LOCATION TECHNIQUES : Landscape and Architecture

Taken on the Yorkshire Moors.

Here is a HDR version of this image :

Taken on the Yorkshire Moors. 

Taken at Scarborough beach.

Taken at Portishead Marina.

Taken at Portishead Marina. 

Important things to consider when creating and processing landscape and architectural images:

Quality - to get the best possible quality images it's best to shoot in RAW in-camera. This enables you to edit images a lot better because the size of the image is four times bigger than a standard JPG. When shooting in RAW, the image file is not compressed and therefore is a lot better for printing on a large scale. A RAW file uses your camera to its full capability, and is the best at achieving the most clear, impressive, professional and aesthetically pleasing image than a JPG. RAW takes up lots of memory (around 4x more than JPGs) therefore you can't afford to be trigger-happy. You need to take time to correctly compose and expose your images so you aren't wasting shots and taking up too much memory.

Focus - Getting the image in focus must be done in-camera. If you do not get the image in focus and it is blurry, it cannot be recovered in photoshop or any other editing software. 

Noise - Noise is created by having an ISO too high. When shooting in daylight, ISO must be kept to it's lowest possible settings for the lighting otherwise noise will be created. A high ISO should only be used in dark lighting situations e.g. shooting at night, at a concert or in a nightclub. Noise can be reduced using editing software like photoshop but doing so will make the image very soft and lose it's sharpness. If the sharpness is then tried to be recovered, it will possibly bring back noise and make the image look very fake and too edited.

Clarity - An image is a lot more aesthetically pleasing to viewers if it is clear. There must be no camera shake or motion blur (unless it is intended). If not, it just looks unprofessional.

Exposure - Exposure can be corrected using editing software like photoshop using lots of different things; exposure, brightness/contrast, levels and curves, etc. However, it is ideal to get the perfect exposure or thereabouts as there is less editing to do afterwards. You can bracket your exposure by taking one underexposed photograph, one correctly exposed and one over exposed, then using photoshop you can take aspects from each one and montage them together to create your ideal image. This isn't the best thing to do though when shooting in RAW because it takes up so much memory. You can also read your histograms to correct your exposure.

Composition - Must be done in-camera. If the image is not composed right to start with, the image can't really be rescued. If the subject of the image doesn't look good, then you can't really do anything about it or edit it in any way to make it look better. The only thing you can do is crop into it using editing software to create a different composition depending on how you crop it.

Colours and Contrast - This can be changed during the editing process. Depending on what the photographer wants, the possibilities are almost endless when it comes to colour alteration. The colours can be made more dull, more vibrant, more saturated or an image can be made completely black and white.