Afternoon lakes scenes

How to capture the best possible compositions and exposures outdoors

Correct colours

Continuing to climb the stone path, we reached the pictureperfect Llyn Idwal. Auto White Balance (AWB) is fine in most situations, but your Nikon doesn’t always get it 100% right. To ensure our colours were accurate, we set our white balance according to the conditions – a mixture of the Daylight and Cloudy for our shoot. Also, by adjusting your white balance to a specific setting for a sequence of photos, they will have a consistent colour ‘temperature’, so you’ll spend less time in Photoshop warming up or cooling down images later on.

Chasing waterfalls

On the way down from Llyn Idwal, we couldn’t resist a slowed-down shot of this rocky waterfall, with a distant mountain peak in our background. Shooting vertically, we used a 10-stop ND filter (with a Custom white balance setting) to extend our exposure from 1/30 sec to 8 secs, and turn the rushing waters into milky blur. This has also captured movement in the clouds too.

Look for leading lines – paths, fences, hedgerows – to draw the eye into your landscapes