This chapter provides an overview of what you must consider before heading out to capture your images in the field. You'll get tips on choosing equipment, camera settings, file formats, and more.
Before You Go Out
This lesson discusses the pros and cons of bringing a companion along with you on a landscape photography shoot and some of the surprising issues you might expect to face.
In this lesson you'll learn you how to set your camera for the best possible image quality for landscape photographs. We'll cover shooting RAW, Adobe RGB, and more.
There are many tripods out there, so how do you know which one to use? In this lesson we'll discuss basic tripod characteristics, including ballhead types, the tradeoff between size and stability, and some examples of what NOT to use.
This lesson introduces you to the world of lenses, including wide-angle and telephoto lenses. You'll learn which lens to use when and how to properly mount your lenses.
A good backpack is a key piece of equipment for a field photographer. This lesson will show you what to look for and what to put into your backpack before you hit the trail.
Now that you are familiar with the equipment you'll need, the next step is capturing the scene. This chapter will teach you how to set up your shot and explore some special techniques you can use to enhance your images.
Capturing the Scene
In this lesson you'll learn how to read the all-important histogram. With it you can make sure your exposures are correct to accurately capture the detail in the lightest and darkest parts of the image.
This lesson shows you the equipment and techniques you'll need to photograph a waterfall while capturing the motion blur of the water, making it look like cotton candy.
Panoramic stitching is a great way to capture an image that is too wide for your camera. This lesson will show you how to use a bracket made especially for this purpose.
Reflections in still water create beautiful geometric patterns and colors. In this lesson you'll learn how to capture this kind of shot and get tips on the best equipment, settings, and composition for both black-and-white and color images.
Composition is simply the arrangement of the subject matter within the boundaries of the image. In this lesson you will learn what to keep in mind when you are composing your shot.
In this lesson you'll learn the difference between simply taking a picture and capturing the scene. As you'll see, the key is to take many varied photographs of the same subject.
In this lesson you'll learn why you should always shoot using manual exposure techniques. You'll also see how to balance the dynamic range of your image with manual bracketing, ensuring that you get the best image possible.
In this lesson we will take to the skies and explore how to best photograph clouds. You'll learn a special trick for capturing the detail in clouds without losing the detail in the landscape. Be ready to move quickly: Conditions change and clouds move rapidly.
No matter how carefully you shoot your photographs, you will always need to do some post-processing to optimize your images. This chapter introduces you to some useful programs for this kind of work and walks you through the most efficient workflow.
Post-Processing
This lesson introduces you to several programs that work together to create an efficient image-processing workflow. You'll learn about Adobe Bridge, Adobe Camera Raw, and Capture One.
How do you decide which file format to use? In this lesson we'll take a detailed look at the differences between images saved in RAW, JPEG, and TIFF formats.
Even the most fabulous photograph will often need some adjusting. In this lesson you'll see how to adjust the white balance, saturation, and brightness of your images.
The possibilities for adjusting your image globally in Adobe Photoshop are endless, so don't be afraid to experiment. However, there are a few adjustments that are standard in landscape photography, as you will see in this lesson.
If your image has a mix of dark and light properties, you may want to manually balance the dynamic range to really make it pop. This lesson will show you how it's done.
High dynamic range (HDR) is primarily used as a special effect to create edgy images, but it can also be used as an easy dynamic range balancing tool. In this lesson you'll see an example of exactly how to do this using Photomatix.
The Shadow/Highlight dialog box in Adobe Photoshop is a great way to bring down the brightness of an image in order to balance out the dynamic range or to reveal a portion of your image that is hidden by darkness. Watch this lesson and you'll see how.
You should always have your horizons straight. Don't despair, however, if the horizon slants across your otherwise excellent image. You'll learn how to correct it with Adobe Photoshop in this lesson.
Don't short-change the clouds in your images - they can turn an uninspired scene into the shot of a lifetime. In this lesson you'll learn how to use Topaz to punch up the cloud detail in your landscape photographs.
If your image is ultimately going to be viewed on the Internet, you'll need to process it in a specific way. In this lesson you'll learn how to really make it pop onscreen.
In this lesson you'll learn how to effectively and efficiently prepare your image for printing. Some of the important considerations include cleaning up sensor dust, adjusting the contrast using a layer mask, and correctly sizing your final image.
Adobe Photoshop is the workhorse software program for most photographers, but there are a number of plug-in programs that play well with Photoshop and can really help improve your image. You'll learn about Topaz, Nik software, and Neat Image in this lesson.
Converting color to quality black-and-white images involves several steps. This lesson walks you through an example involving a layer mask and a saturation adjustment.
Android
Apple iPad
