Ian Plants Online Landscape Course

• Nature Photography

Review of The Ultimate Landscape Photography Masterclass by Ian Plant
 By Charlie Borland

Photowhoa is an outstanding team of creatives who consistently deliver high-quality educational products for photographers. I’ve worked with them for years—both as a customer, purchasing courses to sharpen my own skills, and as a course creator, promoting my own educational content through their platform.

So, I was thrilled when they asked me to review The Ultimate Landscape Photography Masterclass by Ian Plant. Ian and I have crossed paths a few times over the years, and I’ve always admired his photography. Getting the chance to dive into his course, study his remarkable images, and hear him discuss how he documents the natural world was a no-brainer for me.

Having started in landscape photography back in the mid-1970s—and working professionally full-time since 1981—I’ve spent four decades capturing the beauty of landscapes across the U.S., alongside a career in commercial photography. So I approached this course with both curiosity and a critical eye.

Course Overview

Instructor: Ian Plant is a seasoned professional with a strong body of work and an impressive publishing history, including features in Outdoor Photographer, Popular Photography, and Landscape Photography magazines. He’s inspired thousands through his books, workshops, and online courses—and his experience clearly shines through in this masterclass.

Running just over an hour and a half, this course is dense with knowledge yet easy to follow. Ian focuses on key techniques such as the near-far composition approach—a favorite of mine and many other landscape photographers. This technique involves placing an eye-catching element prominently in the foreground and aligning it with a compelling background. It’s a strategy that grabs viewers instantly—I often call it the “in-your-face” method because of its immersive, dynamic impact.

Teaching Style

Ian’s teaching is relaxed, articulate, and engaging. His easy-going presentation style ensures no one gets left behind. He takes the time to walk through the what, where, when, and why of his images, helping viewers understand not just the how, but the purpose behind each composition.

He spends considerable time explaining the power of wide-angle lenses, especially in relation to the near-far technique. His breakdowns help viewers grasp how focal length and framing choices shape the emotional and visual strength of a landscape photograph.

Throughout the course, Ian emphasizes building photographs rather than just taking them—a philosophy I’ve long shared with my students. He calls it “Taking vs. Making,” and his examples make a compelling case for thoughtful, intentional photography.

Content and Technical Detail

Ian covers everything from gear to technique with clarity and purpose. He gives specific lens recommendations for both wide-angle and telephoto approaches to landscape photography. For those seeking tack-sharp images from foreground to background, he discusses small aperture use, tripod stability, and techniques for achieving deep focus—essential when pushing your depth of field to its limits.

Light and weather play starring roles in this course as well. Ian illustrates how waiting for the right moment, understanding cloud dynamics, and capturing the interplay of light and shadow can dramatically elevate your compositions.

He also provides valuable comparisons between different lighting conditions: midday sun, golden hour, overcast skies, and even rainy or low-light scenes. His advice on using mobile apps to predict lighting angles and timing adds a practical layer to planning your shoots.

As the course progresses, Ian dives deeper into nuanced topics such as:

  • How to read and shape light for maximum drama
  • Exposure tips that go beyond technical correctness to image optimization
  • Hyperfocal distance and depth of field mastery
  • Proper horizon placement and camera height for perspective control
  • Compositional elements like leading lines, curves, diagonals, and natural frames

He builds these concepts through excellent image examples, breaking down the visual language of a photograph so viewers can better see, think, and compose with intent.

Video Quality and User Experience

The production quality is excellent. The visuals are sharp, the audio is crystal clear, and navigation on the course site is smooth. You can watch, rewatch, and skip to specific sections without any hassle. It’s a seamless user experience.

Who Is This For?

This course is ideal for both beginners and more experienced photographers. New photographers will gain essential foundational knowledge, while advanced shooters will appreciate the thoughtful insights and refined techniques Ian shares throughout the lessons.

What makes this course truly stand out is Ian himself—his voice, his vision, and his thorough explanation of why each image works. While some of the concepts may be familiar to experienced landscape photographers, Ian’s approach and delivery make them feel fresh and personal.

Final Thoughts: Is It Worth It?

Absolutely. The Ultimate Landscape Photography Masterclass delivers real value. If you’re looking to better understand the entire process—from visualizing a shot to capturing and refining it—this course covers it. Beginners will come away with a solid framework, and seasoned photographers will find both inspiration and new ways of thinking about their craft.

Ian not only shows you how to photograph landscapes—he shows you how to build them, layer by layer, decision by decision. And that’s what makes this course a standout.

Find this course right here.

How To Improve Your Flower Photography with Wireless Flash

• Flash & Strobe Lighting, Nature Photography

Dramatically improve your flower photography by adding light from a wireless flash. If you photograph flowers, you can make them stand out by adding light from a wireless flash.

While it is not difficult to photograph flowers, like all outdoor nature photography, we are at the mercy of Mother Nature and that means we don’t always get the light we want. You can solve this problem by using a wireless off-camera flash. It can in many cases dramatically improve your photography.

When I know I am photographing wildflowers I will take my Canon 580EXII and the NPT-04 radio triggers and the Fotodiox mini lightbox to soften the light on flowers. Also, several light stands for multi-flash setups.

