How to take great summer photos - TIP 4 (Cheshire photography course with Jane Burkinshaw)

We've done a fair bit on taking photographs of people in the sunshine, so let's look now at

HOW TO TAKE GREAT PICTURES OF LANDSCAPES

Now I'll freely admit landscape photography isn't really my bag - I can capture a half decent picture on holiday but I take my hat off to the true landscape photographer greats - like Joe Cornish, one of my favourites. They devote an enormous amount of time to searching out great shots and planning the best time to photograph them, even going back time and again to get it just right.

But for us mere mortals there's some simple ways to make our landscape photos look better and here's one:

THE RULE OF THIRDS

Imagine your picture (the one you're going to take) is divided into thirds, horizontally and vertically and put the horizon on one of the horizontal thirds. This gives a much better composition than if you put the horizon across the centre.

 You can decide whether you have more sky or more land, depending on which has more interest.

On many cameras you can get a grid to display on the LCD screen to help you divide the scene into thirds. This also helps make sure your horizon is level!

Also - see whether your shot looks better as a portrait or landscape orientation - take both to compare.

So whilst the sun continues to shine have a practise! Tomorrow I might skip ahead to sunsets as we're getting such beautiful ones at the moment!

By Jane Burkinshaw. Share this post by clicking on one of the Share buttons on the right hand side. I'd love to hear your comments too!