5 Landscape Photography Myths You Shouldn't Listen To

In today's podcast episode, we're talking about some photography myths relating to landscape photography that, I think, are just not true or not always true. So we're going to be addressing those in today's episode. What is going on, everybody? This is your host, Austin James Jackson, back with another episode of the Learn Landscape Photography Podcast. As always, thank you so much for joining me, or, if this is your very first time here, welcome. I hope that you will stick around for some more episodes. And, as always, I am covering photography topics that I think will be helpful to you, that will help you to become a better photographer. So today's episode is no different. 

In today's episode, we're going to be talking about a few different photography myths. I think right now I have five or six written down that I want to talk about in today's episode. And these are myths, especially relating to landscape photography, that are things that maybe just aren't true or things that aren't always true. And a lot of these myths are like, "You can't do this. You have to do that." And, a lot of times, it's just not true. So I'm going to tell you what these myths are. And there are some of them there is a little bit of truth to. But a lot of them, there is just a lot of things that are untrue about them. So I'm really excited to talk about them in today's episode. There's a few that probably are going to get me pretty fired up, so I'm really excited for it. So let's go ahead and get started with today's episode talking about some photography myths, some landscape photography myths, that I think are just not true.

I don't know if you would call this first one a myth or if it's just something that a lot of photographers think. But we tend, especially on social media, especially a lot of the bigger-name photographers, I guess, people with a larger following -- we tend to think that, to be a great photographer, you have to shoot unique compositions at unique locations. Now, don't get me wrong. There is a lot of excellent photographers out there that have done well. They got early in the game and so they're able to afford to travel to a lot of really unique places that a lot of people aren't going. I'm here in Utah. There's obviously a lot of photographers traveling here because, if you're United States based, it's not that expensive to get out to Utah. Everybody can go here. But to get somewhere across the world, like the middle-of-nowhere, Africa or the Middle East or South America, just way out in the backcountry, those places are a lot more invested to get into. You have to have some money to get there. The notion that to be really great at photography, you need to shoot unique locations and unique compositions really rubs me the wrong way. And there's this big clique, and there's a lot of photographers that --or not a lot, I should say. I should say a few photographers that all the time post about, oh, they're tired of seeing the same shots at the same locations and yada, yada, yada. That is a bunch of crap, if you ask me. You can be a great photographer and take photos of all places that you've seen before. You can go on social media, see a great photo, say, “I want to go there and take the same shot.” And you don't need to feel bad about it. Not every photo has to be totally original and unique.

Me personally, I love getting a photo that's unique. I love getting a photo at a spot that maybe there hasn't been anyone else that's really photographed it with a proper camera before. That's why I love to go backpacking. I can photograph some places that, generally, there's a lot of photographers not going. I like doing that for me, but I don't think less of you if you are going and shooting Delicate Arch and Multnomah Falls and the Grand Canyon. I don't think less of you. I like doing those things, too. I like capturing those photos. It just so happens that because I'm doing this full-time, I have a lot more time on my hands to travel to these locations. And to me, it's not devastating to go on a week-long trip and find absolutely no good photos, because, again, I'll just go the next week and go somewhere else. It's a luxury that I have. I'm very grateful and fortunate for that. But, if that's not you, you're someone that you work your regular nine-to-five job, you have a family, you have kids, you have whatever you have to attend to, you don't need to feel bad about yourself or your work because you're just going to spots that you've seen other people shooting. There's a lot of people that have a photo at a particular spot, it's probably because it's a good photo spot, so you don't need to feel bad about capturing photos in that spot.

Don't feel like, if you want to be great, you have to capture unique locations and unique compositions. You can shoot things that have been shot before. Do it in your own way, in your own style, and you can be a great photographer that way. So don't feel obligated. Seriously. And you heard that from me. I am willing to die on that hill. I don't know if that's a hot take or not. I feel like I always say I don't know if it's a hot take. I think it is a hot take because there's a lot of people out there that just think you have to shoot everything unique;you have to find unique angles. Look, you don't need to force a unique angle at a location to have your own composition when there's clearly a much better shot, even though other people have shot it. That's not to say you shouldn't get creative, but you get the point. I could talk about this all day long, but we're going to leave that as is right there.

Now, the second photography myth that you will see people talk about all the time -- and this is generally something that I would say the real expert photographers wouldn't say, but it's usually the people that maybe they think they're an expert -- but people that say you can only shoot during golden hour, this is not good advice at all. And I'll be honest with you. I thought this for the longest time, that, okay, I'm just going to shoot at sunset, I'm just going to shoot at sunrise. There's plenty of reason to shoot during the middle of the day as well. Of course, your chances of getting a great photo, especially if you're using a wide angle, are much, much better at sunset or sunrise. I will totally admit that. But, if you're using a telephoto lens, you can get great photos at literally any time of day.

