How To: Improve Your Landscape Photographs

Composition in art has provided a topic of discussion—and controversy—for millennia. From the ancient Greeks to present-day digital photographers, design theories, rules, and formulas attempt to define and quantify that elusive concept of aesthetics: What looks ideal? Rather than tackle the problem head-on, I’ve come up with a few basic guidelines that can yield a profound improvement in your landscape photographs. In fact, it’s as simple as A, B, C: Angle, Balance, and Crop.

Find the Right Angle

The most common enemy of good composition is impulse: A subject attracts you, you make a few exposures, then you move on to continue the hunt. Chances are, though, your angle won’t be ideal at the precise moment you discover your subject. So before shooting, slow down!

Examine the scene you want to photograph to determine where best to position yourself relative to both the subject (your perspective) and the direction of light. This is often a simple matter of just walking and observing. Consider how your angle aligns other elements in the scene with your main subject. Look for leading lines you can exploit by changing your position, or distracting objects that you can leave out of the frame with a change of perspective. See if the angle of the light will be more favorable in a different spot at another time of day.

In the landscape at top right, I chose an angle that prevented the distant rock formations from being obscured by other elements, and cropped so that the arch frames the scene.

Balance the Element

Your photo is more than just your main subject. Balance is about finding the best placement of all the elements in the frame relative to each other and to the edges. A balanced composition is one where all of these are in harmony.

Your major adjustments here will be the subject-to-camera distance and the direction of the camera. Look for visual relationships— elements that are larger or smaller than one another, colors and tones that complement or clash, or elements that share lines and contours. A tripod that allows camera placement anywhere from ground level on up is an invaluable tool here.

To draw attention to a particular area, make sure it stands out, whether in size, color, or placement. But, at the same time, make sure that one side of the frame is not disproportionately “heavier” than the other, and that important elements have sufficient breathing room.

In the photo on the opening spread, I included repeating patterns in the dark areas to balance out the bright area at top right.

The Rule of Thirds can help you with balance: Divide the frame into three equidistant sections along each axis, and place key elements along these division lines or at their points of intersection. In the photo above, imagine a tic-tac-toe grid formed by connecting the index marks, and note how the sun and chair fall at intersection points.

Crop Out Nonessentials

Now you’re ready for cropping— the best possible placement of the frame’s boundaries. These determine what’s kept in and what’s left out of your picture, so place with surgical precision. Zoom lenses make great tools for this.

In cropping, whether in the camera or after shooting, you should pay close attention to the borders of the frame. Make sure they do not cut through interesting elements and that no rogue objects (such as branches, shadow lines, and especially your tripod’s feet) peek in. In the photo of corn lilies on page 58, I made sure the borders didn’t bisect the two most prominent plants.

A good technique to detect intrusive culprits is to stop down the aperture to around f/11–16 and use the camera’s depth-of field preview. This sharpens items that may otherwise be too blurry to see clearly with the lens wide open. If your DSLR has live view, you may be able to check the depth of field on the LCD without darkening the image.

Also try framing your subject without looking through the finder. Form your thumbs and forefingers into a rectangle (or carry small cardboard L-shapes) to visualize the best placement for the frame before pointing your camera at the scene.

This has the added advantage of liberating you from the camera’s built-in aspect ratio, which may not always be ideal—there’s nothing wrong with cropping in software (or the darkroom) to achieve the best composition or to get rid of those rogue objects you may have missed.

In the end, no rule will guarantee a successful image, and some of the most successful photos blatantly defy the rules. For instance, the picture at the bottom of page 58 uses a centered composition, typically considered a no-no. But the complementary patterns in the tree and the canyon help balance it.

So use these ABCs as a starting point, but remember the ultimate test of any composition: Step back, look at the scene, and ask yourself: Does it work? If the answer is “yes,” push the button.

Visit Guy Tal’s new gallery in Torrey, UT, right outside Capitol Reef National Park. Not in the neighborhood? See his photos at guytal.com, and Twitter @guytalphoto.

How To: Improve Your Landscape Photographs

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Earth Tones

When people talk about “fine-art photography,” they usually mean that recording subjects and scenes takes a backseat to aesthetics and personal interpretation.

Black-and-white is perfect for this. You’re free to render almost any subject in almost any shade without regard to color accuracy, and to exploit graphic elements such as tone, lines, textures, and details. You can imbue an image with a mood of your own choosing, free from the emotional associations some colors carry. And, for many of us, there is an undeniable romantic appeal to monochrome images.

