Landscape photography: 10 tips for capturing great shots

For many travelers, travel goes hand in hand with photography. We often want to bring home more than memories in our heads. At least, that’s how I feel: I love being able to capture beautiful images. In other articles, I’ve already helped you choose a camera for travel and, more recently, shared tips for improving your photos while traveling. Continuing in the same spirit, today I’m talking about how to take successful landscape photos. You don’t need to take a photography course or be a professional photographer to start capturing, enhancing, and framing the natural landscapes you come across on your travels.

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I already shared this advice in the article on improving your travel photos, so why repeat it here? Because in landscape photography, composition and framing are even more important than in almost any other type of travel photography.

To make your landscape photos a success, think carefully about composition. Before anything else, ask yourself what you are photographing, why you are photographing it, and what you want the photo to show. Otherwise, the intention and the final result can end up being very different. I recommend using the basic rules of composition: the rule of thirds, a straight horizon, textures, colors, leading lines, perspectives, and shadows. In my opinion, taking beautiful photos requires learning at least the basics of photography. In some cases, it can be interesting to focus on the main subject, for example to emphasize the symmetry of a scene, such as in architectural photography. When you’re just starting out, it’s easy to overlook your horizon line and the tilt of your frame. Even if you can crop and straighten the image in post-production, make the effort in the field to keep your horizon straight.

If you want to improve your photo composition, here are two books worth reading from cover to cover. They sat on my bedside table for a very long time!

These are two excellent reference books for learning and improving your landscape photography.

You might be wondering: what subject? I’m photographing a landscape, not an object! Then try to imagine your landscape as a subject in its own right. I have already mentioned this point in another article. The idea is to enhance your landscape in an original and personal way, especially by using the composition rules mentioned above. Don’t just try to photograph “a beautiful landscape.” Highlight one of its qualities, one of its features, the feeling it gives you, or the atmosphere of the scene.

For example, if you are standing in front of a lava field in Iceland, where everything is very black and uniform, try to strengthen your image by finding an anchor point somewhere: an interesting element, a particular shape, or something out of the ordinary. It could be an isolated plant, a lava flow pattern, and so on. Your image will have more structure, and the landscape will stand out more clearly. My photos improved as soon as I started thinking more deliberately about the way I photographed.

Very often, the goal is to enhance a landscape by drawing attention to one specific detail, often something representative of the scene: a piece of driftwood, a large rock, a distinctive shape. You get the idea: try to bring your subject forward by giving it character, color, depth, shadow, and a sense of distance. These are some of the key elements that help you take better photos.

On the technical side, you can play with the aperture of your DSLR, especially by using a wide aperture. This is one of the easiest photo tips to apply when you want to make a subject stand out with a nice background blur, or bokeh. As a general rule, however, in landscape photography we tend to use a large depth of field to keep the whole scene sharp.

I may sound old-school, but to me, using filters is essential if you want to improve your landscape photos. People who tell you that you can do exactly the same thing in post-processing are usually wrong. Recreating the effect of a polarizing filter or a long exposure after the fact is impossible. You can certainly adjust contrast or saturation, but why not get as much as possible right when you take the photo?

The idea is also to spend more time behind your camera than behind your computer screen editing! So, which filters should you use to photograph beautiful landscapes?

For me, there are 3 essential filters:

• A polarizing filter: this is the first and most important one in my opinion. It makes your colors brighter and more saturated, reduces reflections (water, metal), and gives your skies a deeper blue. This is especially true for seaside and mountain photos. Personally, I use a Hoya Polarizer for my zoom lens and the superb Lee Polarizer for my 24-70 mm. I wrote two articles explaining what a polarizing filter is used for, how to choose one, and which filters can be paired with it.

• Graduated filters: these are also essential in landscape photography. You’ll understand their usefulness as soon as you try to photograph a high-contrast landscape. A typical example would be a dark sandy beach under a bright sky. If you expose for the beach, your sky will be blown out and white. If you expose for the sky, your beach will become too dark. The purpose of these filters is to darken the brightest part of the image by placing the darker part of the filter over it. Personally, I use the very good Lee graduated filters.

• ND filters (neutral density filters): these are used to reduce the amount of light in a scene, with different levels of opacity depending on the model. Landscape photographers mainly use them for long exposures, for example to create a streaking effect on rivers, the sea, or clouds. Personally, I use Lee’s very good Big Stopper, which will be the subject of a detailed article later on.

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Getting as much as possible right in camera by using filters will help you capture better landscape photos and balance them more effectively.

If I had to answer the question “How can I take beautiful landscape photos?”, this would probably be my number one piece of advice. Many landscape photographers use long exposure to enhance their images. It does not always require ND filters, but in most cases, they will be necessary. I have also written a detailed article on long exposure and how to achieve it.

The goal is simple: take photos with a slower shutter speed. At first, you’ll need to take several shots to refine the technique. It’s common to end up with photos that are underexposed or overexposed, so use your histogram to check.

