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How To Add Contrast To Landscape Photos

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Sunrise in the Mojave / Photo by Steve Berardi
Sunrise in the Mojave / Photo by Steve Berardi
Adding contrast to a landscape photo is one way to make it a more compelling image. When we think of the word “contrast” we usually think about contrasting colors or brightness. But, there’s also another type of contrast that you can capture in your images: subjective contrast.

Here’s a quick look at the different types of contrast and how you can capture them in your images:

Color Contrast

The most common way of adding more contrast to your images is photographing a scene with strong contrasting colors. With landscape photography, this is usually pretty easy to do around the “golden hours” — where you’ll likely have some of your scene in the shade while the rest of the scene is extra saturated with that warm light of sunrise or sunset. [Read more…] about How To Add Contrast To Landscape Photos

Learn more than exposure from the histogram

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histogram-titleIn a previous post, I explained how to use the histogram to get a better exposure (and then how to do it better with the RGB version). The histogram is a great tool, and it can even tell you a lot more than just the exposure of your image. It can also help show you properties like contrast.

Brian Auer recently wrote some wonderful articles on his blog that illustrate some of the other things you can learn from the histogram, so I thought I’d share them:

I usually just share these kinds of links on our Twitter or Facebook pages, but I thought these were so good that they deserved a blog post 🙂 [Read more…] about Learn more than exposure from the histogram

How to use the histogram to get a better exposure

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histogram-titleOne of the first things you probably want to know after taking a photo is whether or not you got your intended exposure.

You might be tempted to look at the preview on your LCD screen, but when you’re shooting photos outdoors in the sun, those previews can be very deceiving, making your photos look much brighter than they actually are.

So, how do you know if you got the right exposure? Well, one way is to use the histogram. [Read more…] about How to use the histogram to get a better exposure