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Five Hidden Landscape Photography Tips • Landscape Photography
• Wildlife Photography
BY SPENCER COX | 8 COMMENTS
LAST UPDATED ON AUGUST 2, 2023 • Portraiture
• Post-Processing
• Advanced Tutorials
I’ve heard a lot of “hidden tips” for landscape photography over the years. Most
of them weren’t helpful at all. But, along the way, I have collected a handful that
really are useful — nuggets of wisdom that I still use today, and that I recommend
to other photographers as often as possible. I’ve included the five most valuable VOTE
hidden tips below. Perhaps you’ve heard some of these before, but I hope that at On Our Next Lens Reviews
least a few of them will be completely new.

Table of Contents
1. Flip your photos horizontally
2. Capture the landscape doing something
3. It’s about the process(ing)
4. Bookend your photos in the field
5. Show only your best
6. Conclusion
7. See Also: Click Here to Become
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1) Flip your photos horizontally
I’ll start with the best tip first. That way, if it isn’t useful, you can skip this article
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Why would anyone do that? Nothing will change, except that you’ll briefly have a
mirrored image. That doesn’t seem particularly helpful. COMPOSITION & BLACK & WHITE
CREATIVITY PHOTOGRAPHY
Interestingly enough, though, this is my favorite hidden tip of all. The reason? By
flipping your photo horizontally, you see it in a different light.

Have you been editing a landscape photo for ages, and you can’t tell if your
changes are actually improving it any more? Are you so familiar with an old photo NIGHT SKY PORTRAIT
PHOTOGRAPHY PHOTOGRAPHY
that you’re having a hard time judging how good it really is? This tip will help you
out.

When you flip your photos horizontally, it’s like looking at them again for the first
time. Sometimes, you’ll like the photo far more than you expected — other times, STREET PHOTOGRAPHY
you’ll realize that it isn’t as good as you thought. Or, you might notice new things PHOTOGRAPHY VIDEOS

that you need to edit, such as straightening the horizon or altering your crop.
UNIQUE GIFT IDEAS

No matter what, it’s an excellent tool to have for your own photography (and it’s
easy to implement in nearly all post-processing software).

2) Capture the landscape doing something

Landscape photos are nice. Landscapes doing something are the photos that
really leave an impression.

What do I mean by “doing something”? It’s a wide net. Maybe there’s a huge
wave crashing ashore. Or, a rainbow forms during a dramatic storm. Either way,
your landscape photos should tell the story of a moment in time — something
happening that you were lucky enough to witness.

Here’s a photo of a landscape:

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NIKON D800E + 35mm f/1.8 @ 35mm, ISO 100, 1/80, f/8.0

Here’s the same landscape doing something:

NIKON D800E + 35mm f/1.8 @ 35mm, ISO 100, 1/100, f/16.0

The final image.

Notice a difference?

The first photo isn’t bad. It’s a typical shot of a beautiful mountain valley; it shows
how this scene normally looks. But it doesn’t tell a story.

The second photo is much better. It reveals a moment in time — the sun peeking
over the Grand Teton mountains at the end of the day. I only saw the landscape
like this for a few seconds, which is a large part of why this photo succeeds.

People don’t mind seeing landscape photos, but what they really want to see are
pictures of a landscape doing something special.

Why are you capturing a particular photo? Is it because the view in front of your
camera is simply beautiful? Or is it because you’re witnessing something unusual
and spectacular?

Good landscape photos always have a reason to exist. They don’t show the world
how just anyone could see it — they show the world doing something special.

Whether you capture a dramatic bolt of lightning, or a pristine landscape of fresh

snow, your photos will be more powerful if they’re built on a story.

3) It’s about the process(ing)

I don’t like breaking the news, but most of the top landscape photos you’ll see
have been heavily post-processed. In fact, without their processing, some may
not even attract attention in the first place.

At some level, this makes sense. You can take a good photo under beautiful light
of an incredible subject, and it won’t hold a candle to an identical photo with
skilled post-processing.

However, the scary part for a lot of photographers is that some of the all-time
best photos you’ll see are inventions of Photoshop rather than Mother Nature. As
you would expect, this fact has sparked countless debates and arguments about
what is acceptable in post-production, including lots of fierce statements from
both sides.

And through everything, nothing really changes.

No, a photo’s value isn’t 100% based upon the post-processing behind it. In fact,
some photographers today even refuse to manipulate their photos beyond
brightness and color balance adjustments, and they still capture wonderful
shots. Light, subject, and composition matter more than anything else, and they
always will.

Unedited landscape photo, exactly as it appeared out of camera. (RAW image, default white balance,
Camera Standard profile, all siders set to zero in Lightroom.)

Still, even though you can capture good photos without extreme edits, it isn’t the
norm for popular work today. If there is a “secret” of professional landscape
photographers, it’s that almost all of them understand post-processing at a very
deep level. And, as frustrating as it may sound, I recommend that you do the
same.

Becoming an expert isn’t easy, but it’s worth the effort. If you’re good at post-
processing, you’ll see a huge jump in the quality of your portfolio. No, it isn’t the
most thrilling part of the job, but it’s a skill that really matters. It increases your
attention to detail, and it lets you make the most of every photo you capture.

An unedited photo misses a lot of its potential — and there are plenty of other
photographers out there who have mastered this game already.