Personally, for myself, my favorite time to shoot is 11:00 a.m. I guess that's probably four or five hours after sunrise. But, if you get nice clouds and some dappled light, oh my gosh, with a telephoto lens, you can get some absolutely phenomenal shots. This makes it tough as a photographer because, obviously, if you're traveling and shooting photos, it's kind of nice -- you go out for sunrise, you come back, you get your breakfast, you get your little nap in, you hang out, and then you go out and shoot sunset. And by me telling you this, you're like, "Well, shoot, I don't want to shoot all day long. I can't shoot all day long." And so there's definitely some days that are better than others. Again, look for those clouds, look for that nice, dappled light. When you get a really cloudy day, but there's some holes in the clouds for the sun to poke through, you're going to find so many great photo opportunities with a telephoto lens, not with a wide-angle lens. If you just have a wide-angle lens, and that's all you're interested in capturing is wide-angle landscapes, then yes, you will just want to shoot at golden hour because that is going to be the best time of day. But, if you do have atelephoto lens, you're able to find some greater or finer details, I guess, in the landscape that can allow you to get some great shots outside of the golden hour, even in the middle of the day. I can't tell you how many good shots that I've gotten in the last year or two just shooting not at sunset and not at sunrise.

And, of course, if you're shooting somewhere like a waterfall, for example, you might want to shoot in the middle of the day when there’s a little bit brighter down there. When the light might be flat, like on a cloudy day, might work well. Or, if you're like me, you're here in Utah, you might want to shoot in the middle of the day if you're shooting a slot canyon, because the light is going to be better in that canyon in the middle of the day when there's some reflected light off of the canyon walls. So consider everything thing about how the time of day that you're shooting might affect your photos. Certain photos are going to shoot better at certain times of day. But don't be locked into shooting at golden hour all the time because there is other times that you can take great photos as well. 

I want to take a break from today's episode and talk about a really cool opportunity if you are a beginner or intermediate photographer that is really serious about taking better photos and getting better at photography. Now, usually about four to six times a year, I teach in-person workshops around the western United States centered around helping you become a better photographer. Now, my workshops are kept to just five people, which means that you will get plenty of one-on-one attention. So regardless of your skill level, whether you just picked up your first camera or whether you've been shooting for 15 years, I promise you, you're going to get so much out of it. I'm going to cater the class directly to you. Best of all, after the workshop, I'm going to add you to my alumni group on Facebook where you can get,literally, weekly image feedback. We can connect at all times. When the workshop is over, it's not done. I'm still going to be your mentor. I'm going to be there to help you become better at photography. Now, like I said, if you're serious about becoming better at photography, don't wait any longer. Register for one of my workshops this year. You can visit austinjamesjackson.com/workshops. That link will be down below, in the podcast description, that you can click on as well. I really can't wait to see you guys out there.

Alright, well, the third myth here is something that I feel like almost forms cliques in photography, and that is using a tripod for landscapes. There's almost this old-fashion, I guess, point of view where people are like, "Oh, if you're shooting landscapes, you have to use a tripod. It's got to be a big old tripod, nice and sturdy. And everywhere you go, every landscape, your camera should be glued to that tripod." And then, on the other hand, there's that other boat of photographers that's like, "Oh, I never use a tripod. I refuse to use a tripod. I don't need a tripod. I can handheld everything and yada, yada, yada." Don't be someone that is so polarized on the issue. Seriously, you do not need a tripod for all landscapes, but it's nice to have for some landscapes. For example, if you're out there shooting, and really --let's just put it this way. There's a few reasons why you need a tripod. I'll cover them right now. The only reasons you would need a tripod are night photos. You need a tripod for a longer exposure. And don't hit me with the, "I have this Sony A 4 million that has all this image stabilization. I can handhold to 10-second shutter speed." No, you can't. Just get a tripod. And it's much easier than a lot of photographers, like, "Well, I refuse to use a tripod. I'm just going to balance my camera on my backpack or on a rock or something." Just get a tripod at that point.

If you're shooting night photos, you need a tripod. If you're shooting low light photos, like sunset or sunrise, I like to have a tripod, but it's not a necessity, I guess. You can always increase the ISO a little bit. And then, if you're doing a focus stack, a tripod is certainly very nice -- a focus stack where you're combining multiple images from the same spot in order to get the foreground, the midground, and the background in proper focus. But there's plenty of times where I've done a focus stack without a tripod.