This technique is very often used on moving subjects, especially waterfalls, the sea, clouds, and, to a lesser extent, people. As mentioned above, I mainly use the Big Stopper from Lee.

The motion blur effect can be beautiful, and the result is often much stronger in landscape photos. It allows you to be more creative and bring a more artistic approach to your images. That said, some photography gear will often be necessary, at the very least: a tripod, a remote control (or the self-timer on your DSLR), filters (mandatory in broad daylight, for example), and sometimes the matching filter holder. Personally, I keep all of this in my camera bag.

When we photograph a landscape, our first reflex is often to use landscape orientation. It is one of the most common formats for this type of photo.

My advice for improving your landscape photos while traveling would be to vary your shots. You can absolutely take beautiful photos in portrait orientation (vertical), as long as you think about how to arrange the image and pay attention to composition (see point 1). Make sure you highlight something!

The goal is therefore to vary the format of your landscape photos. Be creative and try to compose eye-catching images, perhaps even in vertical format, which is already a little more unusual for this type of photography.

Small bonus note: if you have a Pinterest account, vertical format is highly recommended. Feel free to subscribe to my account.

I already gave this advice in the article on improving your travel photos. For landscape photography, it is even more important. Photographing landscapes between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. will usually not produce anything very exciting. The light during those hours is very harsh, almost vertical, the colors are dull, and the shadows lack interest.

By contrast, if you take photos during the golden hours, generally around 2 hours before and after sunrise or sunset, the light will be gentler and softer, the colors warmer, and the shadows more defined. It is therefore an ideal time to photograph landscapes.

Also remember to study the location so you know where the sun will be at that time of day, depending on the type of photos you want to take. This is obviously even more important if you want to photograph sunrise or sunset. It helps you anticipate where the sun will be and where you should position yourself to maximize your chances of taking a successful photo.

I recommend one particular site: The Photographer’s Ephemeris 3D.

For those who love beautiful light, the blue hour is also a great time for low-light photography!

This is one of the most important tips for successful landscape photography. We’ve all found ourselves in front of a magnificent landscape stretching endlessly into the distance, with a real sense of scale, yet been unable to translate that feeling into a photo.

A wide-angle or ultra-wide-angle lens will be very useful in this situation. The main advantage of this type of lens is that it gives you a wider field of view than a standard lens. The result is often striking, and thanks to that wider angle of view, you can create a strong sense of scale and space.

The choice won’t necessarily be easy, as there are lenses at all price points, with different levels of quality, size, weight, and brand reputation. It will also depend on whether you have an APS-C or full-frame body.

Personally, I bought the Tokina 11-16 mm f/2.8 for my old APS-C camera, and it was excellent. Since switching to full frame, I still haven’t invested in a true wide-angle lens, and I take all my landscape photos with my 24-70 mm f/2.8. I admit I would really like something wider than 24 mm, but I still haven’t decided.

I have also written a full article on how to choose a wide-angle lens. In the meantime, if you have a specific question about choosing one, feel free to leave me a comment!

Another great tip for improving your landscape photos is to pay close attention to the weather before heading out. Contrary to what we often think, a big blue sky without clouds will not necessarily give you the most beautiful photos. This is especially true at sunrise and sunset, when the natural golden light can be superb.

By contrast, a sky filled with thick, beautiful clouds, or even curtains of rain in the distance, can add a lot of character to your landscape photos. Plain blue skies often create a feeling of emptiness in an image. Personally, I often look for a small cloud that I can include in my landscape composition.

So try to pay attention to the weather, or simply to the type of sky you have, before deciding whether to go out and take pictures. Avoid gray, flat, low-contrast skies if possible, as they usually do not add much to a photo.

This point should be considered together with point number 6, about the time of day. Very often, especially in tropical areas, the weather deteriorates in the middle of the day, at the same time as the light becomes very harsh. So avoid those hours whenever possible. Which brings us to the last point of the article.

If you are on a long trip and you love photography, you may have the opportunity, or decide, to stay a few extra days in one place to capture the perfect photo of a particular landscape.

So don’t hesitate to return to the same place several times to wait for the right conditions. Use “bad weather” days to choose the best location and work on your framing, so you are ready when the right moment comes. You can find the best spot to set up for your next photo.

As a personal example, when I lived on the island of Mayotte, I wanted to shoot a long exposure on a specific beach. I did several scouting trips and had to come back 3 or 4 times before finally finding the position I wanted. I’m happy with the result!

So there you have my 10 tips to make your landscape photos a success when traveling. Of course, there are others. Some are already covered in the article on learning how to improve your photos while traveling, so don’t hesitate to check it out. I also talk about landscape photography in the article on photo tips for a safari. Anyway, I hope you found this article helpful!

Finally, I would like to recommend a superb book that I’ve had for several years on landscape photography and how to approach it. If you have any questions or specific requests for a future article, feel free to leave me a comment at the bottom of the article!

See you soon,

Written by Sylvain PONS

I've been passionate about photography since 2010, learning as I went along. Today, I dedicate myself to guiding others in their choice of camera gear and sharing a variety of tips to improve their photography skills.

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