Nature Photography How To

Let’s fact it: Landscape photography can be really expensive. Not only do you need a good camera and an arsenal of great glass, but a solid tripod, filters, and a closet full of hiking gear and apparel for all seasons.

Apologies for the negative headline, but if your photos are really bad we think you should know why. You can thank us later for helping you up your game, after watching the video below.

If your outdoor photographs often have blown-out highlights, crushed shadows, or a combination of both, our guess is that you’re not using exposure bracketing to perfect exposure when shooting in difficult lighting conditions. The tutorial below quickly explains how it’s done.

Cropping photos is easy, right? You start with either a horizontal or vertical photo and trim it a bit to get tighter or remove distracting elements. Of if you want to be really wild (and have enough resolution) maybe you crop in a way that transforms a portrait orientation into a landscape perspective.

As one of our favorite pros insists, “Lightroom’s histogram is one of the most important things to understand in photography.” If you’re new to this powerful tool, the beginners guide below from our friends at The Phlog Photography will get you up to speed in barely eight minutes.

Everyone knows how shutter speed, aperture, and ISO interact to arrive at properly exposed photos. But nailing exposure is only part of the challenge if you want to create images with maximum impact.

Many landscape photographers never leave home without a polarizing filter, and consider this simple accessory almost mandatory for everything they do. But as you see in the eye-opening tutorial below, one pro says polarizers may detract from an image in certain situations—depending on the specific scene at hand and the mood you want to create.