broad and diverse field - it is not limited to specific landscapes and can include a variety of topics such as deserts, seascapes, mountains, waterfalls, forests, canyons and other natural areas. In addition, landscape photography is not necessarily limited to nature and can also incorporate human and urban elements such as people, fields, houses, bridges and even cities. On the websites and social media of landscape photographers you may find a variety of photos, from sunsets in the Grand Canyon, the Milky Way in the desert in Namibia to skyscrapers and busy intersections in Dubai!

landscape photography recommended gear

The right gear will allow you to achieve great results, but landscape photography usually does not require high end or expensive cameras.

Camera - Photographing during the day time and even relatively low light scenes, when there is no need to use high ISO, means even cameras with a simple sensor will do a great job. Even with a crop sensor, micro for thirds, DSLR or mirrorless camera. Full frame sensor cameras will offer the advantages of high ISO performance, better dynamic range, color depth and general image quality.
Wide angle lens - is the classic choice for landscape photography. Wide lenses have several advantages including a wide field of view, a sense of deep perspective and easy to achieve large depth of field. Wide lenses for landscape photography are usually considered to have a focal length of 24 mm or wider for full frame cameras, the classics will have a focal length of 14 to 17 mm. For crop cameras the recommended focal lengthsis 18 mm and below, the classics will be 10 to 12 mm.
Telephoto lens - are a great choice when you want to shoot a smaller and more intimate part of wider scene. It also "flattens" the distance between foreground and background, creating a "tighter" scene. Using Telephoto lenses for landscape photography usually seem less obvious, but it can produce unique images.
Tripod - is definitely useful and may necessary. A tripod allows you shoot compositions more accurately, and stabilize the camera for long exposure scenes using slow shutter speeds (otherwise impossible when shooting hand held). The choice of a right tripod depends on your personal requirements like height, weight, price and more. My tripod guide can help you with that.
Filters - are a pretty common accessory in landscape photography, mostly ND filters to achieve long exposures and balancing background and foreground light. Using filters in landscape photography can greatly help you overcome exposure challenges and increase your creativity.

Diamond beach sunrise in Iceland | Tomer Razabi

A wide angle shot of glaciers with long exposure at diamond beach in Iceland.

A Telephoto shot of camel thorn trees and red sand dunes at Deadvlei in Namibia.

landscape photography technique

Technique and exposure is quite similar in most daylight situations. It is definitely worth to understand the exposure considerations and their implications, in order to choose the right exposure settings and to know when you can make exceptions and still get goos results. Read my full Landscape photography technique article to get the in depth considerations.

ISO - to achieve a clean image with the low noise, good dynamic range and color depth, use the lowest native ISO of your camera (considering you use a tripod).
Aperture - is usually used towards the higher values for large depth of field. When shooting scenes with relatively close elements in the foreground (about a meter from the camera) as well as distant elements, we will need a very large depth of field, so we will use a narrow aperture of F/16 to F/22. In situations where we do not have close elements and most parts of the image are relatively far from us (with a wide lens a distance of 3-4 meters is already considered relatively far) we can use wider apertures such as F/5.6 to F/11 to get the enough depth of field.
Shutter - The main and primary purpose of the shutter will be to balance the lighting in the image and create a good exposure. There are situations when we actually want a certain shutter speed, such as a relatively slow shutter speed in long exposures to produce certain effects in the image (for example, smearing of water in a waterfall or stream). Since we usually prefer not to change the ISO and aperture, we might need to use of filters to get the desired shutter speed.
Focus - In most cases in our goal is to create a large depth of field (DOF) in the image to allow the viewer to clearly see all areas of the image, from the near to the far. The three parameters that affect depth of field are the focus distance, the focal length and the aperture. When we use wide lenses (short focal lengths) we will already have a fairly large depth of field, closing the aperture will increase the depth of field even more. We will usually set the focus on the near foreground area of the image. In cases that an extremely large DOF is needed, you might need to set the focus distance at the hyperfocal length. With telephoto lenses we will get a shallower depth of field in advance, so we will have to check with a depth of field calculator what data we will need to get a sufficient depth of field, or check the result after the photo and change the aperture accordingly. The focus is an important factor of the depth of field. It will be to hard to explain in a few sentences, so I advise you to read my full guide about focus and depth of field.

landscape photography composition guidelines

Besides technique, good composition is the main key to creating a successful landscape image! Our goal is to create an image as attractive as possible, with prominent and clear elements, good balance in the frame, special lighting and interest that will attract the viewer's eye. There are several very important elements to compose that will help make our photos much more interesting.

