There comes a point in every landscape photographer’s life when they grow out of their home region and start looking for more remote areas to shoot. It’s always good to be able to capture your favorite spot in beautiful light, but long-distance travel will open up the opportunity to not only expand your portfolio but also get a boost of creative energy. By the way, if for a good shot you need to neatly erase people from photos, read this article on Skylum’s blog.
The world is full of famous places, and some of them are so swarming with tourists that you are unlikely to find a good time when you can take pictures in peace. Locations with beautiful scenery also often have a line of photographers lined up and when you need to get a good shot without other people around, it’s a problem.
Finding beautiful places
Thanks to the Internet and social networks where photographers share their work, it’s easier than ever to find locations both known and less familiar to the masses. The easiest way to find new locations to shoot is to simply search the Internet; you’ll find blogs and various sites like these where users tag interesting coordinates themselves.
Another option is to search for photos by specific region. You won’t necessarily see beautiful pictures, but you can get some inspiration and find links to useful sites. With the growing popularity of photography, there are more and more travel guides for different countries and specific regions. Here are some more valuable recommendations for you:
- If you see an interesting place in a book, website, or search engine, you can be sure you’re not the first person to find it. So if you want to capture even more unique views, the only way to do it is to simply go for a walk through the area with the landscape you’re interested in.
- Famous places can be used as a starting point, but try to still get off the beaten path. And don’t forget to look around – sometimes the best shot is waiting for you in the opposite direction. And sometimes it’s just luck and the advice of knowledgeable people.
- One of the easiest aspects of landscape photography is to find the place you want to go in guidebooks, on maps, or on profile sites. However, getting to the right place is often much harder, especially if you’re in a hurry to get there before sunrise or sunset.
Photographer’s guides provide detailed directions so that you should have no trouble finding where a place is. However, at night, especially before sunrise, it can be difficult to identify key points of the route and successfully navigate using the guidebook alone. So how do you make sure you’re on the right trail?
Terrain orientation
The best way to learn the route to a hidden place is to make a day trip before you go photographing. This way you will see everything clearly and learn the route more easily. Of course, it is not always possible because of time constraints, so you can just go out early, even if you risk not getting there in time.
It is very important to plan a route on a paper or electronic map so that you have some idea of where you are going and what road to get there. An even better option would be to take a paper map, a smartphone with a mapping application, or a separate GPS navigator in addition to route planning. The main thing is to make sure you download offline maps so that you can continue your journey even without an Internet connection. Armed with the right apps and gadgets, you can plan a route right before you leave, and then use GPS position tracking to determine your position on a given route.
Save battery power
When using GPS navigation, your smartphone’s battery can drain much faster than usual, so you can avoid keeping the GPS on all the time and turn it on once every 15 minutes to get a sense of where you are now.
Look for hidden gems
Traditional paper maps are a terrific way to discover little-known places, and together with a compass, they make a great way to navigate.
Examine the map carefully for interesting terrain elements, such as waterfalls, and then make sure the place is not on private property. Pay attention to the contours of the landscape to see if you can even get there and if it’s safe. The satellite view on Google Maps is a great auxiliary method.
Remember the good finds
There are often situations where you stumble upon a scenic spot at the perfect moment, stop to take a few pictures, and continue on your journey. In such a situation, you may not always know exactly where you are, but for a landscape photographer, this is extremely important.
Advice from us – if you need to edit a good frame, then try using the new modern photo editor Luminar Neo with a set of professional tools based on AI instead of Photoshop. We also recommend reading a guide on how to erase people from photos on the Skylum developer’s website to make your shots even better.