Just recently, in the last week or so, I was out doing some canyoneering here out by Lake Powell in Utah. And the canyons we were going through were so, so narrow, so narrow that I had to actually get a smaller pack than what I normally carry with me. And you're just squeezing through these canyons. I mean, you're stemming through the whole thing, where your knees are on one wall, your back is on the other, and you're just squeezing through. Your feet aren't on the ground. And in a canyon like that, there was no way I was going to be able to get a tripod in there. I was lucky enough just to get my camera in a small bag. But I wanted to do a focus stack. And basically, how I did it -- and, of course, I had to raise the ISO, which is less than ideal. So I was shooting at, like, ISO 400 or 800. On my camera, that's not too bad, but depending on what kind of camera you have, that might be a lot. But because I didn't have a tripod, I knew, okay, I was going to have to make some compromises. So I was going to have to raise the ISO, which is less than ideal, just to get my shutter speed around 1/30th, 1/40th, so that it was stable enough. And then I kind of braced myself against the wall and held as steady as possible to do a focus stack. And then, on my camera, on my Sony -- I don't know how many of you guys out there are Sony shooters. But usually on the newer Sonys, at least on the a7R series, they have like a little joystick, almost, on the back. You can adjust the autofocus point with that joystick, or you can just use the touch screen. So I'm looking through the viewfinder with my thumb kind of on that joystick there. And so I would take a photo holding as steady as possible, and then try not to move the camera, and then I moved the joystick around to adjust the focus point and then take another photo. Then in Photoshop, you just auto-align the layers, and the focus stack is just like you had a tripod. It's just as easy.

There's compromises you have to make if you don't use a tripod, but in a lot of situations, it just doesn't make sense if you're hiking a long ways or whatever. When I go backpacking, I bring a tripod. A lot of you guys, if you do backpacking, you might not want to bring a tripod because it's a couple extra pounds. I bring a tripod, honestly, more because I like to film myself. That sounds really self-centered, but I like to film myself for YouTube videos and for Instagram Reels and stuff like that, and so the tripod helps me to do that. But, if I wasn't going to take any night photos backpacking, and I didn't care about filming myself, I honestly don't know if I'd bring a tripod. I might just live with the fact that I can bump that ISO up a little bit.

Now, of course, if you've got an older camera, you will want that tripod to avoid bumping the ISO up, because some of those older cameras do not do well at high ISOs. You get really noisy images. But, if you have a really nice quality camera, like a full frame, I really like -- I know my Sony shooters out there, you guys, if you're using an a7R IV, a7R V, a7R II or III, a7S series, even just the regular a7 series, those are all really good in low light. I know, also, Nikon's got, gosh, what is it? The Z6 or Nikon mirrorless also has some really nice sensors for low light. So if you're using a camera that does well by bumping up the ISO a little bit, you don't need to worry that much about a tripod other than for super long exposures. So it's certainly a nice tool to have, but don't feel like you are chained to the tripod or like you're chained to the no-tripod gang, because I feel like there's a lot of photographers that refuse to use a tripod. So that is myth number three, is that you need a tripod for all landscapes. Not true, but you might need it for some landscapes.

Now, myth number four: always expose your images to the right and protect the highlights in your scene. This, I guess, is a good tip for most photographers. It's something that you should learn, but it's a rule that you should break occasionally. Now, when I say expose to the right, I'm talking about the histogram. And, if you brief crash course on the histogram, it's like a graph. I guess you could call it a graph. And the values on that graph show you the brightness levels, or the luminance values, of the pixels in your image. Anything touching the far left is totally black. Anything touching the far right is pure white, meaning that if it's touching either end that you've lost detail. Generally, as landscape photographers, we're taught that it's okay if it touches the far left because you can bring up the shadow detail a little bit, but if it's touching the far right -- the values on the graph, that is -- your image is blown out. You won't get any of those whites back, any of those highlights. This is generally a good tip because we don't want to blow those highlights out, usually, but there is a lot of cases where you should.

