STOP This Photography Nonsense!

within photography there are a lot of sayings that are often being presented as facts or a rule and they're just being repeated again and again and again but in the end they are simply just nonsense and we will be better off if we simply just stop saying it also as you can see I am back in Iceland and it is absolutely gorgeous so the first thing I consider to be photography nonsense is how we distinguish between horiz Al photos and vertical photos as landscape format and portrait format the problem is that people start associating vertical photos with portrait photography and obviously horizontal photos with landscape photography the problem is that you can get the idea that if you take a landscape photo in vertical format or a portrait photo in horizontal format it may be wrong and in the end it's actually just nonsense because obviously as you can see here with these recent photos I've taken on this journey here in Iceland you can definitely take vertical photos when you're doing landscape photography likewise in the early days of my photography career I did a whole lot of horizontal portrait photos I personally think that it gives a lot more breathing room around the person so it doesn't feel as if the person is like crammed in there and all you see is like the face I sometimes hear at best Soo scientific explanations why landscape photos are better in horizontal format and it's because of our peripheral vision that we see the world wide and not elongated the shape of your photoo should obviously be dictated by what you want to include from the scene in front of VI how you want to present it the purpose of the photo is also worth considering are you only taking photos for Instagram yes vertical format is way to go if you're more into making big prints then definitely consider making them big and wide for the wall however if you have a slim wall then maybe the portrait or vertical format is better and obviously it also in the end come down to personal preference so I think that talking about portrait format and Landscape format is nonsense and we should just call it vertical or horizontal format and then there's of course also Square format but that's another talk if you want to learn how I compose photos like this when I think about Framing and scale whether to use a horizontal or vertical format how I use leading lines balance my photos and much much more be sure to get my two ebooks they're super easy to read with minimal text and loads of photo examples to get to the point fast there are links to both of them down in the description of this video so I've arrived here at one of the big glaciers in Iceland and I want to take a photo where we have little me in the foreground and we have the big epic backdrop of the glacier however we have a little bit of an issue and that is if I shoot wide angle I'm taking in way too much of the scene right here so I need to zoom in a little bit and then you can easily see me and you can also see the glacier way further up close it takes up more of the image now to get a photo like that I need to use what's called perspective compression perspective compression is that you move your camera into a position so that your perspective makes the Scene Epic and then you use the focal length that is optimal for the scene now I often hear this term as lens compression and it's a confusing term it's actually a little bit of nonsense because it nothing to do with the lens yes you do need a specific focal length to optimally photograph the specific scene you're photographing in but it is your perspective relative to the scene in front of you that makes the difference and therefore it ought to be called perspective compression so to get such an epic shot with me in the front and the glacier in the background I will need to change my perspective that is why we should call it perspective compression and not lens compression it has nothing to do with the lens just look here so right now I found my composition I know I want to include this much of the glacier however I don't really have a place to stand right down here I could walk all the way down to this group right there but that would not have me included in the photo I can of course Zoom a little bit out if I I want to but it's not really the composition that I want so what I need to do is to walk away from this place where I'm standing here and walk up here and as you can see I am shooting at about 70 mm and the point here is I need to change my perspective not the lens all righty so I now made it up the hill and the perspective has changed in the scene so right now as you can see my composition is like this and I'm still shooting at about 70 mm but since I've changed my perspective I now have a completely different scene where I can walk into it and walk on that Ridge and get my perspective compressed photo not lens compressed a misunderstanding I often hear is that you need a telephoto lens to create this effect but using a longer focal length the same as zooming in only crops your field of view it does not compress the scene I also took a wideangle photo of this same scene and as you can see I can perfectly overlay the zoomed in photo with the zoomed out proving that the lens does not change the perspective what some people may think the lens can do is something along the lines of the dolly effect from videography here we see how the scene is getting compressed because I am moving both the camera the persp effective and zooming at the same time but the compression effect happens because I move the camera not because I change the field of view it's kind of an optical illusion the brain makes on you because I remove your spatial awareness by zooming in by cropping your field of view so the next nonsense I think we should stop saying is that you need to expose to the left or you need to underexpose because it's easier to recover the Shadows than it is recovering the highlights yes you can blow the highlights but you can most certainly also blow the shadows and there aren't as much detail in those underexposed shadows as you would want to think there is yes