Foreground anchor - The foreground (generally consider as the lower third of the frame) is a crucial part in a landscape image, especially when using wide angle lenses which emphasize the foreground. We want to have a very interesting foreground, something that can be done by composing an "anchor". The anchor is an element that would usually be a natural object that attracts the viewer's eye, which we'll compose in the foreground. An attractive anchor needs 3 basic characters: a defined and complete shape, stands out of the surrounding, takes a good and aesthetic volume.

The right glacier here is the anchor - located at the bottom third of the frame, defined and complete, stands out of it's surrounding and has good volume.

צילום נוף זריחה בים המלח - צילום: תומר רצאבי

The salt mushrooms are the anchor - located at the bottom third, defined and complete, stands out of it's surrounding and have good volume.

Foreground textures - attractive textures and patterns, sometimes including lines can create a very intersting foreground. Some classic examples are ice patterns, rock textures to the wave forms in a sand dune.

צילום נוף דיונות החול של ניצנה בשקיעה - תומר רצאבי

Leading lines - allow the viewer to move in the frame in a continuous and smooth manner. it will add a great interest to the viewer's eye between the foreground and background. Leading lines can be any prominent element (river, fence, road...) that creates movement in the image. Classic guiding lines are mostly diagonal from one of the lower corners of the image to the background.

נחל הבניאס בחשיפה ארוכה צילום נוף - תומר רצאבי

The river in the image acts as a leading line, attracting the eye from bottom right going up and left towards the waterfall in the background.

צילום נוף הקניון האדום בהרי אילת, נחל שני - תומר רצאבי

The lines in this sand canyon rocks going diagonally in various parts of the image lead the eye mostly towards the center of the image.

Background - an important part that can greatly increase the interest in your image. An interesting background may include vibrantly colored clouds of a sunrise, a snowy mountain peak, a rainbow above the horizon, a lightning storm, northern lights and more. Since you obviously can't control the weather, try to shoot in the direction of the most interesting background you find.

long exposures

Long exposure is a very common technique in landscape photography. The goal of this technique is to create visual effects that can change the image dramatically and greatly increase the interest and visual experience of the viewer. The main effects are smearing or smoothing the movement of various elements like waterfalls, clouds, lakes with smooth water and a beautiful reflection, and more. Depending on the ambient light, there are situations when we will be able use a slow shutter speed and get a good overall exposure without any accessories. In situation where the ambient light is relatively strong, using a slow shutter will cause over exposure and burning of parts of the image or the entire image. In these cases we can use filters that will help us prevent this.

If you want to know more, read my in depth long exposure article.

Soca river gorge, Slovenia | Tomer Razabi photography

Smearing water movement of a river to emphasizing the motion feel wih long exposure.

Dolomites landscapes lago Carezza - Tomer Razabi

Long exposure flattens the water of the lake and allows to see a smooth reflection.

using nd filters in landscape photography

The use of filters (real filters, not those of Instagram 😉) is also very familiar and quite common in landscape photography. The main filters used are called ND filters (Neutral Density) and graduated neutral density filters. The main purpose of these filters is to help us overcome various exposure challenges. In general what ND filters do is lower the amount of light passing through the lens to the camera sensor. There are round filters that can be attached to the lens with a normal screw thread, and there are square filters that can be attached to the lens with a special filter holder.

Solid ND filters - allow to reduce the total amount of light and enable long exposure without burning parts of the frame, or all of it.

Graduated ND filters - allow to balance exposure between the background and foreground when there are substantial differences between them.

If you want to know more, read my in depth filters article.

צילום נוף בחשיפה ארוכה שקיעה בחוף פלמחים - תומר רצאבי

In the image I a solid ND filter to reduce the total exposure and use a slow shutter to smear the water and create a sense of motion. I also used a graduated ND filter to balance the strong exposure in the sky compared to the foreground.

צילום נוף שקיעה בחוף פלמחים - תומר רצאבי

I used the same filters here for the same purpose.

conclusions

If you love nature, the outdoors and photography, landscape photography is definitely something you should learn and develop in order to improve your skills! There are many important topics to learn in landscape photography that I detailed in the article such as technique, composition, equipment, use of filters and more. There are other subjects such as photographing panoramas, Astrophotography, time lapse photography and shooting star trails which are also very interesting and related to landscape photography that are very worth getting to know.

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