Making the Move to Manual

Explore Landscapes #49: In manual mode, you can choose your composition, depth of field, sharpness, and the amount of digital noise. This is the ideal exposure mode for landscape photography.

If you‘re new here, welcome. I’m a professional landscape photographer and hiking/backpacking guide specializing in Joshua Tree National Park. My weekly Monday newsletter is typically a long-form ‘teaching’ article for paid subscribers and workshop attendees. My free Thursday newsletter should interest a wider audience and is typically about my hiking, volunteering, or workshop adventures.

Please subscribe to read more of my posts, visit my website to view my images, or book a workshop or mentoring session. If you value what I provide, consider becoming a paid subscriber or buying me a coffee instead. I look forward to helping you improve your photography!

---

Background

I started taking photos at 14 with my trusty Zenit 10 SLR camera, teaching myself the fundamentals of photography via countless rolls of poorly exposed 35mm film. There always seemed to be so much to consider when taking a picture.

When I started getting a satisfactory composition and an image in focus, I felt that I’d taken a step forward. However, exposure seemed so complex that I never felt I could master it. Much of what I read stated (or at least how I interpreted it) that ‘real photographers’ shoot in Manual. The thought of shooting a photograph in Manual mode terrified me.

I read anything and everything about photography that I could find. Back then, there was no Internet. Monthly photography magazines and how-to-photograph self-help books were my go-to fix. I had to try to figure out metering and exposure. But the more I read, the more confused I became. So much of the information I encountered was confusing and overly complicated.