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How To: Landscape Photography Planning

by dave
Jun , 14
How To:  Landscape Photography Planning

Good landscape photography is more than showing up with a camera and snapping a photograph, how the light moves through out the day and the right vantage points can mean the difference from an “ok” photo to a “wall hanger” photograph that your friends will be jealous of.

How do I prepare?  What does my landscape photography planning consist of?  Two very important tools, plus some research for on the ground knowledge.

Where are you going to photograph?

That’s simple enough, when traveling to new destinations there are a few tools at your disposal, firstly if you are traveling to a national park, like we have in the Great Northern Expedition, guide books are an incredible resource.  The other is to look at photographs from Google image searches, Instagram and Flickr.  These give you an idea as to what you’re looking at.  Landscape isn’t like going to Disney World where you have the “kodak feet” showing you where to stand to take a classic photograph, but there are some dead giveaways like “Artist Point” in Yellowstone.  Seeing that you may be taking a photograph at a similar location that hundreds or thousands of others have done what can you do to make your photograph better?

After using the other resources I hope into Google Earth to get a grasp of what it physically looks like, if it sounds like I’m cheating I don’t care.  It really helps to build a better understanding of an area before you’re standing there with your camera on a tripod!

Landscape photography planning

Plan the exact time you need to be there!

Hold on a minute, how do you plan the exact time you need to be somewhere to photograph a landscape?  The Photographer’s Ephemeris is the go to tool to plan the time for the exact day or days you will be there.  By using the free web tool (or the low cost app for iOS and Android, it’s worth the price), you can have an idea of not just when sunrise and sunset are, but also where the sun will be tracking during those times.  If you need a waterfall lit up just right, you can track the sun’s path to find the right window of time.  If you need a cliff face or mountain range to be illuminated perfectly, this is how you find it.

Landscape photography planning Landscape photography planning

The Weather

The weather isn’t something we can control (yet, maybe?), but if I’ve traveled a great distance to be somewhere and I have a limited amount of time to be in that area, I’ll take whatever weather that is there and hope for the best.  I would have rather tried and failed for a great photograph than not to have tried and it be years until I can return to try again.


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