How to take Landscape Photographs

OK, so you may have seen professional photographs of things like the Grand Canyon, a beach, or of a storm brewing, or mountain scenes. However, you try to take a photograph of mountains, a beach, or some other land, and you just can't seem to produce the same effects. I will teach you how to produce professional-looking landscape photographs using the Olympus SP-820UZ camera. I will start off with the Grand Canyon, located in the United States in Arizona.

So, to get the picture shown below, which if you visit the Grand Canyon, you should find the place where practically all the tourists on the South rim are., which is the first place you'll find. You will find these two trees somewhere on the right side. You will want to set the dial on the top of the camera to "Magic." Then, press the left and right arrow buttons on the back of the camera to go to the preset #12, known as "Dramatic." Press "OK." Then, press the up arrow until you get to where the grid shows. Bring the horizon level with the upper horizontal line on the grid. If I am correct, the trees near the bottom will be close to the two vertical lines. Using this grid, which separates the picture into thirds, is using a common professional photography rule known as "The Rule of Thirds." In this composition technique, you set the horizon either on or near the bottom third or top third of the picture.

An example of the grid made by the Rule of Thirds is shown here:

In some cases, you may need to ignore that portion of the rule of thirds and put the horizon in the middle of the image. Here's an example:

To capture this image, which was taken at San Clemente Beach, California,you will want to set the dial to "SCN," or scene mode. From there, use the left and right buttons to go to "Beach and Snow." You will want to still use the rule of thirds in this photo, but in a different way. This time, you will want to center the picnic table in the bottom left third. This will make the horizon be at the middle of the image, if you use the correct zoom.

So, using these simple settings, and by setting the metering to "ESP," you should come up with these great results. Remember, to get the highest-quality images, set the JPEG compression to High (see previous post) and always shoot with the maximum resolution available in the mode being used. Now I hope you get great results! :D