Photo How To

Most photographers turn to wide-angle lenses when shooting landscape photos. But every so often, depending upon the situation, it makes more sense to pull out the big guns. And if you’re new to telephoto nature photography, it’s easy to make mistakes that can spoil an otherwise great shot.

Landscape photography is challenging enough, with ever-changing light, weather concerns, and complex scenes, that the last thing you want to do is to spoil your effort by making unnecessary mistakes. In the tutorial below you’ll learn how to confront errors that limit your chance of success.

There are numerous “rules” of photography and some are meant to be broken—including a few of the most familiar. But as you’ll see in the eye-opening video below from a trusted pro, you can avoid sabotaging images by using an oft-ignored trick.

We often turn to Danish pro Mads Peter Iversen for expert advice on exactly what to do when shooting landscape images. While Iversen is a cheerful, positive guy, he takes the opposite approach in the tutorial below by explaining what NOT to do when making nature photos.

There are plenty of camera settings to consider for capturing the best possible landscape photos, depending upon the specific look you’re after. And one of our favorite pros insists that, “aperture is the most important stylistic instrument of all.”

Presets are timesaving files that enable Lightroom to apply predetermined enhancements to images, enabling you to quickly make changes to color, introduce special effects, and much more. By clicking on a preset you avoid the task of doing things manually, and you can always go back in and tweak the results.

There are many reasons you may want to cut out the background of a photo and create a composite image. Sometimes the goal is to replace a boring sky with something more compelling. Other times you may just want to place a portrait photo on a more interesting background.