Landscape shooting is one of the most commonly used kinds of shooting in photography. Each definite landscape requires individual approach, and careful choosing of shooting conditions. It is often that a landscape that attracts general attention turns out to be entirely inexpressive in the imprint, and the details, attaching special showiness to the landscape, disappear. A photographer must not only see the details, constituting the main thing in the landscape beauty, but he must be able to emphasize it and single out the essentials by means of photography.
Optic qualities of landscapes depend on components of their objects and conditions of illumination. Most part of the picture in the landscapes is occupied by the sky, the vegetation, snow, water, and in some cases by bare surface of the ground and rocks. The illumination conditions vary greatly depending on the height of the sun, nebulosity and other factors, what constitutes the main palette of the photographer-landscapist. Sometimes it happens taking pictures against the sun, when the direct rays or reflections from the glaring surfaces might get into the lens.
To take pictures of landscapes one can use any cameras, however, it is very important to convey minor details in depicting landscapes, and high resolution of image is very important.
Good pictures of the cloudy sky could be obtained against the sun, when the solar disc is covered by a cloud. In these cases edges of the clouds are cut out by the sun, and a picture sometimes depicts even divergent rays of the sun. Winter landscapes are notable for high contrast. The contrast of winter landscape in gloomy weather is especially noticeable, when tree trunks, figures and other objects look rather contrasting against the bright white snow background. This landscape contains almost no transitional intermediary colors, only dark objects on the snow background could be seen. The contrast decreases at solar illumination, soft shadows on the snow appear, and blue shadows of the objects conceal homogenous contrast of the landscape. Undoubtedly, it is better to shoot in sunny weather, as without the sun the structure of the snow blanket, its relief is not expressed in the pictures.
The most expressive objects in winter landscape are snow banks, snow on the trees, roofs of buildings and hoar-frost on the branches. All these objects contrast with each other and well depicted in the pictures only at direct solar illumination. The best time for shooting winter landscapes are morning and evening hours, when the sun slanting beams outline the monotony of the snow blanket.
