Photographing the Outdoors: A Camper’s Guide to Capturing the Wilderness

How to Get Beautiful Photos of the Wilderness

With the above settings in mind, it’s time to start photographing the outdoors!

1. Keep Composition in Mind

Composition refers to the arrangement of all the elements within your photo. When taking photos, you might veer towards putting your subject smack in the middle of the lens. While this can make a beautiful picture in some cases, the composition is usually boring.

The Rule of Thirds

To make interesting photos, you may want to keep your primary subject to the right or left of the lens. Doing this will keep your subject in one-third of the photo while the other two-thirds are almost empty. This photography method is the rule of thirds, and it helps to draw the eye to the subject. Your resulting photos will be absolutely compelling and have more of a visual appeal.

2. Make Use of Lighting

When photographing the outdoors, you won’t have much control over lighting. There is nowhere to plug in lights to help you manipulate your photos. So, you’re typically stuck with natural sunlight and moonlight. You’ll want to take advantage of the beautiful lighting the blue and golden hours have to offer.

Blue Hour

There are two times of day when you can experience blue hour, including before the sunrise and after the sunset. Beautiful blue light seeps into the sky at these times, creating a moody and dreamy atmosphere. You’ll have about 30 minutes to an hour before sunrise and after sunset to capture this magical sight. Blue hour is especially great for photos of water, as it gives the water a deeper blue tone.

Golden Hour

You can experience golden hour for about 30 minutes to an hour before sunset and after sunrise. Golden hour provides soft, warm light, where you’ll often see yellow and orange hues in the sky. The result is a happy and glowing atmosphere. These colors make a beautiful backdrop for mountain and forest photos.

3. Try Out a Polarizing Filter

Many outdoor photographers tend to have polarizing filters in their collection of camera accessories. They can help reduce any glare you might be getting from water sources. And they can help create more contrast when photographing the outdoors by darkening the sky and emphasizing natural colors. This filter will generally reduce the amount of reflected light in your photos.

4. Play With Angles

Photographing at different angles can significantly improve your photos. Try to steer clear of keeping your camera completely straight with the horizon line. Sure, it’ll look great for some pictures. But it can get a little boring to look at after a while. Try out varying angles and different perspectives.

A cool way to try this is by pointing your camera upwards from the bottom of a tree trunk. This will almost elongate the tree and make it look much taller than it is.

5. Use Depth to Your Advantage

Another thing you can do is play with depth. Choose different things to focus on. Using interesting foregrounds is a great place to start. Maybe you’re in a field of flowers, and there are mountains in the distance. Try focusing your lens on the flowers with the mountains blurred in the background. Don’t always focus on the obvious subjects.

6. Try to Capture Movement

Using movement when photographing the outdoors is always beautiful. One of the most obvious ways to use movement is by taking photos of water. If you use a slow shutter speed on a waterfall, the photos will be especially stunning. Or you can use a fast shutter speed to freeze moments like a running deer or splashing raindrops. You’ll need to experiment with your surroundings.