This Is What Advanced Landscape Photography Should Look Like

Christopher Lin

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The following is a sponsored post.

This past week, Elia Locardi released his latest photography tutorial on advanced landscapes in which he teamed up with Fstoppers to travel North and South America. If nothing else, it’s worth checking out the trailer for the gorgeous footage and images they captured.

If you haven’t followed Elia Locardi’s work, he is an internationally acclaimed professional travel photographer, Fujifilm Global Ambassador, writer, public speaker, and highly experienced educator who spends his life shooting some of the most beautiful locations in the world. Since he began traveling full-time in 2009, he has visited more than 65 countries, flown nearly 2 million miles, and collaborated with major companies, brands, countries, NGOs, and tourism agencies on nearly every continent.

Several years ago, Elia teamed up with the team over at Fstoppers to start producing the most comprehensive landscape photography educational series on the market. Since the Photographing the World series began, it has taken photographers to some of the most beautiful places around the world. The series offers an educational insight into Elia’s popular shooting and photo-editing techniques, but also lets you experience the adventure of traveling full-time photographing landscapes and cityscapes throughout the world.

Photographing the World 4

In the latest iteration of the Photographing the World series, Elia travels out to the western portion of the United States. Even though Elia Locardi grew up in the US, he spends most of his time working internationally and has actually done very little travel through the states. As he explores these beautiful locations throughout Nevada, Utah, and Arizona, he offers insight into how he scouts and sets up his photographs in areas he’s visiting and seeing for the first time. Some of the locations included in this first half of the tutorial include Horseshoe Bend, Mesa Arch, Thor’s Hammer, Angel’s Landing, and Monument Valley. Even though this tutorial is focused on advanced landscape photography and advanced post-processing and editing, Elia spends time during one lesson to break away from the landscape theme in order to demonstrate how he tackles one of the most extravagant cityscapes in the world: the Las Vegas strip.

After traveling through the western US, Elia changes his environment completely and flies down to South America. From Santiago, Chile, the crew travels to the southernmost part of Patagonia to photograph the rugged terrain within Torres del Paine National Park. Here, Elia is faced with some of the harshest winds and changing weather conditions he has ever seen during the Photographing the World tutorial production. After photographing the epic mountains in Chile, Elia continues to travel to Argentina as he photographs the grand Fitz Roy mountain in El Chaltén. The journey eventually wraps up back in Chile in the volcano-filled countryside of Conguillío National Park.

The Behind the Scenes Series

Ever since Fstoppers started traveling with Elia Locardi during the first Photographing the World, they have filmed an entire behind the scenes series that showcases everything that took place when the production cameras weren’t rolling. This tutorial is no different, and with Photographing the World 4, you will get 10 brand-new episodes of the whole production crew as they travel throughout North and South America. Not only will you get to see when things go wrong with a lesson, but you will also get to experience some of the best food, wildlife, and excursions each location has to offer. Watch the first behind the scenes episode of Photographing the World 4 for free right here.

If you’re a photographer who wants to step up the quality of your landscape images, Elia is an incredible instructor to learn from. This tutorial covers so much about his workflow, including:

  • How to Deal With Inclement Weather
  • Extensive Location Scouting and Tips for Better Composition, Angles, and Vantage Points
  • Advanced Panoramic Photography Shooting and Stitching
  • Blending Moments in Time with Multi-Level Panos
  • Solid Neutral Density Filters and Softening Skies and Water
  • How to Use Smartphone Apps to Precisely Plan Your Night and Astrophotography
  • Capturing Stars and Star Trails While Using Tilt-Shift Lenses
  • Focus Stacking and Focus Bracketing
  • Perspective Blending and Combining Various Focal Lengths
  • 100 Percent Manual Exposure Blending Using Zero HDR Software
  • How to Replace Skies and Add Depth and Drama to Existing Ones

If some of this sounds too advanced for you or if you’d like to focus more on your cityscape work, consider checking out Photographing the World 1, Photographing the World 2, or Photographing the World 3 instead.