Pro Tips for Shooting Wide-Angle Landscapes

If you’re a landscape photographer, you know how important it is to try to include as much of the visual elements as possible. The best way to achieve this is by using a wide angle lens. Shooting your landscapes with a wide angle lens allows you to capture a lot of the foreground, background and sky to create the depth you are looking for. There are several tips for using a wide angle lens to expand your creative landscape photography options. Here are some of the ways you can use different types of wide angle lenses to create amazing landscape photos.

Fill the Frame

When shooting landscape photography with an ultra-wide angle lens from Beachcamera.com, you want to make sure that you don’t leave a lot of open space in the frame. You want to fill the frame with content that will contribute to the overall image. Utilize the foreground and background to fill any possible empty space in your frame. You don’t want your viewer’s eyes to be distracted by any empty space that might take away from the experience.

How Low Can You Go?

Try shooting from the hip, or even lower to change up the perspective of your wide angle lens landscape photography. Shooting from lower angles will allow you to include more leading lines in your foreground to create new compositional opportunities for your wide angle landscape images. Getting lower to the ground with your wide angle lens will also allow for the smallest features in the landscape to have their day in the spotlight by standing out more.

Distortion

Wide angle lenses are used in landscape photography mainly because they cause objects that are closer to appear larger compared to objects that are more distant. This is called perspective distortion. As a landscape photographer, you achieve this effect by the way you use the wide angle lens. If you’re trying to make a faraway mountain range create a larger impact, use perspective distortion to your advantage. Simply tilt your camera down and place the mountain in the upper part of the frame. The lens’ distortion will stretch the mountain to give it the impression of being larger.

Focus Stacking

Shooting wide angle landscape photography at such low perspectives can make it challenging to maintain a sharp focus on the main object, the foreground, and the background. Try using focus stacking to create a greater depth of field. This is done by capturing several images focusing on different spots throughout the frame. Then, blend these images together during post-processing to create a sharp image from the foreground to the background.

Four Corners

This isn’t referring to the sidewalk game you played as a kid. When using a wide angle lens from Beachcamera.com for your landscape photography, it’s easy to accidently capture a few unwanted items in the corners of your frame. Zoom in and check out your image preview for tripod legs, camera bags, your feet, or tree branches you didn’t plan to include in your shot. Adjust your perspective by zooming in a little, or plan to remove these items during post-processing.

It can be challenging to create the image you’re aiming for when photographing with a wide angle lens. These tips will help you use your wide angle lens to its fullest potential so you can capture impressive landscape images.