How to use your low-end mobile phone camera to take a landscape picture.
Picture & Story © Janek Szymanowski
Everyone uses their mobile phone camera to take pictures, mostly of friends, family and meaningful events. And sometimes just pictures of where you have been. But you can also be really creative and take some wonderful pictures with your mobile phone camera.
I had a Nokia MusicXpress 5800 that is quite a couple of years old, I know it’s not an Apple iPhone or the latest Android, BUT the Carl Zeiss Tessar 2.8/3.7 autofocus lens in the phone is FANTASTIC for such a small aperture lens.
This landscape picture and the others are nice and sharp from close-up all the way to the horizon, that is called the depth-of-field. As well as the 3.2 megapixel image is big enough for most online uses these days.
As I was on my way home the other day driving through some dry farmlands I spotted a windmill in a field and decided to do this project. When things are dry and dusty we all seem to think that the landscape is dull and boring and just drive on. I have done a series of pictures to demonstrate how you can take a stunning landscape picture with your mobile phone.
Firstly frame up your scene using the rule of thirds. Overlaid in the shot below I have put lines on to show what we mean by the thirds rule. This is how you should NOT frame up the picture, as you can see the horizon cuts the picture in half and there is nothing of interest in the foreground, and the hills in the distance are also distracting, a boring picture.
By moving the windmill to the left third of the frame it now becomes more balanced and not as distracting. And there is still the problem of two halves as well as the windmill being quite a distance away. I needed to find something in the foreground to lead me into the picture.
Looking around I found a fence nearby that helped me with this shot as it gave me the foreground point of interest as well as brought the “camera” closer to the windmill, and I have moved the horizon closer up to the thirds line.
In the final shot it all comes together in this landscape picture with the fence adding interest in the foreground leading to the lonely windmill in this vast open space.
There are two things to add, firstly that this was the worst time of day to take pictures as the sun was directly overhead as you can see from the shadows being cast. During the early morning or late afternoon the light would have been far better. So I did a little Photoshop work on the final picture to make it a little more dramatic. I masked off the sky and overlayed a graded filter and then made the land and windmill a greyscale image. I like it and I use it as a wallpaper on my PC.
You can get a FREE download of the picture as a wallpaper 19420 x 1440 pxl: Click Here
Here is more on Landscape Photography
Landscape photography shows spaces within the world, sometimes vast and unending, but other times microscopic. Landscape photographs typically capture the presence of nature but can also focus on man-made features or disturbances of landscapes. Landscape photography is done for a variety of reasons. Perhaps the most common is to recall a personal observation or experience while in the outdoors, especially when traveling. Others pursue it particularly as an outdoor lifestyle, to be involved with nature and the elements, some as an escape from the artificial world.
Many landscape photographs show little or no human activity and are created in the pursuit of a pure, unsullied depiction of nature, devoid of human influence instead featuring subjects such as strongly defined landforms, weather, and ambient light. As with most forms of art, the definition of a landscape photograph is broad and may include rural or urban settings, industrial areas or nature photography.
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