I HATE SHOOTING LANDSCAPES. There, I said it. It’s probably only because I’m bad at it, but I cannot for the life of me capture a compelling landscape. I feel like I did better with cityscapes, but even then I have a really hard time finding a focal point.
This week I went out shooting at a park I’d never been to, and I felt pretty good about it while I was shooting (which is rare) and then when I got them onto my computer I was so disappointed. Just so much green, and not much interest. I even got a shot of an urban cowboy and couldn’t make it compelling!
I tried to capture some moving water in a stream, but every shot wound up wildly overexposed. I guess I need a neutral density filter :-/
As always, I was using my borrowed Olympus E-M10 with a Lumix 14-42 f/3.5-5.6. I shoot mostly aperture priority and often shot with the highest f/stop to get the whole scene in focus. Unfortunately that meant that I didn’t nail focus when I came across a man riding a horse. They were moving a bit too fast for me to capture, but I recovered it as well as I could in post.
I do all of my editing in Lightroom, mostly adjusting the crop, white and black points, and some luminance.
f/7.1, 1/400th, ISO 200
f/3.5, 1/1250th, ISO 200
f/22, 1/20th, ISO 100
f/20, 1/60th, ISO 250
I’m really kicking myself for not adjusting my aperture when that cowboy showed up. It could have been such an incredible capture but I really missed the mark. I’ll have to go back there and hope to see them again, there were quite a few people out riding. I’d also like to go back during the golden hour which would help with the lack of color variation in all the shots.