While digital offers much of the same capabilities as traditional b&w film photography, it allows more precise control. Here are some steps to creating your own fine-art monochromes.

Step 1: VISUALIZE TONES

Ansel Adams described visualization as seeing in your mind’s eye the finished image before actually making an exposure. A useful skill for any photographer, it becomes all the more critical in black-and-white. Your final image will be rendered in tones, or degrees of brightness, rather than in individual colors. This means different colors (say, red flowers and green leaves) may appear the exact same shade of gray when transformed into b&w.

To successfully visualize in monochrome, ignore color and pay attention only to differences in brightness. With some practice you’ll be able to tell how different elements in your composition will appear relative to each other.

Tonal differences are referred to in terms of separation and contrast. If one element is significantly brighter or darker than another, contrast is high, and the elements will be well separated when rendered in b&w. Where contrast is low and elements have similar tones, they will tend to mesh together and not separate very well.

Step 2: UNDERSTAND FILTERS

Color can still be put to good use in b&w by using color filters. These allow light only of their own hue to pass through, blocking others. Opposites on the color wheel will show the strongest separation: A red filter will block most of the green and blue ranges, and can thus produce a striking separation between a red flower and green leaves. A red filter can also render a blue sky almost completely black, making clouds stand out boldly. And a green filter makes foliage appear bright, helping to separate leaves from dark branches and trunks.

Photographers used to have to carry color filters with them and decide on the spot when to use them. If you’re shooting digital, though, you can create the same effects with software such as Adobe Photoshop. You can apply any amount of filtration, and also blend the effects of multiple filters. And you can see the results in real time on a large colorcalibrated monitor before deciding on the right look.

Step 3: CONVERT TO MONOCHROME

If you have Photoshop CS3 or later, you can use the versatile Black & White adjustment layer. This allows you not only to convert your color image, but also to select from a number of filter presets, and adjust the blending amounts of various colors and shades.

Have an older version of Photoshop? Instead, use the Channel Mixer adjustment layer by checking the Monochrome box and adjusting the percentage of each color channel used in the conversion. For example, 100% of the Red channel and 0% of the Blue and Green channels is equivalent to a red filter effect. I don’t recommend converting the image using the Grayscale mode, as this will discard its original color information. (For the same reason I don’t recommend using the b&w modes built into most digital cameras.)

Step 4:****SHOOT RAW FILES FOR THE BEST RESULTS

Fine adjustments are much easier to apply when converting from RAW in the digital darkroom, rather than making decisions in the field based on readings in the camera’s LCD.

Take white balance, for instance. You may think that WB during processing is irrelevant when you’re converting to b&w, but that’s not so. Varying the WB setting also varies the relative amounts of red, green, and blue used to render each pixel. Thus, an image with an overall blue cast will appear dark if you use a red filter when converting to b&w, or bright if you use a blue filter.

In extreme situations, individual color channels may be clipped-a clipped red channel, for example, will result in loss of shadow or highlight detail if the image is converted to b&w using either a red or blue filter.

Varying the WB setting can direct more image detail to a clipped channel from a nonclipped one. You can see this effect by watching how the individual color histograms change relative to each other under different color temperatures or WB presets. To keep a color channel from clipping, make sure that its individual histogram does not spill over the left or right edge.

Yet another reason I recommend capturing RAW instead of JPEG images in the field? If your camera has a b&w setting, shooting RAW lets you see a monochromatic preview in the LCD without actually losing the benefits of all that color information.

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Budding photographers usually get the same sage advice: Learn to use your manual controls — shutter speed, aperture, focus, and meter pattern — for the desired effect in each individual scene. Still, most photographers leave one critical setting on automatic: white balance. That’s a mistake, because this control can have a profound effect on your photos — even monochrome images.

To understand white balance, first consider that light comes in different colors. A candle or wood flame will cast shades of warm orange and amber; fluorescent lights tend toward a cooler, sometimes even blue, tint. A consistent shift in color throughout the whole image is called a color cast.

The standard measure for the color of a light source is color temperature, measured in degrees Kelvin. It may seem confusing, but lower readings are associated with warmer tones while higher readings indicate cooler ones.

Without a camera, our brains adjust white balance. If we know something to be white, we’ll perceive it as white even when the color of the light changes. But a camera needs to be told what to do.

The white balance (WB) control on a digital camera allows you to compensate for differences in ambient color temperature. It adjusts the balance of red, green, and blue in the image so that neutral tones (white and gray) remain neutral, whether you’re in a hall lit by Tiki torches or in the depths of a shaded forest — or even underwater, where overall color can be very cool and blue.

