Landscape photography has pretty much the same criteria as does landscape painting, only the medium used by the artist is different. Landscape photography is often used for advertising and documentaries as well as fine art photography. You don’t have to be a professional photographer to enjoy taking landscape photography lessons, whether with a professional teacher or with yourself as a teacher.

What’s Your Landscape?

Landscape photography is not limited to just trees and fields, although there are certainly a lot of fine photos of them being taken every day. Landscape is whatever is around you. It doesn’t necessarily have to be beaches or mountains majestic or any of the traditional landscape photography settings. The city may be your landscape. The block you live on may be your landscape. The office you work in, the store you shop in, the lot you park your car in – all of those places are part of your world. It is all your landscape.

Perhaps the minute cracks in the pavement are your landscape. Looking at them very closely, they might look like a miniature city seen from space. Or perhaps your landscape is the entire harbor you grew up at. It might be best to get that view from atop a skyscraper or a in a helicopter. All of these examples capture the landscape of your inner experience and show the outer world what you see.

Traditional Landscape Photography

Most artists do starve if they only work for themselves. Don’t be afraid to take landscape photography to the specifications of others. This will test your creativity in ways you may not have thought possible.

For example, maybe your grandfather wants you to take landscape photography of his fishing hole. It’s not just one section your grandfather wants – it’s the whole area. You would need to get up in a tree or a ladder to get an overview of the fishing hole – the trees, the clouds, the play of shadows on the water, the boats silently hopeful overhead.

You will also need a panoramic lens in traditional landscape photography in order to fit all of what you see on the actual photo. It is best to work with natural light, as that gives a softer and richer look to the images. If the day is heavily cloudy, you could try using a higher speed of film such as 400 or even 1600 rather than the usual 100 or 200 speed used in most 35mm cameras. Only use a flash if you absolutely have to -- say, if you have a camera that refused to release the shutter unless the flash is turned on!