How to take good landscape photos

From there he took pictures for Santa Fe for 20 years. When he left Santa Fe in 2003, he went to work for Wolfe‟s Camera. He said the most joy he gets from photography is when he is teaching others to take good pictures.

“I did not get into digital photography willingly,” Steve said. He said the first digital camera‟s didn‟t have the detail that SLR camera‟s so he thought digital photography was just a fad and that it would go away. Obviously, that didn‟t happen and digital cameras have greatly improved. When he went to work for Wolfes, he found that 75% of digital camera buyers were second time camera buyers who wanted to upgrade to a higher pixel and bigger zoom. Camera‟s rapidly improved and at the same time became less expensive. Extremely expensive and large at first, a 10 mega pixel camera
with 7X zoom have now gotten small enough to fit into your pocket or purse and are in the $200 range. He calls one of his cameras an Altoid Mint Tin Camera because it will fit inside the empty throat lozenge tin, which makes a great carrying case.

Hammering away at composition, Steve said it is just like location, location, location is to real estate, to take good pictures you must remember to fill the frame, fill the frame, fill the frame. By that he means to make sure the subject is close to you and fills the frame. He said for landscape pictures in general it is best to use a wide angle lens. He uses a backpack filled with various tools to help him take better pictures. The backpack should include knee pads, umbrella, clippers, and any equipment that will make you more comfortable so you can take good pictures. Other useful tools are a
polarizer filter which will enhance the contrast, a macro which will let you get only inches from an insect, a camera cord instead of using direct flash, an auto windshield deflector to use like a mirror, a wire hanger and white trash bag which can be made into a diffuser, and always carry an extra memory card.

An important tip to remember is to take pictures at dawn or at sunset so the harsh sunlight will not blare down on top of the subject. The softer lighting results in a much more pleasing photo. Steve said that 85% of bad pictures are the result of camera movement. Use a tripod or steady the
camera on a close object. Photographers are story tellers or historians. They can show the before and after of a project or show it in stages. Steve advises to get close up and try to tell the story by taking the pictures from the same angle each time. Find a location and repeat it.

Rules for good composition include:

• center (don‟t put your subject in the center)
• rule of thirds (divide your frame in thirds both across and up and down, place the subject on two dissecting lines)
• mergers (watch for trees or poles growing out of people‟s heads)
• frames (use a nearby tree, etc., to frame the subject)
• leading lines (draw the eye into the subject)

Other important things to remember are:

• contrast - light and shadow or difference of color
• change the camera angle – 95% of pictures are taken in the 4‟ to 6‟ range. Get down on the ground or stand on something higher off the ground
• depth of focus – the distance in focus in front of the subject and behind the subject. Use the Portrait mode – the camera is preset so you have a shallow depth of focus. Using the Macro setting will do the same thing.

The computer has given us the opportunity to control the data in photography. Steve emphasized that an image is not a picture until it is printed.

Probably one of the most important things Steve told us was to keep the resolution of our camera in the highest or next to highest setting. This will result in a sharper picture when the image is enlarged. “There is never a reason to set the camera on a low resolution,” Steve said.

Two important things that I learned is that you want to buy name brand Gold CD‟s to store your photo images, because it isn‟t really known yet what kind of shelf life a CD has. Also, never use a Sharpie to label your CD because it is not acid free and will eventually burn into the data. Do not use a ball point pen either. You need to pay a little extra to buy pens specially made to label CD‟s.