When we use social media, YouTube videos, and online articles, it’s easy to think that other people out there know what they’re doing. I made many mistakes early on in my landscape photography journey. I still make mistakes today! I will share some early mistakes I made and things I wish I had started doing sooner.
One of the things I like about landscape photography and photography in general is that I’m always learning something, improving something, and making better photos every year.
But part of learning is making mistakes. Making mistakes can be frustrating, especially when other people seem like they’re doing a great job and can’t make a mistake! Even to this day, I still make mistakes: sometimes technical errors in the field, forgetting to change my ISO to something reasonable, using a poor aperture selection or whatever.
Take a look at five mistakes I made when I first started taking landscape photography. Some focus on equipment and others focus on techniques that I have used incorrectly or should have been used.
Use a cheap tripod
Here’s one piece of advice all landscape photographers get when they’re starting out: “buy a quality tripod”. I think all landscape photographers then ignore that advice. I know I can!
First, I use my dad’s old tripod, just like the old movies, and not even a great tripod to start with, pieces actually fell out of it while walking. on the trail, strapped to a backpack only.
After looking through a bunch of other tripods, I finally bought a quality tripod and am using and satisfied with a quality one. FLM-CP30-S4 for a few years now. I should have listened to seasoned landscape photographers and started with a quality tripod.
Why a quality tripod? Because you need a stable surface for photography if you want to take long exposure photos of water scenes, giving clouds an ethereal look or even seascapes.
At the seminars I’ve led, I’ve seen people show up with tripods with thin, unstable feet, a loose center column, and a tripod head that doesn’t hold their camera firmly. A quality tripod will be the stable foundation you need and last. Just start with a quality tripod.
hastily shot
As I begin my landscape photography journey, I will appear in a famous location, set in a place where hundreds, not thousands of photographers before me, have created a photograph and taken . I was in a hurry to take pictures and didn’t really take the time to look around. Yes, I had the image, but it wasn’t unique and didn’t really tell a story.
I had no problem wanting to take that iconic photo (I still am), but once you have it, take the time to process it more. Look for interesting angles, high, low, left, right, or look for smaller details or unique ways light hits during the specific time you’re there. Take your time and think about the story this position has for you. Think about how to compose your images to tell that story.
Taking this extra time will help you turn your photos from what everyone else has into something more unique.
Using a new skill
As we learn new skills, we eagerly put them to use! I remember when I learned exposure compensation. I put square brackets on every layout whether it’s necessary or not, sometimes five-stop brackets.
I came home from an outing with hundreds and hundreds of photos, even though I only visited two locations. Not only is that cumbersome, but it also adds work to the editing process and is often unnecessary.
Instead, I should have thought more about what situations need exposure compensation and only used that technique when the situation allowed it, not for every composition I’ve done in the past. months. It is good to learn new skills. Just remember to understand when to use them and why.
Don’t understand the chart
Early in my journey, getting a good exposure for a scene seemed more like guesswork. This might explain why I abused exposure compensation in the first place; I’m sure I’ll get a well-exposed photo if I shoot every composition with five different exposures!
Until I started using the histogram, either through playback playback or live view as I adjusted camera settings, I was never too confident in my exposure. Learning to use histograms was probably the most important thing I did to start getting a steady exposure in my landscape shots.
Histogram is a tone histogram that lets you easily see where shadows, highlights, and centers are in an image — providing near-real-time feedback on whether you’re overexposed or underexposed serious in the picture. If you are new to it, you should start learning more about it and start using it for landscape photography.
Don’t Use Lens Filters
Another hardware lesson. I wish I had started using lens filters for landscape photography sooner. While I don’t often push people towards gears, the polarizing filter has had a big effect on my images.
I am attracted to water scenes, specifically waterfalls, so the polarizing effect of good circular polarizing filter helps reduce glare from water and moisture on nearby rocks, making the image much more pleasing to my eyes.
In addition, there is at least one neutral density filtersuch as the ND64 filter, can be very handy for landscape photographers to help you photograph waterfalls during brighter times of the day and still get a smooth, long exposure effect.
I’ve looked through several filter brands over the years and have chosen magnetic filters as my preferred filter setup. I am currently using Kase . Magnetic Filterand they made it easy to attach, remove, and stack filters in the field.
What mistake did you make?
Those were the five early mistakes I made as a landscape photographer. Even today, I still make mistakes, but again, for me, that’s part of the fun of photography — always learning, always improving.
How about you? What mistakes have you made as a landscape photographer?
