Follow the light
One of the common mistakes in landscape photography is working against the light in an attempt to create a preconceived image. Whilst it is certainly a good thing to plan ahead, if nature is not giving you what you want, you must be willing to adapt. Good images can be made in any light, as long as you are not trying to fight it.
Working with flat light
Many photographers get easily discouraged on overcast days. When extensive cloud cover fills the sky, it can often block out all of the sunlight, resulting in a lack of shadows and, ultimately, contrast within the scene. Without any direct sunlight on the scene to highlight edges, textures and curves, landscape images can lack depth and even appear a little two-dimensional. Moreover, grey skies can even soften tones and mute other colours within the landscape, making images seem less vibrant than bright and sunny day shots.
If the landscape seems muted with a noticeable absence of strong colours and contrast, then the best thing that you can do is to look for subjects that are better suited to being photographed in overcast light. Whilst looking for new scenes, always concentrate on creating strong compositions by emphasizing features of the landscape, such as different shapes, forms and textures. Leading lines will help you distract from the uninspiring lighting by taking the viewer on a journey around the frame of your composition, giving them an interesting subject to focus on. One of the best objects to photograph in flat light are waterfalls
By slowing down your shutter speed and creating a longer exposure, you can add another layer of dimension to the scene that will excite the viewer, even if the sky is grey.
Working with dramatic and moody light
One of the challenges of working with moody weather is low light and the photographer’s ability to capture tonal detail throughout a scene. Light and shadows are the fundamentals in landscape photography and, in order to render them effectively, it is useful to refer to the good, old-fashioned rule of ‘exposing for the highlights and developing for the shadows’. To apply this rule while photographing moody
landscapes, try to move the histogram as far to the right part of the graph as possible, but without blowing the brightest part of the scene (exposing for the highlights). This will ensure that there are no elements without detail in your image and you retain as much information as possible in the darker parts of the image. The second part of the rule (developing for the shadows) refers to the editing of the Raw file and optimizing of the shadows, thus achieving a perfect contrast in the image and revealing details in them.
An alternative method of achieving balanced images is bracketing and exposure blending.
I use this method frequently in my landscape photography with three bracketed exposures. The beauty of brackets and blending is that you can take the most detail from different parts of the shot; blending an underexposed image can contribute to emphasizing dramatic sky, whilst blending an overexposed capture can create gentle shadows.
The use of bright and dark tones and postprocessing of moody captures will always be a matter of personal style. However, it is always worth taking pictures with ‘the light in mind’, so before pressing that shutter, stop for a moment to consider the following. Where is the light coming from? Where are the brighter and darker areas within your frame? How do they define your scene?
The beauty of blending is that you can take detail from different parts of the shot