The great outdoors offers a lot of irresistible subjects: landscapes, gardens and individual flowers, trees, waterfalls, and animals. The next time you explore Mother Nature, take these helpful tips with you and bring back some amazing pictures.
Step into the light
Look for interesting combinations of color, light, shadow and texture
Morning light gives you warmer, yellow colors
Late afternoon, or evening light provides colors with a hint of red to full red
Prevent flare-ups
Sunlight can hit the camera lens and create flare – those hexagonal shapes that veil over the image
Use a hat or your hand to shade your camera
Find a location where something like a tree or its limbs can block the direct sun
A new angle on life
Sometimes the best photo is the one you just walked by
Look up, look down, look all around you
Take a few wide-angle shots of the area
Move in close to capture the details of a flower or bark of a tree by using macro mode on your camera
Explore your camera modes
Landscape mode – optimizes the camera settings for landscape photos and capturing objects at great distances
Macro mode – perfect for taking extreme close-up photos
Panorama stitch mode – combines up to three shots together into one large picture
Cut the clutter
Unrelated elements compete for the viewer’s attention and draw the eye away from the center of interest
Fill the frame with your subject by moving in close to exclude any extraneous elements
Take vertical pictures of vertical subjects like trees, flowers, and mountains
Shoot from a very low or very high angle to help the subject stand out
If practical, move the subject to a better location with a cleaner backdrop
Capture the full view
Take dramatic shots of beautiful landscapes. Capture the whole scene, be it a landscape or plunging waterfall using the panoramic mode.