While I don’t get as much time as I’d like for Landscape Photography these days - I thought I’d jot down a few of the lessons that I learned in my early years of doing it.
Landscape photography has been my first love for most of my photographic career, though the necessity of making a living required me to spend much more of my time in the commercial studio and in my clients' facilities. For the past fifteen years, however, I've spent increasingly more time working as a National Parks artist-in-residence, teaching photography workshops and photographing some the most beautiful landscapes on the continent.
Much of what I mention will be from a SLR point of view, but can be applicable to most camera systems where you have a good degree of manual control. These suggestions are by no means comprehensive...just a few thing to get the beginner thinking.
Many photographers assume that once the sun goes down, so do the opportunities to take spectacular landscape images. Some of my favorite photographs were taken under extremely low light or nearly pitch-black conditions. In fact, I have found that the darker it is the better results I usually get in my images.
Many of my favorite images were taken during the golden hours of dawn and dusk. A successful landscape photographer is usually willing to get out of bed well before dawn or to stay out late into the evening to capture the beautiful light of the setting sun.