    | |||||
|
Mar 2, 2009 - Kent Pickering Landscape & Architecture Tips How to find your landscape... 1.Take those shots where everyone else is standing in those popular places, but then look round, even opposite of what everyone else is doing, and see what the possibilities are. You’ll be surprised at what you’ve been missing. 2. Hike to locations to which others are unwilling to venture. Sometimes even short distances will yield something few have ever seen. I also get out of my car to travel to locations where many photographers are unwilling or unable to get to. I ski and mountain-bike to locations with a camera, traveling fast with just one lens and a couple if filters. I have backpacked to locations high in the hills with my family, not only to bond with them around the campfire, but also to shoot locations that many don’t. 3. Get low to the ground and focus more on the foreground. Turn your camera to the air; try to distort your current surroundings as much as possible. This can yield perspectives that have never been seen before. 4. Shoot in rain, snow, fog and wildfire smoke. One of my favorite images I’ve taken recently is of the Madison River in Yellowstone when wildfire smoke turned the western skies into a deep crimson. Clearing storms are also a great potential for powerful colors, clouds and shade and shadow elements. 5. Don’t be afraid to focus on what I call “the intimate landscape”-the lines within your closest surroundings. I have an image of a boulder at the edge of a lake in which the water is lit up by the reflections of surrounding peaks and silhouettes of fir trees in the vicinity. It’s almost abstract until you start to look at what’s really there. 6. Research your locations. I love looking up on the web a place that I’m about to visit and seeing what amazing photographers have captured there. I use those images for my basis of what’s available in the area; I take very similar shots and then I expand upon those. 7. See how many images you can take n your local region. Shoot the same area with multiple lenses, stand in different spots, and then take what you’ve learned on the road whenever you head someplace new. Remember point of view. 8. Use telephoto lens where others have used a wide-angle lens and vice versa. 9. Study other creative disciplines: painting, architecture, graphic design, web design, music, movies and more to find your creative soul. 10. Enjoy what you photograph and the surroundings that you’re in. cherish every minute of your time there and never forget all of those amazing experiences. That emotion will transfer to your photographs.  | |||||
| |||||
 |
