Mountain landscapes

Highlighted peaks
Shoot late in the day for the sun to work its magic

icturing your finished, cropped and edited image

in your minds eye will help you to capture the
shot you need to achieve this goal. The original wide
shot here was taken at 24mm as we wanted to
capture as much as possible of three Lake District
peaks: Kirk Fell, Great Gable and Scafell Pike, with
Wastwater in the foreground. We timed the shot so
the setting sun was highlighting the peaks, and we
werent too worried about all the empty water in the
foreground or the excess sky, as we were planning to
crop both top of bottom of the image for a

Get down low!

T

o exaggerate the size of the mountains, try

getting down low with a wide-angle lens
such as a 10-24mm on APS-C D-SLRs like a 700D
or 70D, or 16-35mm on full-frame D-SLRs like a
6D or 5D Mk III and shooting up towards the
sky. Fill two-thirds of the foreground with
something engaging; we went with a mountain
stream flowing steadily over rocks and the
remaining third with mountaintops and sky. We
shot at a narrow aperture of f/22 for good depth
of field, and also for the slowest possible shutter
speed; 1/2 sec in this instance, which was slow
enough to capture the blur in the water. Always
use a tripod for landscape shots, but with slow
shutter speeds its even more essential to
capture sharp shots that would be impossible to
shoot handheld. Composing your shot with the
aid of Live View on your rear LCD will mean you

32 | PhotoPlus October 2014

panoramic-style shot; one the bonuses of highermegapixel D-SLRs is being able to dramatically crop
images and still be left with a large file for printing.
Make sure you focus on the mountains youre
including in shot, rather than the foreground that
youll be cropping out, and use a narrow aperture of
around f/16-f/22 to ensure the whole mountain
range is sharp, from front to back. Shoot at ISO100
for the best noise-free images, and use a tripod so
you can capture shake-free shots. Also expose your
shot for the lighter mountains, not darker waters.

can incrementally improve your composition

usually it only takes a nudge left or right, up or
down, to remove distractions and to create a
well-balanced composition.

Highlighted peaks
Panorama

Original Wide shot

Lens: Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM

Exposure: 1/15 sec at f/18; ISO100

PhotoPlus October 2014 | 33