But I see a lot of photographers either doing bracketing or just exposing their one image to the right where it just doesn't make sense. Prime example -- you're shooting directly into the sun. There's photographers that are exposing for the sun; their whole image is dark, so not only will you have a hard time editing, but let's put that aside and say you're doing a bracket. When you go to edit your photos, people are trying to make the sun not blown out. It doesn't make sense. If you're shooting into the sun, it should be blown out. It's totally fine to blow out the sun. It's going to look more realistic. You'll notice there is a lot of people that have a really hard time, in my opinion -- and of course, this is just my opinion. Photography is an art, and maybe you like it, and I don't, and you can tell me to go bury my head in the sand. But I do notice one thing that I really don't like is when photographers really drop those highlights. They really ramp on it, like negative 100 on the highlights slider, and then they also go in and drop the curve as well. And then they go like plus 100 on the shadows to create this HDR look because a lot of photographers are like, "Oh, the more details the better." And it just doesn't make sense. Your sun should be bright. It should be the brightest part in the image, so don't worry about it being overexposed or blown out. Let it be blown out. I have a few photos where I've got a blown out sun, and I did it on purpose because it makes sense. It doesn't make sense to have a sun not blown out and also have shadow details, so embrace that. Embrace that in your images. Little small spots that are blown out are totally fine. Don't worry about that.

Another one that drives me crazy is slot canyons or people shooting in the forest where there might be -- in a slot canyon, for example, there might be a little sliver of sky that you can see kind of in the background of the top middle of the frame. In a forest, it's the same thing. When I go shoot in the redwoods, you can see through to the sky, just barely. There's little pockets between the trees where you can see the sky. There will be photographers that will expose for that sky, so there will be blue sky behind their redwood tree or above their slot canyon. I think that's honestly really distracting to your image. It really hurts the subject of the image, in my opinion. So in those situations, just blow it out. It's totally fine, especially in a slot canyon. I mean, in my opinion, the blue sky above the slot canyon look is not my favorite. Like I said, you can totally have your own opinion and tell me to bury my head in the sand, but that's my opinion on it. Blow it out. When you blow something out, it makes it so that that object now doesn't scream for attention, which is good. Everything in your photo doesn't need to scream for attention, or else the subject is going to suffer. Exposing to the right is generally a good idea, but you shouldn't always protect the highlights in your scene. Don't always worry about getting the absolute most detail possible.

Alright, so let's talk about the fifth and final photography myth -- landscape photography myth, I should say, I keep saying that wrong -- that we're going to talk about in today's episode. One thing that you hear all the time is f8 to f11 is always the best aperture for landscapes because that's going to give you the most in focus in your image. This is generally a good tip, but it's not always the best aperture, and it kind of cracks me up.

If you guys follow me on Instagram or you follow my YouTube channel, I posted a Reel or a Short, a 60-second-or-less video like TikTok-style content, a few weeks ago, and I covered how to find the sharpest aperture on your lens. The way you do that -- TL;DR -- is you basically just take a photo at every aperture on your lens and then bring it in the Lightroom or Photoshop and compare it and figure out which one's the sharpest. Now, on YouTube, that Reel is kind of blowing up. I mean, it's not going crazy, but I would say it has, like, ten times more views than most of my Reels. So it's gotten a lot of comments on it, and there's so many photographers commenting on it that are like, "Oh, you don't need this. Just f8 is the sharpest aperture, always," which is not true.

For landscapes, my advice for you, especially if you're someone that might want to print your work, the sharper the better. And, of course, if you have a high-quality lens, the difference between the softest and the sharpest aperture, you're not going to be able to tell unless you zoom in. But, if you're ever going to print your photos, or you ever think you might want to print your photos, and, if you do landscapes, I think you definitely should print your work. And so sharper is better. So the best aperture for landscapes, when the other settings, camera settings, don't matter, when I can make the aperture whatever I want because I don't need light or I don't need to get rid of light, is going to be that sharpest aperture.

Now, on my lens -- I made a video a few weeks ago shooting in Death Valley with my brand new 150-600mm lens. I was shooting the first day at, like, f8 or 9.1 or whatever it is around there, f10 or something. And I went back after the first day, and I was looking, and I was like, man, these images, they're not that sharp. I was pretty disappointed. And then I made that Reel talking about here's how to find the sharpest aperture, and I was thinking, okay, yeah, my sharpest aperture is probably f8, whatever. And when I made that video, since I shot all the photos to make the Reel, I ended up putting them in Lightroom, and I found out that the sharpest aperture for that lens was f13, which was incredible. I've never heard of a lens that f13 was the sharpest aperture, but I never would have known had I not tested that. So now I know, when I use that lens that, if I can, if the shutter speed doesn't matter and if the ISO doesn't matter, then I'm going to dial in the aperture first. So I'm going to just set it tof13, and then set my ISO to 100 or 50 or whatever, and then adjust my shutter speed accordingly. So the best aperture for landscapes is going to be whatever that sharpest aperture is, or it's going to be the aperture that allows you to create the creative effect that you want to do on your photos.

