Landscape photography: how to take pictures of mountains, beaches, other scenery with an SLR camera

Picturing the Lay of the Land
Know your camera and trust your instincts

andscape photography vies with portraiture as the easiest kind of photography to do passably, but the most difficult to do well. In both, technical mastery of the subject is simple to achieve, but to get superior results, a photographer must rely on the more elusive faculties of imagination, sensitivity and a discerning eye.

In one respect, landscape photography is more difficult for the average photographer because there is a relation between camera size and the ability of the photographer to render the scene successfully. Timothy H. O'Sullivan, William Henry Jackson, Carlton E. Watkins, Eadweard Muybridge and the other great American landscape photographers who explored the West in the late 1800s used large-format view cameras in which the negative plate was as large as the paper on which it was printed.

Today's serious landscape photographers continue in that tradition, using more versatile though somewhat smaller view cameras, which nevertheless are gigantic compared with the 35-mm single-lens reflex (SLR) camera, the largest format used by most amateur photographers. In effect, we must squeeze the vastness of a scene onto that relatively miniscule 35-mm frame. If we are too ambitious and try to capture too much, the results can seem meager indeed compared with the grand reality.

Small-format camera users must therefore approach their subjects with the limitations of their equipment in mind. This usually entails concentrating on the landscape within the landscape—on the part that reflects the whole.

On a visit to Cape Cod one summer, I remember trying to photograph from atop the cliffs at Cape Cod Light. I wanted to capture the great height of the cliffs, the sparsely peopled beach far below and the tranquil water beyond. To get it all in, I had to use a 24-mm wide-angle lens, but like a Bible written on the head of a pin, my pictures contained details too many and too minute. They gave no impression of the depth of the scene, and there was nothing to arrest the attention.

If I were to try it again, I would begin by concentrating on each of the elements separately; then I would move to a site that encompassed two of them; and finally, I would attempt to embrace all three, but with a more restricted view, experimenting with different lenses, camera angles and distances.

In approaching a landscape, you intuitively or deliberately arrange elements of the scene into a meaningful composition. Unlike candid forms of photography, landscapes depend heavily on composition for their success. Many people have a sense of composition that is quite sophisticated, perhaps because television, movies, pictorial magazines and heavily illustrated Web sites are an integral part of contemporary life. In our photography, we often know when we're going wrong without resorting to compositional analysis. Likewise, we're quick to release the shutter when all the elements of a scene come together.

The important thing is knowing what you can do when the landscape meets your camera only halfway—how you can change dissatisfaction with a possibly inspiring picture into satisfaction. The practical compositional variables you can employ are focal length, depth of field or focus, viewpoint, color, light and shadow, atmosphere, subject matter and framing.

Focal length is at the short extreme with wide-angle lenses, which change proportions in a scene. Objects closer to the camera will appear proportionately bigger than those farther away. With a 28-mm or a 35-mm lens on a 35-mm camera, you can use this characteristic to give more visual weight to foreground subjects, such as rocks, trees or water, while you minimize the effect of possibly distracting backgrounds containing people, roads or power lines. Distances between things appear greater through wide-angle lenses; you can therefore use them to give a sprawling look to a rather limited view.

In contrast, telephoto lenses have little effect on proportions, and they have the property of compressing space. You can use the flattening of field that occurs with a 200-mm telephoto to bring an important background, such as distant peaks in a mountain range, forward—giving the background pictorial status nearly equal to that of the foreground.

"Mount Monadnock, the Summit from Bald Rock" by Robert Winkler

A fine all-around lens for landscape photography is the 50-mm lens that comes as standard equipment on many 35-mm SLR cameras. Zoom lenses are best when circumstances prevent much movement toward or away from the subject.

Depth of field is greatest with wide-angle lenses, so use them if you want sharp focus for the entire scene, from the foreground to infinity. With telephoto lenses, depth of field is shallow, though focus can be quite deep if you use a small aperture and focus the lens at the far end of its range. At a wide-open aperture and a close distance, you can use selective focusing with a telephoto lens to crisply separate a person, wild animal or object from the rest of the scenery. With either wide-angle or telephoto lenses, you may need a tripod in low light; otherwise, use a 50-mm lens, which usually has a considerably larger maximum aperture than the others, making it much "faster."

