Landscape Photography Tips And Techniques, Part 3

Today's photo tip is the third and last in our review of landscape photography tips and techniques. If you combine this one with the last two, you WILL be light years ahead of your local photo competition!

I challenge you to try USING these landscape photography tips and techniques this weekend, and prove me wrong!

This article (like the last two) is a review of landscape photography tips and techniques I've covered before. Have you wondered why I'm going over previously tread ground? There are several reasons.

First - I wanted to have all these landscape photography tips and techniques listed together so you can more easily make a checklist. I hope you've done that, in the excitement of the moment, it's easy to forget important and rather obvious techniques.

I'm reminded of a caution I once heard... If you are about to fly somewhere in an airplane - would you rather hear that the wings were designed by an engineer who remembered the mathematical stress formulas - or one who looked them up!

Second - It's good to review from time to time because statistically, only about 15% (or fewer) of you will read any particular article I write. So actually, this is new material for 85% of you!

Third - I keep repeating the important points because... There is a story about a preacher - he wasn't a dynamic speaker, but he did OK. One Sunday he did a fire and brimstone sermon that got a lot of favorable comments from the parishioners as they left the church.

The next Sunday, he did exactly the same sermon! Word for word!

This drew some quizzical looks, but no one mentioned it to him.

The next Sunday he did the same sermon - word for word - again! And the next and the next!

Finally, thinking he was losing his mind, someone asked him if he was aware that he was doing the same sermon over and over.

He said that he was well aware of what he was doing, and he intended to keep doing the same sermon until his parishioners started following the advice!

How can I dispute that!

Enough said - here are today's landscape photography tips:

Use photo filters!

Photoshop has the ability to do remarkable things, but there are limitations. Stop trying to "fix" it in Photoshop. Get it right in the camera and use PS to do some minor tweaks.

First, make sure you have a circular polarizing filter for each of your lenses. This eliminates glare and polarizes light. What this means is that you will get far more intense and saturated colors - and the clouds in the sky will "POP".

Next have a selection of neutral density filters. At least have ones that will give you 1, 2 and 3 extra stops. More if you can afford them. There are tons of uses for them, but getting that silky - cotton candy effect in flowing rivers and waterfalls is the most common. You WILL want to do this - be ready.

Finally add a couple graduated neutral density filters. This will help with your sunrise and sunset photos where the ground and the sky have dramatically different light levels.

Consider getting some colored graduated filters too! I recommend at least having a "tobacco" colored one. It is the most popular to add or intensify sunset colors.

When you are shooting, don't forget to turn around and look behind you! Sometimes we get so intensely focused on what we are seeing, we totally miss shots that are even better!

Try finding an attractive foreground element (or a person) and do a silhouette. They can be very striking and almost everyone likes them. Be careful that you keep the shape simple and that it doesn't blend with others. It has to immediately "read"! If your viewer has to try to figure out what your silhouette is, you have failed.

Lastly, consider time lapse and HDR. Will the scene in front of you lend themselves to these techniques?

I'm sure I've missed a few landscape photography tips and techniques but if you take the ones in this and my last two articles, combine them into a laminated checklist, and FOLLOW it... You WILL start winning photo contests.