Ok...
Each year there is a photo contest organized by the city where I always go hiking in the mountain...
Last year the topic of the contest was 'physical activity' and I didn't relate to it, so I didn't submit any picture...

This year, the topic is: Wild Plants and Trees from here
(This is my attempt to translate it from French).

Great!
A contest just for me!!!
But....
Everyone can take good flower pictures...
I need to do something different.. something that will attract the attention of the jury..
Something that will look pro..

Ok now am not limited with my little point and shoot...
But I lack the imagination and creativity it seems...
I took more pictures yesterday in the mountain, and I'm looking at them this morning and they are boring...

Any suggestions?

I can't upload pictures till go to work for high speed (Flickr seems to dislike my dial-up connection)..
Will try one at the time overnight...

I can submit up to 10 pictures...
The best picture wins 500 $ in photo equipment and a yearly pass to the mountain for a family (100$)
Second and third best get 250 $ in photo equipment and a yearly pass as well.



This post was edited by MotherOfTwo on May 2 2010 05:34am

Light.

First light in the morning as the sun just sprays the landscape. You will get that beautiful golden glow plus a warm soft sky. The same is for sunset. If you want your shot to look pro, don't shoot a silhouette

This

lol'd

that sounds pretty fun all you have to do is find pretty things, hopefully things happen right and you get a significant one~

That.

I also agree with mr Lithfkn here but I think you will need to use either a GND filter to get a proper exposure of both the sky and ground or try to make a HDRi which can be hard with most Canon cameras because all except for 1D series only allow you to shoot 3 exposures using exposure bracketing which is far from enough to make a good HDRi. You can use a tripod but the slightest movement like when you change settings on your camera would make the images out of alignment and Photoshop is pretty bad at aligning pictures
As for the contest. I guess you could also use fill flash when shooting plants and trees during sunset/sunrise.

Speaking of HDR I saw a funny graph posted in some other photography forum and it's kinda funny but also true at least to some extent:


EDIT:
not all silhouette shots are bad. I have seen some awesome ones like this one here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tommyoshima/2911640726/in/faves-futurama_photography/

This post was edited by Futurama on May 2 2010 04:58pm

Funny graph

Sorry man, but I still think silhouettes are very amateur :/ (especially in landscapes)

If I was gonna try a HDR with the use of a tripod...
Is there a guideline on how to do it?

whatever
What kind of technique or methods do you use for shooting landscapes? Well other than HDR.
Is it really worth investing in a good GND filter?



Here is a tutorial:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/hdr.shtml

an some info about AEB:
http://hdr-photography.com/aeb.html

I am sure there are free HDR software and alignment tools just do a google search

This post was edited by Futurama on May 2 2010 05:59pm