Читать книгу Digital Photographer - Литагент HarperCollins USD, J. F. C. Harrison, Professor J. D. Scoffbowl - Страница 7

Successful landscape pictures can be taken at any time of the day, but certain conditions stack the odds of success in your favour. If you rise at dawn you are almost certain to capture some stunning images as the earth awakens after a night under the stars. From high ground you will often see veils of mist hanging in valleys, or floating gracefully over rivers, lakes and woodlands. The first rays of sunlight bathing a hillside also look stunning, and the low angle of the light reveals texture and creates a sense of depth.

USE A TRIPOD One of the keys to producing great scenic pictures is to use a tripod. It will ensure you get sharp pictures and will also slow down your picture taking – resulting in more considered compositions.

Placing one of these dramatic looking trees so that it looms large in the foreground gives the picture a powerful sense of depth.

However, although bright sunshine and blue skies promise great conditions for shooting landscapes, nothing beats a bit of stormy weather if you want really dramatic images. The most spectacular images are produced when rays of sunlight break through a dark, brooding sky and illuminate the foreground or distant features.

The mist of early morning rolling over the hills, the sprawling long shadows of the trees, the compressed perspective created by using a telephoto lens… landscape images do not get any better than this.

The most important thing with landscape photography is not to include too much. Faced with a great expanse of gorgeous countryside, you may be tempted to just start snapping away. However, when there is too much in the frame you can lose impact. Start, then, by deciding what it is about the scene that attracts you. Maybe the light on the hills catches your eye or the pattern created by a dry stone wall? Once you have established what the main point of interest is, you can set about emphasizing it. As a rule of thumb, keep your compositions simple. A single feature, such as a cottage at the foot of a mountain, can make an attractive shot in its own right.

A large proportion of the earth’s surface is covered with water, so it is not unreasonable to think of it as a subject in its own right, as we do landscape. After all, what a range of options it offers us: waterfalls, rivers, lakes, reservoirs, pools – plus, of course, the sea.