How to use wide apertures properly in landscape photography

How to use wide apertures properly in landscape photography

If you’re wondering what an aperture is, it controls the depth of vision your camera picks up. When used properly, it can create mystique, abstract, beautiful images and can turn the mundane everyday world into something surreal and unique. The use of bokeh images, the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light, can be fantastic for focusing the eye on your subject or a way of adding 3D depth to your shots.

Transforming Light

To create bokeh images in your landscape, wide aperatures are used to transform light sources into defined shapes.

If you’re working in overcast conditions and the light sources are not visible, the use of shadow and the shallow depth of vision create a watercolour painting-style to your photograph.

Adapting to light quality is vital to make the most of aperture. Overcast and soft vs direct and intense are interpreted differently by the aperture sensor.

Balance

Balance can be thought of in similar terms to physically balancing. Which parts of the image look heavy, attract the eye, which are most important and need to be focussed on?

Moving your camera’s ability to focus is vital in balancing your shots or you can choose to weigh heavier on certain aspects of the image in order to be able to add power to your landscapes.

Depth

To create the illusion of depth in two dimensional images, create a shallow focus in your immediate foreground. This creates a focus in front and behind your focal point and creates the layered effect which creates a 3D feel.

Framing

When using a wide aperture you can frame your images with greenery or anything with strong colours as they add to the illusion of depth but also focus the eye on the subject.

By pushing the focus to the background and overlapping the foreground, you can capture your landscape with a natural frame which complements the scene.

The key is to experiment and see which effects you enjoy and which ones you don’t. Some of the best results come by accident.

A bokeh image which blurs details into geometric shapes.

Minimalism

If you’re working with quite a busy image with lots of complicated objects, a wide aperture can simply them into a minimalist shot with a small portion of focus.

By tightening the frame and widening my aperture, you can minimise the detail of the image and create a more peaceful photograph.

Isolation

As well as quieting down distractions of the scene, a shallow depth of field is a great way of drawing attention to a certain aspect of an image. Perhaps what you thought was the subject isn’t as interesting as something else. The ability to draw your audience’s attention to the details.

When working wide open, even the smallest adjustment of your focus can completely change your focal point, and thus the overall mood of your image.

Structures

In a landscape, structures can dominate the scene but you might not want them to be the centre of the shot and they needn’t be.

Creating the juxtaposition of extremes between something tiny and something huge can be really powerful if your eye is focussed on the small rather than the usually overpowering object.

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