My strategy for lighting flowers is I want it to look REAL and not flashed because contrast looks really ugly. I usually use a 100mm macro lens for smaller flowers but today I am using a 28-70mm lens because these flowers are so big. I have set my aperture to f/5.6. and my ISO is 100.

The last thing is when you have a grouping of flowers instead this little mini lightbox won’t cover it. The solution is a larger lightbox like this 18×18 inch one. I am holding the lightbox over the flowers and the additional light brightened up these foreground flowers nicely. On this final photo I darkened the background by changing the shutter speed from 1 second to 1/4 second and that makes the foreground flowers stand out nicely.

A Flooded River Camp Leaves Amazing Sand Patterns

• B&W, Nature Photography, Outdoor Adventure Photography
I had an assignment years ago to photograph a rafting trip on the Copper River from WR-SE to Cordova, Alaska, and it was one of the wildest places I have been.
 
One morning, we awoke to find our riverbank campsite flooding from rapidly rising water. We had about an hour to break camp before it was totally underwater and one of my last photos was my fellow guest standing on a patch of sand that was probably 6’x6′. We all got aboard and launched.
 
A couple days later the waters had subsided and left these amazing patterns in the soft mud. The guides said the cause was most likely an ice dam in the river, way up in the Chugach Mountains, has busted unleashing the water.
 
I was treated in the aftermath, to these amazing patterns along the riverbank. 
I used my Canon EOS 1N and Canon 16-35mm lens for the shot with the lens set to 16mm. That made the foreground closer to the camera which emphasizes the foreground. I next processed the photo in Photoshops B&W adjustment layer.
Want to learn more about adventure and nature photography? Check out my online courses at Great Photography Courses:

Sunrise Photography at the Grand Canyon

• Image Processing, Nature Photography, Photoshop

Here’s a photo from Pt. Imperial where I made the journey from outside the park to the rim before sunrise.  It was a perfect morning with pretty clear skies.

I took the photograph before sunrise at 6:40 am which was 13 minutes before sunrise. When shooting pre-sunrise, if you start early when the alpenglow type light is evident, you have less contrast compared to the minutes before the sunrise.

Using the Near/Far Technique for More Impact in Your Photos

• Nature Photography
When photographing wide-angle landscapes, often the goal is to make sure everything is in sharp focus. The reason is that usually, we do not like to look at out of focus areas of our scenes. While that shallow depth of field can be a powerful technique to get viewers to look at something in your composition that deserves all the attention, wide-angle landscapes can be more powerful when everything is sharp.
 
Looking at this scene, from Oregon’s Willamette National Forest, you see a scene using a great depth of field. But stop for a second and think about what your end goal would be for this scene. Is there anything you would want in focus and the rest out of focus?
 
The foreground maple leaves are probably what I would call the ‘star of the photo’ so they should remain in focus. In this case, the background could be thrown out of focus and that would support the approach of forcing viewers to look at the foreground maple leaves.
Making the background sharp and throwing the foreground maple out of focus would only create visual chaos because the foreground maple is so large in the frame. That big out of focus maple creates a visual roadblock that stymies viewers who want to look through the scene to the background.
 
The answer is to use the Near/Far technique of making sure everything is in focus. This supports the foreground elements and the background as the two areas of the scene are more visually in-sync.
 

Processing Wet and Dry Cracked Mud

• B&W, Image Processing, Nature Photography

As I was hiking the desert this last winter, I spotted an area where rain had collected and created this pattern. What I thought was very interesting was how the mud was totally wet and then following the cracks, totally dry. It made for a nice composition was my feeling and I shot it with an iPhone.

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But you can see by this pre-processed image below, the photo would not work without some good processing since it was totally flat looking.

Death Valley is the Most Amazing Place!

• Nature Photography

I think Death Valley is SO amazing!

I have photographed in every state in the lower 48 and while our country has the most amazing diversity of landscapes, for me Death Valley is the most unique!

Just my humble opinion!

I have been there more times than I can count and there is always something new. On my last trip, I was driving a road when I spotted the pitch black, almost coal colored geology in the far distance. So I hiked down there and photographed some variety of scenes, all under an overcast sky.

ca_death_valley_artist_area_MG_5864bWhen the sun was setting (before the color show) I started back when I stumbled on this scene of turquoise colored sediment. I have no idea what it was (I am not a geologist) but I knew it would make for a great foreground.

The Arizona Wildflowers are here.

• Nature Photography

The flowers are out and while I have only hit this location in western AZ, near the CA border, I am hoping to head to the Superstition Mountain and search for their wildflowers soon.

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Canon 70D 28-70 f/16 set to 28mm

I zoomed in on this landscape a little. rather than go real wide and the reason is that the foreground flowers are not that close together. But standing further back and zooming slightly, I was able to stack teh flowers and make them look more condensed.

For processing, I am now a big fan of Sean Bagshaw’s Luminosity Mask system where I can select individual sections of an image based on tonal values, or colors, and process each of those individually and it works great.

Check out my ebooks and online courses on the right sidebar. 

Watch my Nature and Landscape Photography webinar.