- Welcome to this episode,
in my series on mobile photography for beginners.
In this episode you will learn five tips
on how to take some great landscape photos.
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I'm Loïc Bellemare-Alford,
and in this series I share some tips and tricks
that I learned by taking thousands of pictures
using my phone.
Landscape photography is my favorite type of photography,
so let's get right into it.
My first tip is the rule of thirds.
If you haven't already, go inside of your camera settings
and enable a three by three grid.
Once this is done, the rule states
that your subject should be either on the line of third
or ideally on an intersection of two of the lines.
If we have a pretty typical scene right here,
so we have a nice mountain, we have a lake, and some sky.
We actually want to make sure
that the mountains here, which is our subject,
is either on the bottom line or on the top line,
here to get a little bit more of the sky
or the water inside of it.
A little pro tip is actually take your camera
and turn it around here
to take more of the sky inside of the shot
or more of the water,
depending on which is most interesting.
So this is really great
if you have a sunset, or something like that,
where you want to get more sky inside of your image.
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One of the best tips I can give you for landscape photos
is to add a foreground subject.
A foreground subject
is anything that is in front of your main subject.
For us, our main subject is going to be the mountains
in the background.
So we could use the bush that is right in front here
to add it as a foreground subject,
but it could be anything else like rocks, sand,
or anything else that you think looks good
in the foreground of your image.
Don't forget your rule of thirds.
You want to make sure that you have this
in the bottom right corner
or anything that respects the rule of thirds
and keep your background subject,
also using the rule of thirds.
The reason why adding a foreground subject is so useful
is that it creates layers inside of your image,
which add more depth inside of your image,
and makes it a bit more complex
and more interesting to look at.
One well kept secret
inside of landscape photography using your phone,
is actually to use your portrait mode.
So this will allow to select
if you want to have your foreground
or your background blurry inside of the image.
By blurring the foreground, or the background,
it's actually going to allow you to get some images
that are much simpler.
Another a little pro tip
when taking pictures using your phone
is actually to turn it around
and face downwards with the camera
if you want to get closer to the ground
and get an even more interesting shots right here.
My next tip is definitely going to seem
completely unintuitive,
but it's to add a person inside of your shot.
The reason why you want to do this
is to fill a part of the image
that might be a little bit boring
or to show a sense of scale.
So for example, it could be somebody kayaking on the lake,
or if you get to the top of the mountain,
you could put a timer on your camera, walk away,
to really show how big mountains are around you.
My last tip is one that's usually misunderstood
by beginner landscape photographers
and is that you need the right light
and the right weather conditions to get amazing shots.
If you take a picture at sunrise,
in the middle of the day of a blue sunny sky,
at night, at sunset, or at blue hour,
they're all going to be completely different results.
You usually want to take a picture of a landscape
at sunrise, sunset, blue hour,
or in the middle of the day when you have gloomy skies,
because these are the places
where you're going to get the best results.
This is also a reason why pro photographers
tend to go back to the same location multiple times
because they're waiting to get
the perfect weather conditions and the perfect light
to get an amazing landscape photograph.
So it's not just luck,
it's a lot of time just going back to the same places
and taking the same picture over and over again
until you get the perfect conditions
for your landscape shot.
I hope you enjoyed this episode
on landscape photography using your mobile device.
If you did,
please let me know by hitting the like button below
and definitely subscribe
for more videos on mobile photography.
See you in the next one. Bye-bye.
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