How to Use Wide-Angle Lenses for Landscape Photography

When you are trying to create extraordinary landscape photography, your best bet is to use wide-angle lenses. Using wide-angle lenses for your landscape photography will help you achieve the near/far composition you’re looking for. Wide-angle lenses allow you to include foreground, background and sky all at the same time to create depth in your images. Here are some tips for using your wide-angle lenses to expand your creative options when shooting your landscape photography.

Get Low and Close
When using a wide-angle lens from Beachcamera.com for your landscape photography, you can create a perspective distortion by causing closer objects to appear larger in size compared to the more distant objects. To achieve this effect, you will need to position yourself low and close to the objects in the foreground of your landscape photo. Fill the bottom of the frame with your foreground by getting only a few feet away. This may require using a smaller aperture of around f/11 or f/6 to achieve the sharpness you desire. 

Exclude the Unwanted
When using wide-angle lenses for your landscape photography, be careful that you don’t include any unwanted elements. It’s easy to accidentally include anything from tripod legs, your own shadow or even your feet. Lens flare can also be an issue. It’s harder to shade your wide-angle lens when pointing it toward the sun.

Use the LCD Monitor
When you are trying to frame your landscape shot using a wide-angle lens, look at the scene through your camera’s LCD in live preview mode. This will help you to better see all of the elements within the frame before you take the shot. You can move your camera from Beachcamera.com around and refine your compositions as you see different perspectives through your wide angle lens.

Use Small Aperture
You will want to get as much of the landscape in focus as possible. The way to achieve this when using a wide-angle lens is to shoot at smaller apertures. Shooting at around f/13 to f/16 when your subject is a lot closer to your wide-angle lens than the background will keep your background in focus. You want your viewers to still be able to clearly view the point of interest in the background.

Not Just for Wide Open Landscapes
Your wide-angle lenses can be used for more than photographing expansive landscapes. A wide-angle lens can actually help you capture more of the scene when photographing small spaces. If you like to explore caves, a wide-angle lens is the perfect addition to your camera kit. Using a wide-angle lens will allow you to capture dramatic and interesting shots that will actually make the confined spaces of a cave looked bigger.

Using wide-angle lenses give you a perspective that’s perfect for capturing sprawling landscapes. Adding wide-angle lenses to your landscape photography allow you to get everything in the scene into focus to create awe-inspiring photos.