Viewpoint is influenced by the angle, height, tilt and distance of the camera. A change in viewpoint can be the answer when you seem to be getting nowhere with a landscape, but don't expect to find the ideal point of view, since there are often many good ways to approach a vast subject. In 1874, Timothy H. O'Sullivan spent no less than three days photographing Shoshone Falls in Idaho's Snake River from various vantage points. The first ever to photograph the Grand Canyon, he was able in 1871 to convey its awesome scale by confining the view to a narrow section of the canyon's towering wall and a strip of the Colorado River bed, while including some other members of his survey party—tiny figures that rest on the river's sandy shore.

Once you've found a promising camera position, decide whether the horizon should be high or low. If the sky is important, you may want to lower the horizon; if the foreground is more interesting, you can raise the horizon or perhaps eliminate it. Move back to bring a new element into the picture, forward to remove an object from the frame's edge.

Tilting a wide-angle lens while changing its height and distance can make subjects loom larger or appear to recede, depending on the direction of movement. A wide-angle lens exhibits the least distortion when you hold the camera in a plane parallel to the subject; converging lines occur when you tilt the camera. With telephotos, distortion is minimal.

Colors, which vary in kind, intensity and distribution over the scene, can convey mood, tend toward the monochromatic or exist as a variegated patchwork. Their impact is often greatest when they are least expected. In Eliot Porter's landscapes, vivid colors frequently occur in unlikely places, like the spray of orange autumn leaves that pierces the dark understory of Great Smoky Mountain woods, or the prismatic effect of a sheet of water spreading over stone.

Light is yet another pictorial element—you can sometimes use it to separate foreground and background; use shadows to impart mood and to counterbalance areas bathed in sun. At times, light can give an otherworldly quality to landscapes, as in the work of Ansel Adams, who, in California's Yosemite National Park and in other Western states, seems to have reveled in the stark, changeable light of storms, sunrises and moonrises.

Look for unusual atmospheric effects and try making them the main subjects of some shots, or, as Axel Brück suggests in his helpful book, "Practical Composition in Photography," use them as "great simplifiers." Snow and fog, for example, can greatly alter the landscape, obliterating lines and detail, limiting the range of colors and often making a complicated subject easier to deal with pictorially.

Although different land forms can exist within a single region, you'll probably find it best to concentrate on the landscape most characteristic of a place, whether that means sandy beaches or rugged mountains, desert scrub or lush forests. Including a section of ocean, lake, stream or river can suggest movement, add texture or reflect a part of the scene that bears repeating. Clouds—whether high or low, dreamy or threatening—can bring a prosaic landscape to life.

Framing determines where your picture begins and ends. The framing you choose can create a simple picture that has few components for the viewer to absorb, or a complex one, which may take the viewer time to interpret. With a panorama, you portray the landscape's grand scale; with a closeup, you show its intimate side.

Although many of us have been warned not to follow our first impulse to put an interesting subject in the dead center of the frame, sometimes that's the best place. Consider off-center framing, however, before you release the shutter—perhaps important elements might otherwise be excluded. If you're not sure exactly where you want the borders of the picture to lie, decide what scenery really makes the picture, and include no more or less of it than you need. We're often told to watch our backgrounds for objectionable arrangements; also check the four edges of your viewfinder to keep what's important in and what's extraneous out.

Don't be afraid to experiment—in landscape photography, trial and error is not only advisable; it is also practical. The vast and permanent subject permits careful study, an unhurried technique and a multiplicity of views. Look at the familiar with fresh eyes, whether it's the ridge you pass on the way to work or a landscape you've seen pictured 100 times. There is no such thing as the definitive landscape. Not even the Grand Canyon, perhaps the world's most-photographed natural wonder, has given up all its visual secrets. Variations in the play of light are infinite, and no two people see the world in exactly the same way.

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A message from Robert Winkler

Jeff Brush/Connecticut Post (used with permission)

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