Digital Photography Guide - Make Your Landscapes Look Like They Were Taken by a Professional!

Landscape photography can be tricky. Even though elements may be individually beautiful, sometimes broad landscapes can look boring. There are, however, things you can do to improve your photograph. Using a tripod, even on bright days, allows you to use a small aperture setting to obtain optimum depth of field. A digital photography guide can go into more detail about the steps to take to tailor your camera's settings to the landscape you're photographing. Here are a few general tips, since different landscapes call for different techniques. Three types of landscapes to consider include rural, urban, and night time.

With rural landscapes, most photographers go with a representational style of photo, as realistic and natural as possible without manipulation (darkroom or digital). Composition and detail are key to getting a good rural landscape picture. You can use a wide angle lens, but this isn't by any means vital. The great thing about digital cameras is that there are a number of "on-board" settings that you can change that make an enormous difference in the way your photos turn out. Check out an online photography course that will show you how to do this, whether it's an inexpensive camera that's several years old or a brand new digital SLR.

You'll use different camera settings for urban landscapes than for rural ones. Did you know that cloudy weather is often better for shooting urban landscapes than sunny weather? Or that early morning or late evening can give you amazing effects? Urban landscapes are full of clean lines and angles. Following a digital photography guide, you can easily learn exactly what menu selections and settings to change to make the most of the contrasts of an urban landscape.

Night time landscapes can be difficult because you want to capture the beauty of twilight, but long exposure times don't always work out well. Using a tripod and a remote shutter control are two big steps toward great night photography. Learning these techniques isn't brain surgery, but if you don't know where to begin with the menus and settings on your camera it might as well be. The great thing about learning these techniques is that you can apply what you've learned to other types of photography: weddings, portraits, extreme close-ups, and speciality shots.

Armed with the knowledge of what those mysterious camera settings do, a tripod and a couple of other basic tools, you can make professional quality pictures with your camera. Surprisingly, you don't need to have an enormous number of megapixels to do so. Landscapes can go from ordinary to amazingly detailed and perfectly exposed with a few easy to master techniques. The only thing separating your ho-hum snapshots from crystal clear, professional looking shots are a few tricks you can learn from following an online digital photography guide. After this, you'll never go back to taking uninteresting landscapes again.