Ezi Pix Blog

Three Tips for Breathtaking Panoramic Landscapes

Based on a conversation with professional Landscape Photographer Geoff White of Landscape Decor

I just spent 30 minutes in the great outdoors, photographing a fence! I’m learning to take breathtaking Panorama’s. Yes, you heard me right. In my conversation with Geoff White, I learned this is a great trick to making sure you know what aperture settings are right for your camera/lens, before you even get to your place of interest. Geoff is incredibly knowledgeable in the subject of landscapes and as he say’s “I really only see in panorama!”

What’s that, you want the opportunity to do some ‘doors off’ shots from a helicopter?

This is a must read article for you with a very special opportunity to do just that. The excitement, the vista’s, the adrenalin rush, and of course the images. Geoff can take you on a magical tour of some of his favourite places and teach you many more exciting tricks than shooting fences. You will be on location, hands on in his workshops. Check out my three top tips to taking breathtaking panoramic landscapes which I discovered during my conversation with Geoff.

1.    Steady on.

Use a tripod. It is impossible to get a good landscape shot without a tripod. Today's digital cameras, in their compact and ultra compact forms, may look ridiculous perched atop a huge tripod, but don’t let that stop you using one. There are many fine companies that make lightweight, easily transportable tripods. Lightweight is important because, if you walk all day or night looking for those special shots, a tripod can get very heavy very fast. There are also tiny table top tripods that you can use on the roof of your car or on top of a wall.

Tripods are a necessary evil, but anytime your shutter speed needs to be slower than 1/60 sec. at wide-angle, you should be using a tripod to prevent camera shake and a blurry picture. If you are fully zooming in without a tripod, you will probably need to have 1/125 sec. or faster.

To understand what the best aperture is for your lens try setting up your camera on a tripod against a textured surface like a wooden fence. Then manually focus on that wooden fence and shoot an image at every available aperture from 2.8 through to the maximum aperture of the lens. Have a real good look at those on your computer screen, particularly out at the edges and the corners of the shot and you will find that the edges and the corners will be quite soft at f2.8 and as you go through you might find that the optimum aperture for your lens is f11 or f16. By doing those tests, whatever the optimum aperture is, that’s what you need to be shooting your landscapes at.

2.   Simplicity

K.I.S.S. (Keep It Super Simple). Make your images as simple as possible. It’s the simplest images that are the ones that are the best. Have you ever taken a shot just on sunset with nothing but the stunning colours in the sky and just one tree, or even one person as a silhouette and nothing else? These simple shots are the ones with the ‘wow’ factor.

Often times when you look at a landscape image it’s not particularly evident what the subject of the image is and it’s the simplest images that really stand out the most. It can be a winding creek in the foreground that leads your eye gently to the mountain ranges in the background or a paddock of canola taken at just the right angle to make your eyes want to wander over the flower tops and onto the lone gum tree in the middle of the crop. Simple, but stunning and effective.

3.    I see the light!

You may see the light, but are you shooting at the appropriate time of day for the shot you are taking. If you’re shooting a rainforest shot or a waterfall, you definitely don’t want to do this when there’s sunshine. You want to do this when there’s a leaden overcast sky. As heavy overcast as you can get and you’ll get beautiful rich greens and you’ll get fantastic shadow detail. On the other hand if you’re shooting beach landscapes and stuff like that you don’t want overcast, you want sunshine. So choose your subject according to the light you’ve got for that day. Geoff recommends planning ahead and having a couple of options so that no matter what the weather, you can still go out and get your shots.

Of course, light is the most important part of any photo. Even if the composition and focus are out, the image will still be pleasing to look at if the lighting is good. Is the light falling at the right time of day and at the right angles? This gives the image its artistic elements.

At the end of the day, most people don’t get that great shot they are after because they are not out there practicing and doing it. So in the words of Sir Richard Brandson “Screw it, Lets do it!”