Improve Your Landscape Photography with a Viewing Card
This tool is very simple to make and can have huge benefits.
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Improve Your Landscape Photography with a Viewing Card
Do you shoot landscapes? Do you ever wonder why you feel you missed the mark when you return to view your images?
This is often the greatest fear for photographers. While they got all the technical aspects correct, like shutter speed, aperture, ISO, and lighting, they missed the mark on a dynamic composition.
Creating that dynamic composition comes from your point of view and your choices of lens and perspective. That's the challenge for every photographer. Looking through the smaller dSLR viewfinder or the ground glass of a larger 4x5 with its upside-down image can hinder some photographer’s efforts at composition.
It’s easy to lose sight and focus or view the star of your photo more than the total scene and its surrounding elements.
If that is the case, there is a tool that may help you fine-tune your composition and it is the viewing card.
The viewing card idea goes back many years and even Ansel Adams used them and handed them out at his workshops, as I do. For me, using a viewing card while searching for a composition is like viewing my picture in a frame on the wall. They can aid in getting an idea of what your image will look like as a finished print.
In the Field
The best way to use a viewing card is to keep the camera in the bag and the card in your hand as you wander in search of something to photograph. Just bring the card up in front of your face when you see a potential scene.
Then move the card left or right, and turn it vertical or horizontal, while searching for a composition. But also consider the fact that when you pull the card closer to your face, the view through the card would translate to a wide angle lens while further from your face would more telephoto.
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When you find the view you like, make a mental note of that view and then move to the camera to compose what you saw with the cards. The more you use this technique, the sooner you develop the instinct of knowing the focal length of the lens in relation to your arms length.
Making a Viewing Card
Now, where to get a viewing card? Decades ago you could buy them but I found nothing when searching online. So that leaves making one and here is how you do it.
You will need an 8”x10” or 5”x7” black card or plastic. I used to use cardboard but those became pretty ragged over time so I switched to plastic. So I went to the department store and searched in the office supplies where I found a spiral ring notebook where they use plastic covers now instead of cardboard.
I cut the plastic cover off the binder and then cut a 4”x6” rectangular hole smack in the middle of it. Basically, I created a picture frame to be used as a viewing card and I can pull it out and put it back into my camera bag and it won't become ragged.
You will be surprised how this approach can improve your pictures. This is one way we can train our eyes to see images like they have been printed and framed before we set up and click the shutter. The time it takes to raise and lower the tripod and camera while exploring the scene takes time and impedes the search for the perfect composition.
Try it! You may be surprised.
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Great tip! Easy to make and doesn't weigh much in a pack!
Thats a great idea Bob. Are you carrying different cameras or have one camera that changes aspect ration?