In a nutshell, landscape photography captures the beauty of nature and the outdoors. These photographs bring spectators to the stage and perfectly capture the setting, the mood and the feel of the place. The activities needed to take landscape photos help me stay active and fit. Having to take a 10-mile hike to get the perfect sunrise photo makes exercising easy and enjoyable.
I love landscape photography because nature seems to have a universal capacity to move people. The viewer doesn't need to have any experience in nature to be inspired by their images. Landscape photography is the technique of capturing images of nature to bring the viewer to the scene. Through landscape photography, photographers demonstrate their connection to nature and capture the essence of the environment that surrounds them.
Although I have been in the world of photography for about 65 years (both as an instructor and as a commercial photographer), I still love its landscapes. Good and reliable photographic equipment is extremely important to achieve the best results in landscape photography. Of all the different lenses that I have used over the years, I came to the conclusion that the focal lengths I use most for my landscape photographs are between 24 mm and 100 mm. Without understanding the relationship between the focal length of the lens, the aperture and the distance from the camera to the subject, the focus for photography of landscapes can be quite difficult.
But since these are the moments when you can find the most interesting light, landscape photography pushes us to set an alarm in the morning instead of sleeping late or staying outside during (and even after) the sunset. Kristen runs landscape photography retreats for women in Tetons, Chicago and the Canadian Rockies, offers private tutoring, and teaches an online landscape photography workshop twice a year. There are several opportunities to explore in the imaging industry and, among the many genres of photography that can be exploited, is landscape photography. I once spoke to a well-known landscape photographer about the camera mount and he told me that he couldn't think or compose his images until he put his camera on a tripod, even when taking pictures on a sunny day.
Keep in mind that hyperfocal distance calculators aren't designed for modern high-resolution digital cameras, so I wouldn't recommend them for landscape photography (see Spencer's article on why hyperfocal distance tables are wrong). Photographing landscapes is like therapeutic meditation: going out to photograph landscapes clears my mind and relieves my worries and anxiety. When it comes to cropping, I recommend that you minimize your cropping efforts for landscape photography if you take digital photos. For those with tighter budgets, cheaper cropped sensor cameras will be the least preferred, but the most popular for landscape photography.
For landscape photography, primary lenses used to be the number one option (and they're still the number one option for medium and large format cameras). An ultra-wide-angle lens will allow you to get closer to subjects and show their greatness; a normal range lens is probably the most used lens in your arsenal to photograph most subjects, while a telephoto lens will allow you to focus on a particular feature of the landscape in front of you, or perhaps photograph distant subjects. You can take good landscape photos with any camera equipment, but you still need to know how to use it properly.