Still, I recommend being subtle. You can draw a lot of quality out of an image
without going overboard or looking unnatural. How much processing looks
unnatural, and where should you draw the line? This is a decision you should
make for yourself, and there are pros and cons either way.

4) Bookend your photos in the field

Have you ever taken a series of panoramas or HDRs in a row? If so, you probably
know how tough it can be to remember which photos go together once you open
them up on your computer.

There’s an easy trick to fix this problem: Bookend your important photos in the
field, and you’ll save yourself a lot of time later!

What do I mean by that? All you have to do is take a photo of your hand before
every series, and then another one at the end. Pretty easy.

This is a very quick way to mark where each set of photos stops and starts,
saving some time and preventing headaches in post-processing. (Feel free to
delete the photos of your hand once you’ve merged the proper images together,
or labeled them some other way.)

There are other uses for the bookend trick, too, but this is the big one for
landscape photography. Hopefully, if you hadn’t heard this tip before, you’ll find it
valuable.

NIKON D800E + 70-200mm f/4 @ 70mm, ISO 100, 1/4, f/22.0, six-photo panorama

5) Show only your best

It’s a simple tip: If you only show your amazing photos, people will think that all
your photos are amazing.

Ansel Adams said that twelve successful photos in a year is a good crop. To me,
though, that seems like a pretty optimistic standard. I’d be happy with three or
four truly successful photos each year. The years add up quickly.

Since starting photography, I’ve taken too many photos to count. Even as a
landscape photographer, working more slowly and taking fewer images than
other genres of photography, I still routinely capture a couple thousand photos
during long expeditions.

How many photos do I display, though? A tiny, tiny fraction of that number. When
I’m introducing people to my photos for the first time, I rarely display more than
75 images.

If you only show your good photos, people will think all your photos are good.

Consider, for example, what would happen if you made 5,000 smoothies over the
course of a few years — and you only ever let anyone taste your best five. People
would think you’re universally fantastic at making smoothies.

This holds just as true in photography. The fewer photos you display, the higher
quality your portfolio is, on average. You get to be more selective.

In the end, you have the power to decide which photos to show the world. That’s
a pretty powerful tool.

Conclusion
At least for now, these are the top hidden tips I know. As I find more, I’ll continue
to update this article with new information, so stay tuned. In the mean time, feel
free to test them out and see if they’re useful for your own photography.

Individually, none of these techniques will skyrocket the quality of your

photographs. It takes patience and practice to learn a solid framework of
landscape photography, and these tips are simply small parts of that larger
whole.

No matter what, though, it’s always a good idea to expand your web of
knowledge about landscape photography. You never know when a new tip might
make a big difference for one of your photos. So, even if only one of these five
suggestions is something you hadn’t heard before, I would consider it a success!

See Also:
Five Landscape Photography Tips for Beginners (Five more tips, bringing the
total to 10)
Five Advanced Landscape Photography Tips (Now we’re at 15!)

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FILED UNDER: PHOTOGRAPHY TECHNIQUES

TAGGED WITH: CREATIVITY, LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY, PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS

About Spencer Cox

I'm Spencer Cox, a landscape photographer based in Colorado. I
started writing for Photography Life a decade ago, and now I run
the website in collaboration with Nasim. I've used nearly every digital camera
system under the sun, but for my personal work, I love the slow-paced
nature of large format film. You can see more at my personal website and my
not-exactly-active Instagram page.

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8 COMMENTS Newest

Steven Tryon
January 9, 2021 5:36 am

I always bookend my panoramas by taking one photo of my hand, holding up a number of

fingers equal to the number of shots in my panorama. Super simple, always works!

0 Reply

TJ Weisenberger II
December 12, 2020 6:49 am

I’ll try flipping the phots. I never heard the bookend tip anywhere but I do bookend with
photos of my feet.

0 Reply

Let's connect lens

September 19, 2019 1:46 am

Great tips guys! Photography is an art so it must be learned properly. A good guide can
teach art in a great way. This article is similar to a guide because it is an eye-opener for
blooming photographers and travel lovers.

Thank you so much!

0 Reply

Mohit Bansal Chandigarh

February 21, 2019 6:32 am

Really big thanks from Mohit Bansal Chandigarh for sharing these tips. It’s really helpful as I
am also a photographer so it will surely help me a lot.

0 Reply

Mohit Bansal Chandigarh

February 21, 2019 6:31 am

This is incredible. Such an informative blog. Really big thanks from Mohit Bansal Chandigarh
for sharing these tips.

0 Reply

Jason Schroeder
February 21, 2019 3:49 am

These are incredible! I am a complete beginner in all of this, but I just got a new camera as a
gift for my birthday, and I wasn’t thinking it wouldn’t hurt to learn a few tricks and use it from
time to time to actually take nice pictures :) Thank you very much, your tips really helped! I
am going to go practiceeee

0 Reply

Dan s
April 30, 2018 12:21 am

Thank you Spenser! These tips were very helpful. These tips are things I’ve never read
before, or would have thought on my own. I recently shot several panoramas. It was a
nightmare figuring out where one panorama set of pictures ended and the next began. Love
the bookend idea. Dan

0 Reply

Spencer Cox Author

Reply to Dan s April 30, 2018 2:46 pm

You are quite welcome! Yes, bookending photos is something I’ve found to be very
useful, just for the fact that it simplifies things for later. Best of luck putting these
suggestions into practice.

0 Reply

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