🎙️ Ep 70 — Landscape Photography 101: Court Whelan's Field-Tested System from 20 Years of Shooting
Court recorded this episode literally staring at the Rocky Mountains from Boulder, Colorado — and distilled two decades of landscape photography into a single repeatable workflow. No theory. All field-tested technique you can use on your next shoot.
📎 Source: Landscape Photography 101 — The Wild Photographer Ep 70
Key Insights:
🔍 The Hyper-Focus Shortcut → Forget the complex calculations involving focal length, sensor size, and aperture. After years of running the math, Court found the answer is almost always the same: focus one-third of the way into your scene. "99 times out of 100, where I should be focusing is very, very close to one third of the way in."
🏔️ Build Scenes in Three Layers → Every great landscape has a foreground (draws the eye in), mid-ground (creates intrigue), and background (brings it together). Before worrying about rule of thirds or leading lines, make sure these three components exist in your frame.
🌅 The Two Golden Hours + Two Blue Hours → Every day gives you exactly two blue hours (20-30 min before sunrise/after sunset), two golden hours (one hour after sunrise/before sunset), one midday, and one night. Prioritize golden hour for landscapes — "the number one time of day to photograph."
🖤 The Midday Black & White Hack → Don't skip shooting at midday. Instead, think in black and white. Harsh shadows and bright highlights that ruin color landscapes become powerful contrast in monochrome. Shoot in color, convert later.
⚙️ Lock Three Settings, Flex One → Set aperture to f/11 (not f/16 or f/22 — diffraction kills sharpness), ISO to 100, then only adjust shutter speed until the exposure meter zeroes out. The tripod makes slow shutter speeds irrelevant for still landscapes.
⏱️ The 2-Second Timer Hack → Skip buying a remote shutter. Use your camera's built-in 2-second delay — it's foolproof. Press the button, let the camera settle, zero movement when the shutter fires. "99 times out of 100, that two second delay is not going to change the scene."
☀️ Sun Surveyor for Predictable Magic → Use the Sun Surveyor app to know exactly when and where golden hour light will hit your subject. Stop hoping for good light — plan for it.
"If you're like most photographers, you're probably not going to be up at four in the morning getting the first blue hour AND the second blue hour. It's A-OK to prioritize for just the second half of the day." — Court Whelan
🎧 Listen: https://thewildphotographer.buzzsprout.com/948082/episodes/18771239
Which of these changed how you'll approach your next landscape shoot? 👇