The Importance of Weather for Landscape Photography

To be a really good landscape photographer, you have to become a bit of a weather expert. And I rely heavily on online weather forecasts and satellite imagery to determine where I wanna be and when I wanna be there. The best conditions I find usually are when you've got mostly to partly cloudy skies, where you've got clear air behind the clouds and you have a gap at the horizon where the sun is coming up or going down at sunrise or sunset. If you have that gap, then the clouds will catch the light at sunrise or sunset. And if you get enough light and color in the clouds, that color and light will bounce down onto the landscape and you can get some really spectacular lighting effects.

But you really need those clouds. You need textured clouds that have a lot of detail, that have interesting shapes that can catch that color and that light. So you really need those clouds. If you have too many clouds, then it's just overcast and there's no detail or texture in the clouds. The sky isn't really that interesting.

But having that really, really interesting sky is very, very critical to getting those really dynamic, dramatic landscape shots. But it's very, very critical as well to have gaps in the clouds, gaps where the light can come through, gaps that open up and separate some of the clouds so that they create distinct shapes. It gives you more compositional opportunities. And you really need that clear air. So I find usually the best times to photograph are when a storm system, a storm front, is either coming in or clearing out.

So usually after a really heavy thunderstorm or something like that, when the air starts to clear, it clears very rapidly and dramatically. You get some really clean air after all that stormy weather. And as all those dramatic clouds break up, the light comes through and you can get some really spectacular conditions. I find that sometimes you also get it when there's a storm front moving in where you have clear air in front of the storm front and the clouds, the dramatic clouds, are beginning to build up in the background. If they build up high enough and they build up at the right time, let's say at sunrise or sunset, you can get some really dramatic lighting effects.