How To Improve Your Scenic Images

How To Improve Your Scenic Images

by William Lulow

In the days of black & white photography with a view camera, it was easy to obtain a totally sharp image on film. You could use the camera’s swings and tilts to create infinite focus from front to back in any scene. With a digital camera you don’t have the flexibility of a view camera for achieving these results. Nobody is interested in soft scenes unless they are totally artistic and “impressionistic” instead of being representational of the real world. What follows are some tips to achieve in scenic photography the sharpness you need to make powerful images.

This is a view of Porto, Portugal. Note the composition with the lead-in stone walk and the boats, with the city in the background. The gradient sky was due to the addition of a special filter over the lens.

• Try to find the sharpest aperture of the lens you are using. It may not be the smallest lens opening. So, you need to experiment making several images of the same scene at various f/stops and PRINTING OUT THE PICTURES. You can’t really judge overall sharpness unless you make prints. Monitors are not all that sharp, even the best ones.
• If you can stop your lens down to at least f/16, set up your composition to focus more on the front of the image than the rear. Objects closest to the camera need to be tack sharp for impact. If the background is very slightly soft, it won’t be nearly as noticeable.
• Lower your camera angle to emphasize the foreground and make sure it is sharp. Examine your exposure on your LCD and enlarge sections of it to check focus.
• Use a tripod. Even a small amateur tripod is better than none at all. If you travel by car, a good tripod should not take up much room. If you’re travelling by plane, maybe a monopod will suffice. But any support is better than none at all. I told a student to get bean bags for her trip to Africa. She wound up using them as support on the edge of a Land Rover.
• Try to decide BEFORE you shoot, if your scene will look better as an original black & white image and shoot it as such. Put your camera’s controls on MONOCHROME and use an over-the-lens filter to enhance the tones.
• Include less of the sky in your compositions unless the clouds are unusual or the lighting of the sky is dramatic. This means aiming the lens down more of the time.
• Take your camera off automatic and begin thinking about what you are doing. Use the aperture priority setting (Av) to get an idea of exposure (if you are not using a light meter). Set your camera to f/16 and see what the camera’s computer figures for a shutter speed. If it’s slower than 1/60^th of a second, make sure you secure the camera. It’s really difficult to get sharp images with a hand held camera and shutter speeds less than that. Get the exposure right and then shoot the scene in MANUAL mode.
• To minimize camera movement, learn how to shoot scenes with the mirror in lockup position.

This view of Sarasota Bay, Florida, was enhanced by the flight of a pelican to complete the composition. Canon 90D with a 20mm, f/2.8 prime lens.

In this shot, placement of the horizon was a key compositional factor. Just the effect of the sun on the clouds was enough to make this image spectacular.

Here’s another one where the foreground treatment made the shot:

When you shoot with a wide-angle lens, you get really good depth-of-field and when you concentrate on the foreground, almost the whole scene is rendered sharp.

These are just a few tips. But, you need to go out and practice until you get a “feel” for what good scenics look like. Study the great masters (Adams, Weston, Evans, Friedlander, et. al.) to see what kinds of images they have made.