Digital cameras offer WB presets for specific conditions (Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten, etc.), as well as an Auto mode, which tries to determine and compensate for color temperature. For more accurate balancing, most DSLRs offer a custom setting, which lets you take a reference shot to base the correction on. Some cameras and most RAW converters allow even more control by letting you directly set the color temperature in degrees Kelvin.

In nature photography we generally rely on the sun as our primary light source. Color temperature outdoors changes throughout the day and may be affected by such factors as the position of the sun, the presence of clouds or haze, whether you’re in direct light or shade, and whether the light is reflected off something that absorbs parts of the spectrum.

The good news is that color accuracy is not as critical in nature photography as it may be for some types of commercial work in which, for example, a product’s image must match its color exactly or a bride’s dress must be perfectly white.

On a given day, color temperature may range from very low (yellow/orange) at sunrise, through neutral around midday, and up to very high (blue) shortly after sunset. Even at the same time of day, it may vary widely between direct sunlight and open shade, reflecting the blue sky.

At a given WB preset, these differences will produce casts in light that do not match your preset. For instance, setting your camera to Tungsten and photographing a sunlit scene will result in a deep blue cast, since the camera assumes the color temperature is much lower than it really is — yellowish — and counters it by adding blue. Even with a neutral setting such as Daylight, you’ll get color casts under heavy cloud cover, in deep shade, or at sunrise or sunset.

Keep reading for four tips on using WB to your advantage in nature shots.

USING WB TO YOUR ADVANTAGE IN NATURE SHOTS

1. Avoid auto white balance.
You may think you should eliminate color casts to maintain a scene’s natural look, but this isn’t always true. Color can be used very effectively to create or enhance mood. Imagine the cool blue of a clear winter morning, the warmth of the first rays of sunlight at dawn, or the rose and lavender hues in the sky after sunset.

Set to Auto WB, your camera may eliminate some or all of these desirable effects, resulting in a dull, lifeless image. That’s why it’s always best to adjust the WB setting individually for every scene rather than let the camera make the decision for you.

2. Shoot RAW and adjust WB later.
Differences in color temperature can be too subtle to judge accurately on your camera’s little LCD. It’s much better to decide on the correct WB setting while viewing the image on a large, color-calibrated monitor.

Capturing images in RAW mode, rather than JPEG, has the added advantage of letting you choose a WB setting while processing your images at home. This way you don’t have to commit to one in the field with limited ability to see the effect.

3. Use histograms for the best detail.
The vast majority of digital cameras use separate red, green, and blue sensor readings to determine the color and luminance of each pixel in the image. The differences between pixels are what make up image detail.

As each sensor has a limited range of values, sometimes one or more of the channels (red, green, or blue) will become saturated. When you are photographing a bright red flower, for example, all the red pixels may return their maximum value, and conversely all blue sensors may return a zero reading if no measurable amount of blue exists. This is called clipping, and these areas will contain no detail in the clipped channel. If all three channels are clipped, some areas in the image will have no detail at all — think of a blown-out white sky.

By looking at the histograms for each color, you can clearly see which channels hold detail and which are clipped — these will have the graph extending past the far left or far right edge of the histogram.

The WB setting determines the way readings from the three channels are blended together to produce the final picture. For example, when set to Cloudy (or to a high color temperature), the camera will assign greater weight to readings from the red and green channels, and reduce the weight of the blue channel in order to warm up the palette. By carefully adjusting WB, you can vary the blending ratios so that you take more data from channels containing image detail and less from ones that are clipped.

The obvious downside: You may gain detail but end up with unnatural-looking colors. But as long as the color casts are subtle, they can generally be corrected in Adobe Photoshop or other image-editing programs to restore the original hues without loss of detail.

4. Blend multiple WB settings.
Much like exposure compensation, WB is a global control, affecting the entire image. But in some situations, you may want to apply it selectively. This is not much different from using a split neutral-density filter to make up for differences in brightness, or blending multiple bracketed exposures to achieve high dynamic range.

Similarly, you can blend separate versions of the same image, converted from RAW using different WB settings. The technique is especially useful in images with strong blues and yellows — a given WB setting may significantly alter one or the other. Once you have made separate conversions from your RAW file, you can blend these images precisely using Layers in Photoshop.

Finally, and most important, don’t be afraid to experiment. A modern DSLR offers a wealth of creative controls and myriad ways to express your vision. The more you experiment, the more you’ll discover.

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