Ask The Photo Experts: Landscapes

Dear Photo Experts,

I travel quite a bit, and love to take pictures of landmarks and other landscapes. I have a good digital camera with 6 MP, but my pictures never come out looking anything like the postcards of the same landmarks. They just look flat, or something. What can I do to make better landscape pictures?
Picture Crazy

Aloha Picture Crazy!
You say you have a good camera, and 6 MP is plenty enough resolution of capture to make really beautiful photographs of anything! But the size of capture isn’t the only criteria to determining the quality of cameras. If your camera is an SLR, which means you view through the actual picture-taking lens to frame your shot, that’s better. And if you have the option of shooting on ‘Manual’, where you control the shutter speed and aperture, even better yet!

Even if your camera is an all automatic, point-and-shoot, there are still things you can do to improve your landscape pictures. One of the easiest and more dramatic improvements you can make is to add a Polarizing Filter to the camera lens. These filters greatly reduce UV rays and increase the contrast and color saturation of your images. Especially in the sky and water.

Another huge improvement can be effected with the addition of a sturdy tripod to hold your camera. A good tripod is invaluable, particularly when shooting in the very early morning, or late afternoon, and especially if you add a Polarizing Filter, which in addition to adding contrast and saturation, blocks some light. In lower light situations your camera will need a longer shutter speed, and without a tripod to hold your camera very still, you can tend to get a blurred photograph.

Which brings us to the time of day that is best to photograph landscapes. What time of day is that? That depends on a number of factors. From where you want to take a picture, what is the path of the sun? What time is the sun at the point in the sky where the landscape is illuminated, but there are also shadows which add definition and contrast to the scene? That is the best time to make a landscape photograph. So, as in many things, timing is crucial in making a great photograph.

Three things you can do to improve your landscape photographs are 1) Use a Polarizing Filter, 2) Put your camera on a sturdy tripod, and 3) Time your picture taking so the sun is illuminating the landscape well, but also creating shadows that add depth and contrast.

About the author: Stan P. Cox II runs a Portrait and Commercial photography studio in Honolulu, Hawaii, and has been a professional Hawaii photographer for 31 years. His web address is: http://www.ParamountPhotography.com