these days we do have amazing noise reduction software but you still need to just make a proper exposure it's actually really that simple so as I've explained in other videos you need to expose to the right but you do not want to clip the highlights overexposing the photo and clipping the highlights are two different things you can most certainly overexpose a photo and then bring down all that information in post processing so you actually do want to overexpose the photo but you do not want to clip the highlights and it's very important that we put those two things together in the same sentence overexpose but don't clip the highlights because then you actually get more information onto your sensor you can then bring it down in postprocessing and you then have a cleaner photo so I've come here to the ice beach in Iceland one of the most beautiful and unique places in the entire world to take landscape photos and to get a proper exposure is very very simple so right now I am photographing in manual mode so I take control of all my settings both the Shadow speed the iso and the aperture and let's say I want to photograph this chunk of ice right here in front of me so I simply just dial in with my histogram here so that I get a proper exposure so if we look here at the histogram right now I'm overexposing as you can see I also have my separate Stripes here warning me so I need to just make a proper exposure I have a few separate Stripes but up here that is fine and now I'm good I can change the iso of course but then I start overexposing again you just want to fill out your histogram right here so that your information is towards the right you can also see I have information here towards the left that's the black sand you can see here in front of us and the information on the right that is the background and the sky there's no right or wrong histogram there's just an optimal exposure and right now as you can see as I decrease my shutter speeds I get a darker and darker and darker photo and obviously I don't want to underexpose it yes I can bring it up in Photoshop or light room but then I just get a noisy photo I just want to make a proper exposure to begin with which is about here so underexposing a photo on purpose because it's easier to bring out the sh Shadows is just nonsense just get a proper exposure from the beginning expose to the right but don't clip the highlights it's that simple sometimes you photograph a very contrasty scene and to not get your Shadow area too dark and full of noise when you lift the Shadows you'll want to take two two photographs one where you expose for the shadow areas in this case the foreground and one where you expose for the highlights in this case the sky and then you can combine them in Photoshop or another editing software that allows you to work with layers if you do struggle with editing or want to learn my editing techniques such as working with layers Luminosity masks focus stacking adding or working with atmosphere cleaning your photos properly dodging and burning and avoiding editing mistakes then check out my big post SES in course Photoshop for landscape photographers there are now more than 30 videos divided into several sections and if you want to save a bit of money be sure to use the coupon code down in the description of the video so the final part I consider to be complete photography nonsense is that wideangle lenses are landscape lenses the problem with saying something like that is that you kind of insinuate that the other lenses are not landscape lenses and obviously that's just plain wrong on this trip alone I have taken a few photos with the long lens of the Landscapes generally in Iceland there are plenty of ways you can take photos beautiful photos with a t photo and a standard zoom lens so just right here where we are standing right now I'm photographing out here and we have the most inredible SE spray as you can see down here right here being lit by the sun and then we have the background mountains there and a beautiful dramatic Sky it looks absolutely gorgeous and the wide Ang L can of course be used to much more than just landscape photography you can use it to architecture photography cityscape photography and you can actually also use it for portraits now it may not be the most flattering portraits it kind of gets a little bit of a comical look when you take a head shot or a portrait photo with wide angle lens but a wide angle lens is not exclusively decent or good and can be used for landscape photography it can be used to a lot of different kinds of Photography where you have to distinguish between the lenses or focal lengths that is that you want to use is simply just how does the scene in front of you look if it's a bit dramatic scene where you need to take in a the entire visual field then yes a wide end Glens is good however if you need to zoom into like something way into the background or in the near the Horizon far away or some details then a t photo lens is of course beneficial and if you want to take something in between then a standard zoom lens is what you want to [Music] use so I hope I managed to clean up a little bit of all this photography nonsense that gets repeated again and again and again if you want to learn more about composition or you want to learn how to edit your photos be sure to use the links down description of this video to either get my composition ebooks or enroll in my big Photoshop landscape photographers postprocessing course hope you enjoyed the video see you next time

Channel: Mads Peter Iversen

Views: 74,793

Keywords: photography, landscape photography, photography tutorial, learn photography, photography education, photography mistakes, photography techniques, photography tips for beginners, beginner photography, professional photography, better photos, photography nonsense, photography misconceptions, iceland landscape photography, photography course, lens compression, perspective compression, landscape format, landscape lenses, landscape photography lenses

Id: yh8LMjceKpw

Length: 14min 14sec (854 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 06 2023