Visualizing landscape photography: The importance of planning your shot and developing your own style

 

 

Landscape photographers have a lot of different tools to help them deliver great images. For photographer Nigel Danson, one of those tools is Adobe Lightroom. In the video below, Danson discusses not only how to create better landscape photographs, but also goes through his Lightroom editing workflow.

An important skill Danson discusses below takes place long before you ever start editing your image in your software of choice, visualization. It's important to work on being able to see in your mind the final image that you want to create. Before you press the shutter, you should be imagining the desired photo. With experience, knowing what you want to shoot will allow you to choose the right camera settings and allow you to know what you'll do for editing steps before the image is even written to your memory card.

Without visualization, your photographs will be snapshots. There's nothing wrong with taking snapshots, but if you want to take photographs and create more meaningful work that better impacts your viewer, then planning ahead and visualizing your work is often a critical step in the creative process.

As you can see above, your personal vision and editing workflow can result in capturing vastly different images from other photographers who may have been with you or have shot a similar location. Even if you are shooting in a group or capturing landscape images of popular locations, you can still deliver very different photographs with varied moods and emotions.

To see more of Nigel Danson's work, visit his website and follow him on Instagram. You can see more videos like the one above by visiting his YouTube channel.

(Via Nigel Danson)