dPS Bi-Weekly Photo Challenge: Scale

Inline with our Photo Adventure Cheat Sheets (on sale now for 80% off) we’re going to run ‘Scale’ as our challenge for the next two weeks!

• One photo per challenge
• Challenges run for two weeks – Saturday to Saturday Week
• Remember to use the challenge hashtags wherever you post (#dPSWeeklyChallenge and #dPSScale)

From Darren’s email earlier today;

Capturing the essence of vast landscapes in a two-dimensional frame can be challenging. The key lies in understanding and effectively using ‘scale’ to bring context and depth to your images. Here, we explore techniques to master scale in landscape photography, transforming your shots from ordinary to extraordinary.

1. Introduce a Human Element: Incorporating a person in your landscape photo instantly establishes scale. It helps the viewer relate to the enormity of the surroundings, whether it’s towering mountains or expansive plains.

2. Use Familiar Objects: No people around? Use other familiar objects like vehicles, animals, or buildings to offer a sense of scale. A car on a vast mountain road, for instance, can dramatically highlight the scene’s magnitude.

3. Layering and Foreground Elements: Creating layers in your image, with a strong foreground element, adds depth and a sense of scale. This technique allows viewers to visually traverse from the foreground to the distant background, understanding the space between.

4. Use Wide Lenses: Wide-angle lenses capture more of a scene, emphasizing its vastness. Combining a wide lens with a foreground element exaggerates the perspective, enhancing the sense of scale.

5. Capture Atmospheric Perspective: This phenomenon, where distant objects appear lighter and less saturated, adds a sense of depth and vastness. Scenes with atmospheric perspective, like fading mountain layers, emphasize the grand scale.

6. Play with Shadows and Light: Utilizing the interplay of light and shadow, especially during golden hours, adds dimension. Long shadows can illustrate the enormity of elements like trees or mountains.

7. Use Leading Lines: Leading lines, such as rivers or roads, guide the viewer’s eye and illustrate the scale of the landscape. They create a visual journey from the foreground to the horizon.

8. Drones and Aerial Photography: Drones offer a unique bird’s-eye perspective, revealing landscape proportions and patterns unseen from the ground. This fresh viewpoint can showcase scale in an extraordinary way.

Implementing Scale: When out shooting landscapes, remember these techniques to add a compelling sense of scale to your photographs. It’s about providing context and reference points to turn flat images into captivating stories of grandeur.

As Ever:

Make sure you include the hashtags #dPSWeeklyChallenge and #dPSScale in your post, here in the comments or over on social media. You can tag us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter!

Find all of our previous weekly challenges here.

Simply upload your shot into the comment field (look for the little camera icon in the Disqus comments section) and they’ll get embedded for us all to see or if you’d prefer, upload them to your favourite photo-sharing site and leave the link to them. Show me your best images in this week’s challenge. Sometimes it takes a while for an image to appear so be patient and try not to post the same image twice.

Share in the dPS Facebook Group

You can also share your images in the dPS Facebook group as the challenge is posted there each week as well.