Outdoor Photography How To

One of the hardest things for beginners to understand in landscape photography is picking the right aperture. The main reason aperture selection is so confusing for newbies is that there are two schools of thought when it comes to composition, landscape pro Mark Denney explains in the below video.

"Should you use a large aperture with a small f stop number to throw the background out of focus or should you use a small aperture with a large f stop number to create those razor sharp and in focus images?" Denney asks. "And that doesn't even account for the fact that each aperture you select will also impact the overall exposure of your image. It's enough to really scramble your brain!"

In the below video, Denney shares five beginner aperture mistakes he used to make all the time when he first started off in landscape photography.

"Now these five mistakes are not ranked in order of severity, but they are ranked in the order that they impacted my development when I was navigating how to choose the best camera settings for a particular scene," he notes. "I can't begin to tell you how many photos I ruined by simply not fully understanding how the aperture I dial in can impact the overall outcome of my photo."

Here are the five aperture mistakes that Denney explains in the video:

#1 Constant Aperture

#2 Exposure Is Everything

#3 Vision-Less

#4 Lens Stranger

#5 Distant Subject

Check out the tutorial below and then go visit Denney's channel for tons of great landscape photography advice including this video where he explains how to get sharp images every time.