I really enjoy doing landscape type of photography. It's the traveling combined with going into the countryside to look for opportunities that gives me a great sense of freedom. Add to this the magic results you can get when the conditions are right and well, and you’ve just come up with something that is very satisfying to do.

While I was walking on a slope of a hill looking out on a great panoramic view I did not have to remind myself of the above statement. This whole scene screamed to be photographed! But having a grand view is one thing, converting it into a photograph that does this view at least a bit of justice is something else. For me this is the moment where the fun actually begins…

One of the problems when looking at a spectacular scene is that it can easily overwhelm you and that you more or less forget to explore it first for the best viewpoints (I’ve made this error way to many times to admit…). Everything looks great at the beginning but there are a few things to consider. First of all I wanted to recreate the overview that I had while I was on the hill. This calls for a “wide angle” approach.

Using a wide-angle lens in the landscape means you must have an attractive foreground first that you can use as the “anchor” of the image. Making a wide-angle photograph without taking the foreground into consideration will, in my opinion, lead to boring images most of the time.

In this case they were growing grapes in orderly rows on all the slopes of the hill. This was perfect for creating great diagonal lines that force your eyes straight into the main subject of the image. Still, it took a while to find a location that wasn’t cluttered with weeds and didn’t have all kinds of obstacles that covered up too much of the rest of the image.

Of equal importance in selecting the proper viewpoint is the light. It’s no good if you found a great viewpoint with the light being boring or coming from the completely wrong direction. In this case I was lucky in having beautiful warm evening sunlight (ok, I was in the luxury position of staying close to this area for several days and could wait for these conditions to appear…)

Evening sunlight has a number of qualities that make it perfect for photography better even than broad daylight. First of all it creates warmer and richer colors. Secondly it’s not as intense, meaning the overall contrast between highlights and shadows is much easier to manage by digital or film camera’s. Lastly the angle at which the light strikes creates longer and softer shadows that can help a lot in creating depth into the image by making objects looking more three dimensional. To maximize this effect, you need to make sure that the light is coming from the side. The result of this is easily spotted on the sticks where the grape plants are attached. The relatively soft shadows on the side make the sticks look round. If I would have taken this shot e.g. on an overcast day the sticks would have appeared flat because of the lack of this shadow…

Now we are basically all set to take the photograph. All you have to do is stop down the aperture enough (or use the landscape setting on your camera) to maximize the depth of field (sharp from foreground to background) and use a tripod to prevent camera shake…

Of course a location like this has much more photo opportunities waiting to be uncovered. Apart from the wide-angle approach I wanted to explore the village by using a tele-lens. Contrary to popular (read internet) believe, I do not agree that wide-angle lenses are a must for landscape photography. Depending on the situation, you can basically use any lens for this matter and I’m especially fond of using tele-lenses in the landscape (which I intend to write another article in more detail about later).

Since I was already on a viewpoint that gave me a clear view on the village and the valley all I had to do was change the lens to a 200mm tele. When you look at the image to the left it’s vastly different in “feel” but equally attractive in my opinion. It’s basically a scene within the scene of the first image.
In this case I used the road as the line that leads you from the foreground into the village and I used the church tower as the exit “anchor” of the village by positioning it using the “rule of thirds”.

There’s one word of warning when using such a long lens for landscape photography. Getting enough depth of field (sharp from foreground to background) can be problematic, (impossible even when the foreground subjects are too close). In this case it’s not an issue at all since the whole scene is distant enough.

I highly enjoyed walking around and taking photographs here. Add to this that I was pretty pleased with the results myself (which is all that matters really) and I had a perfect evening indeed…

Alfred