how to improve landscape images

 english landscape photographer

how to make landscape picutres better

How to improve your Landscape images
Most of us have been there.You try your hardest to get a great landscape image but end up disappointed.You look at other peoples work and think "why is that so good" or "Why dont my images look like that. You look the lighting and wonder just how people ever get it just right.Answer is in quite a few cases they dont. Even if you go to the exact location where you have seen an image taken yours just dont quite stand out. So what's the answer.
To start with we all fall into the trap of photographing the main object and ignoring what makes it interesting.For instance you see a photograph of say a country mansion and off you go and photograph it..then compare your image with one you have seen.Chances are you have made the basic mistake of photographing just the mansion and not anything of interest around it.So if you look at the original you saw the chances are there was a lot more interest in the image and not just the building. To get a good interesting image you need to have foreground..middle ground and distance.Not always possible and as your photography improves trying to get foreground interest gets harder but with practice you will get the hang of looking for elements to make the image have that "Wow" effect.
Planning your shoot is pretty essential if you can do it.If your going to go out and shoot some landscapes the try to plan in advance things like where the sun will be and if possible check the weather.No use going out to photograph something if the lighting is dull and flat or the point of interest is backlit by bright sun.Even the best laid plans can go down hill fast if the weather changes and what had promised to be a bright sunny day turns into bland grey skies or rain. I try to plan a day out on where I am going...what I want to capture and where the sun will be at a given time.Even to the point of if I am going to photograph water falls I try to find a map with contour lines to see which way the water flows and where the sun will be at the right time of day. What I am in effect saying is that a bit of forethought goes a long way to getting a great exposure which is in effect what we all try to achieve.
But even then the image may look good but doesn't look great.There is a difference between a good image and a great image and in many cases the end result is achieved by post work in some image editing programme. Yes I have been there,looked at peoples images and wonder how the hell did they get the lighting that good. So it had to be post work..work you do on an image on your computer.
In the early days I read lots of digital photo mags and everything seemed to be levels and saturation.Even doing a selective adjustment didn't come up with what I wanted.There had to be something more.
When we were going on holiday to Scotland I was looking for ideas of where to go and came across a site of some excellent photos.Several really impressed me and they had been taken by some young female photographer who is very good but I just knew from one shot that there was no way ever that the lighting was that way when she took it. So after some time I learnt a few new ideas.
I rarely use Levels or Hue/Saturation. I dodge and burn but DON'T use the dodge and burn tools.If you dodge and burn onto the image you are destroying the pixels and any levels or any saturation later will only empathies it.
There are other ways.
Before we go into this I told some other guy who's attitude was "I cant be bothered with all that on every image". Well I don't work on every image I take.I select the best from a day out or holiday and work on them. The method may sound long but I don't spend much more than ten minutes on an image..maybe 30 at the most. But people either want to boost things or they want to stick with the mundane. I shoot in RAW on a Nikon D200.I shoot in RAW as there is more you can do with a RAW image but all my work can be done on a jpeg.
I use Photoshop CS3 but this can be done in almost any prog. So what makes the image better.If you look at a nice image..well that's it.There is nothing to hold the interest but some nice shadows and high lights makes the viewer look around the image.
Look at master paintings and see the amazing shadows and light.
So this is what I do.
Open the image and duplicate the background layer..there are some things you cant do to a background layer plus I may need it later.
Then I decide to do some dodging and burning.
This is the method.
Create a new layer and set the blend mode to OVERLAY. When using the "Overlay" mode the layer is working on image data not pixels so it is less memory intensive and keeps file sizes down.Also when you paint with the brush opacity set low the underneath details still show..so if say you are brushing over a wall the bricks will still clearly show.
You are also working on a separate layer which you can switch on and off or delete and you haven't wrecked the image.
It is advantageous to use separate layers for say foreground and sky.
Set the foreground colour to black and the background colour to white and whilst working switch between them.
Get a soft edge brush and set the opacity to about 10.
This is really going to depend on how strong you want the effect.Sometimes I go as low as maybe 3 or 4 on the opacity but rarely go above 15.
Black will BURN - white will DODGE.
Then start playing and try some dodging and burning.On blue skies black will darken the blue and if you have clouds white will brighten them up.
Its a question of practice but easy to get the hang of.
For a bit more mood on cloudy skies set the foreground colour to a light brownish colour and with the brush opacity set low use a soft edge brush to paint over the sky...gives some nice effects.
If you have some grass in the image set the foreground colour to a yellowy/gold colour and try that..keep the opacity down and just work away.Play with different colors on hills or mountains.
Another trick is to copy the image layer and set the blend mode to Colour Burn...it will look awful but lower the opacity to about 5 of whatever you want and it just boost the colours a bit.
Try the same idea using the Soft Light mode.
If you use those modes and it ruins say the sky get the eraser tool with a soft edge brush and erase the sky or what ever and the underneath layer will show through.
When its getting to look good try a new CURVES adjustment layer and just tweak it a bit..always use an adjustment layer as you can turn always turn it on..turn it off or delete it.