Landscape photography tutorials are one of the niches of photography that lend themselves to being really well covered online. Over the years we have seen a lot of exceptional guides to help newbies and experienced alike master their landscape photography, possibly headed by our own article by Chris Gin. But, this year has seen an especially good crop of new tutorials that we thought were worth bringing to the attention of the landscape photographers among you.
Of course, if you really want to take your landscape photography up a notch, you will probably need to read all of these and then follow it up with studying a proper, full-length guide on the topic like Kent Dufault's excellent guide to landscape photography, but for now, let's jump into some great blog post tutorials on the topic.
13 Tips to Perfect Your Landscape Photography – General tips that will get your basic landscape shooting up to scratch pretty quickly if you follow them all. These types of tips articles are great for picking up one or two things that you may not be doing, but may make a noticeable different to your landscape results, if implemented.
The Emotional Impact of Color in Landscape Photography – This is an interesting tutorial that goes specifically into how to use colour in your landscape shots. It actually comes in three parts and is very comprehensive. A great primer on the topic that will get you thinking about this specific aspect of landscapes.
Landscape Photography: 9 Ways to Break the Rules for More Creative Images – It can be easy to fall into the habit of trying to create technically sound landscape images and this can sometimes lead to producing boring images. This tutorial throws a spanner into those works and makes sure that you are using every ounce of creativity that you can muster. Exercises like this are great for maintaining a bit of originality in your thought process for landscape photography.
How to Use Natural Light in Landscape Photography – If you are a traditional landscape photographer then the chances are that you will be spending a lot of time thinking about your lighting situation and 99% of the time that will be natural light. Getting your head around the possibilities of natural light will have massive effect on the quality of the shots that you are taking. This tut is definitely one that you should save and print out.
Chasing Lightning: Landscape Photography Tutorial – This is a more specific sub-genre of landscape photography that can produce some simply stunning images. But it comes with its own set of problems, some more obvious than others. We threw this one in as the quality of the tutorial is great and will get you thinking about those types of landscape photography that you might not usually do. A great addition to the landscape photography tutorials crop that has come out this year.
Landscape Photography Tutorials That Concentrate on Post Production
If you are shooting raw and shooting to the right in your landscape photography (and we strongly suggest you research the reasons that this is a good idea), then you will come to realise that both the shooting and the post production of a great landscape photograph are required for exceptional results. Properly shot landscape shots, ironically, look kind of flat when they come out of the camera.
How to CLEANLY Blend 3 Exposures in Photoshop (Landscape Workflow) – Jimmy McIntyre is a beast when it comes to these types of tutorials – easily one of the top 10 people doing this online at the moment. He has even written for us a couple of times and his tutorials are among the most popular we share. This particular tutorial really shows his style well and we think it's one worth learning. The fact that it's a video makes it very easy to follow along to. It also deals with a very difficult element of landscape photography that any landscaper will want to master. We actually came across this video on the wonderful Shutterbug website.
How to use Photoshop for Landscape Images – This video tutorial will show you how to do a lot of the post production effects that are popular in landscape photography. Sharpening and vignettes feature and are useful, but be cause not to overdo these types of effects. A thorough tutorial that deserves a place here though!
Focus Stacking For Landscape Photography Tutorial – Focus stacking is usually something associated with macro photography, but in the spirit of keeping things fresh, it also deserves a spot on this list. It's also difficult to argue with some of the effects that can be achieved as shown in this tutorial. A very thorough Photoshop tutorial that doesn't leave much out!
Moody Landscape Tutorial in Adobe Lightroom – Interestingly, this is the only Lightroom post production tutorial we could find from this year that hit a great standard (hint for photo bloggers there). This is a really useful tutorial as it centers around moody landscapes achieved in overcast conditions. Any landscape photographer knows this can be challenging due to the drab colour conditions on those types of days so this is actually really really useful.
Conclusions
These landscape tutorials were standouts so far in our search for 2017 which leaves a big gap for photography bloggers at the moment (hint hint). They will certainly introduce most photographers to a few ideas that they may not have considered previously so be sure to bookmark them!
1 Comment
Thanks James for the tutorial – great to follow you as you used the Lightroom tools. Soooooooooooo useful!