David Pogue's Digital Photography: The Missing Manual

The Stunning Landscape

In portraiture, you have to arrange the lights and the models. Landscape photography, however, demands a different discipline: patience. Nature calls the shots here. Your job is to be prepared and in position.

Shoot with Sweet Light

Hate to break it to you, but the best photographers don't get a lot of sleep. Show me an award-winning, breathtaking landscape—a pond shimmering in the woods, golden clouds surrounding a mountain peak—and I'll show you someone who got up at 4:40 a.m. to be ready with his tripod as the sun rose.

That hour before sunrise, and the hour after sunset, are known as the magic hours or the golden hours. The lower angle of the sun and the slightly denser atmosphere create rich, saturated tones, plus what photographers call sweet light. It's an amazing, golden glow that makes everybody look beautiful, every building look enchanted, and every landscape look breathtaking.

It's a far cry from the midday sun, which creates much harsher shadows and much more severe highlights. Landscape shooting is more difficult when the sun is high overhead on a bright, cloudless day.

Tip

The 20 minutes before the sun rises and after the sun sets can be pretty amazing, too.

Layer Your Lights and Darks

Ansel Adams, the most famous American landscape photographer, looked for scenes in sweet light that had alternating light and dark areas. As you view one of these pictures ...