Another thing that, for example, I'll go out and shoot -- here in Zion, there's a couple good canyon hikes with some flowing water. I'll go out there, and I'll just bring a circular polarizer,and I'm using my wide-angle. And maybe I have the circular polarizer, but that's not dark enough. I want to get a longer shutter speed, because in the middle of the day, with a circular polarizer at f8 or whatever, I can only get my shutter speed to, say, 1/4th of a second, and I might want to get it to 1 second. So I might adjust the aperture to do that. I don't want to have my hands tied and say I have to shoot between f8 and f11 because that's the aperture that is going to give me a sharp image that has a lot of the image in focus. I might adjust the aperture and go to, like, f20. I know that's not going to give me the sharpest looking photo, but, in those cases, it's more important for me to get the creative look on my photo than it is to have the absolute sharpest image, because I can always make up that sharpness in another program afterwards, but I can't recreate that longer shutter effect.

And same thing when you're shooting something -- it could be a landscape, or it could be a portrait or whatever. But, when you're shooting in low light, you might need to drop that aperture further to gather more light. Because I would rather have that aperture lower, have a little bit of bokeh in the image, or just do a more difficult focus stack, to avoid having to pump up that ISO and have that noise or grain. So the best aperture is going to be the one that lends itself to your scene the most. Always, always choose the creative effect or whatever is going to allow you to create something that's creative, over the sharpest aperture.

If there's nothing that is particularly creative about the way you're capturing the photo, like if you're just point and shoot, the settings don't matter, then you want to use the sharpest aperture. Figure out what that is for your lens. Don't just assume that it's between f8 and f11, but, for most lenses, that is going to be a somewhat sharp area. But, seriously, go just figure it out for your lenses. It is so easy. People are commenting on my Reel like, “This is so much work. Why would I do this when I can just look it up?” It's literally not very much work. I'm sitting in my office right now, looking across the street at this stop sign. I could literally just pull out my camera, set it up on a tripod here in my office, and photograph that stop sign and figure out what the sharpest aperture is. It would take me probably ten minutes from start to finish. So just do it. It's worth knowing what the sharpest apertures on your lens are. And then, again, don't get too tied up by those sharpest apertures in situations where you might have the opportunity to do something more creative. Hopefully that makes sense and that is helpful for you guys.

Alrighty. Well, that is all she wrote. Hopefully that's helpful for you guys. I'm debunking some of those myths or rules or whatever you want to call them that I think maybe aren't true, or things that you should know about because those were all certainly things that I believed in when I started, and, far into my landscape photography career, I always believed those things. As I've kind of matured and grown my photography, I've learned those things aren't always true. So hopefully that was helpful for you guys.

Additionally, I did want to mention before this episode ends, if you aren't following me on all of the platforms, how dare you? I'm just kidding. It's totally fine. But I did have somebody that mentioned to me via email that they were like, "Oh, I've been following your Facebook page for a while. I had no idea you had a podcast because they aren't cross-linked," so I need to do a better job cross-linking things. If you're listening to the podcast here, make sure you follow me on Instagram at austin.james.jackson. If you're on Facebook, it's Austin James Jackson Photography. On TikTok, if you use TikTok, my account is very small, but I'm just posting other videos there. It's, I believe, austinjamesjackson, and I think that's pretty much it. Additionally, if you want to be on my email list -- oh, YouTube, of course, Austin James Jackson photography on YouTube.

If you want to be on my email list as well, you can go to my website, austinjamesjackson.com. I've got a free video tutorial there that covers 10 photography tips. I think they'll help you out a lot. If you join my email list, I'll send you that video for free. You can do that on my website, again, austinjamesjackson.com. And my email list is kind of fun. Every time I post a YouTube video, I send out a video saying, "Hey, here's my YouTube video this week. Check it out." And I only send, at most, five emails a month. That's all that I pay for, so I'm not like that person that emails you every Tuesday at 9:00 a.m. trying to get you to buy my next offering. I send usually four emails a month covering YouTube videos, and then I usually send one a month covering, like, "Hey, I've got a cool workshop coming up. Check it out." So if you want to be part of my email list, again, austinjamesjackson.com. Check that out.

Otherwise, thank you so much for being here and listening to the podcast. I always appreciate you guys on here, and I appreciate hearing from you guys. Seriously, I get so many emails from people reaching out, talking about how much they love the podcast, or with a recommendation of, "Hey, have this person on," or "Hey, can you cover this topic?" or whatever it is. I really love hearing from you guys and I'm really, really so, so happy that there's so many of you guys that are out there finding these things useful, so thank you so much. Yeah, that is it for today's episode. Thank you guys so much. We'll see you guys next time. This is Austin James Jackson, signing out.