Nature Photography How To

A common approach to nature photography is to strive for vibrant skies and foregrounds full of color. But as you’ll see in today’s tutorial, taking a different approach will often make your images stand out from the rest.

Danish photographer Mads Peter Iversen is known for beautiful landscape images with a unique style. He typically takes a minimalist approach, and prefers capturing dark moody scenes in favor of emphasizing colors. And that’s what he demonstrates in the episode below.

In this behind-the-scenes video you’ll follow Iversen to a beach as he explores small tide pools and interesting wooden piers. As you watch him capture the scene, he shares a number of tips on composition, camera settings, and focusing techniques. He also discusses his approach to editing these types of images.

Iversen begins the rainy day shoot with a tip he often provides at the beginning of tutorials; namely, “First and foremost you have to figure out exactly what you want to photograph.” In this case it’s a moody effect using a pier to draw the viewer’s eye into the scene.

Once you settle on a concept, the next steps include getting the weather right and maximizing conditions, choosing a composition that emphasizes the look you’re after, and pinpointing the appropriate zone of focus. He also reveals the camera settings he recommends for this style of photography.

The video concludes with a simple editing trick for dealing with skies, and what Iversen calls “a final super important tip.” After watching the video you may approach your next landscape shoot with a different vision. There are many more tips on Iversen’s YouTube channel, so be sure and take a look.

We think you’ll also like another tutorial we posted, with 10 creative ideas for capturing the splendor of spring.