After hiking for miles one day, I had a second day where the forecast was even better than the first day of hiking, and I was absolutely knackered from all of the hiking on day one … but I still wanted to go out and take some stunning landscape photographs without having to hike too far at all.

Landscape photography can be done from the comfort of your car. All you need to do is find some locations where there is a road near the subject you want to photograph. As long as you do a bit of research, you can easily find a place to take photographs without hiking one mile!

Research For Good Locations with Roads Nearby

Driving by Cregennan Lakes — Driving past Cregennan Lakes

When I am researching for landscape locations, I will find places where I can hike to, but I will also look for places that are good to photograph from my car.

A few years ago we were visiting the Dolomites in Italy and I was thinking that we would have to hike to every location to photograph it … however, this is not the case at all.

There are passes, viewpoints and maybe even cable cars that will take you to some amazing viewpoints … and I know that a cable car isn’t exactly “from your car”, but it does have car in the name so it’s not exactly cheating!!

At the location I filmed at, Cregennan Lakes, the road goes right by the lake, and you can get some great reflection shots if there is no wind.

In the dolomites, you have places like Giau Pass, Lago d'Antorno and Lake Misurina. They all have roads right next to them … and as long as you are not there in the winter, you can drive to some great landscapes to practice your photography.

Be safe when you are driving

When you are driving and taking photographs, safety should always come first.

This means no photographing and driving … stop in a layby or where it is safe to stop and not get in anyone’s way before you take a shot.

I try to choose sleepy roads and then head to them really early in the morning when everyone else is still in bed … then I have the place all to myself!

Just make sure you are not going to cause an accident or just annoy other people, because that’s just not good practice and it will ultimately give us photographers a bad name!

Cregennan Lake island with a telephoto lens by Mike Smith — Cregennan with a telephoto lens

Use A Telephoto Lens

Sometimes the roads in these amazing places are quite far from the focal point or subject you want to get into your landscape photograph, so having a long lens will really help.

Whenever I am taking photographs from my car, I will always have either the 70-200mm on or I will have my RX10iii with me, which has a full frame equivalent range of 24-600mm, so this is an amazing focal range to have in such a small camera package. The RX does have it’s disadvantages, but if there is enough light about, you can get some great photographs with it!

If you don’t like the composition, just drive on a little

The great thing with taking photographs from your car, on a sleepy road like I was on in mid Wales, is that if the composition isn’t quite right, you can just pull the car forward or backwards a little to change the composition of your photo completely!

This might not always work, but you can get some amazing photographs and some very different compositions by being creative with where you put your car in relation to the subject you are trying to photograph.

Get the Subject on Your Side of the Car

If the subject is on the opposite side of the car, it might be hard to get a shot of it, without getting parts of the car in your frame, or you might lose a part of the subject as the sides of the windows might get in the way.

If you make sure the subject is on your side, you can then wind the window down and lean out of the car a little to get the most unobstructed view of that subject.

Walk a Little Bit

If you can’t quite get the perspective you want, you might have to get out and walk a little bit. But at the locations I have found, this doesn’t have to be too much, maybe 10-20 foot from the car and you can drastically change your composition.

I did this at Cregennan Lakes and I got one of my favorite shots of the day … it was handheld, with a small sensor camera and I just love the framing of it!

To be honest, at most of the locations I have been to recently, there have always been places to photograph that aren’t that far from the car … or at least far from a carpark you can pull up to.

A Beautiful road from Cregennan Lake by Mike Smith

This is Great to do if you have Mobility Issues

As we all get older, our mobility slowly diminishes … it usually is a gradual thing, but sometimes things happen in our lives that we have no control over and someone who was once an avid hiker can become quite sedentary due to health reasons … but this shouldn’t stop you from practicing landscape photography!

So do a little bit of research and see what you can find near to where you live, or maybe plan a trip away with your family and look for locations around the place where you are going to visit.

I bet you can find some really cool locations to take photographs from your car and this will really help you get better at photography and just enjoy your hobby once again!

Is this something that you do with your photography?

It is definitely comes in to play with my landscape photography planning, especially when I might be thinking of going out to shoot the stars with a tracker, and don’t want to venture too far away from my car.

And Like I have already mentioned, when we have been on a huge hike and we need a day to rest … landscape photography from the car can really be a way to continue in getting better at photography without the arduous hiking to far away locations!

If you liked this article you might be interested in this post, where I talk about what kit is essential for landscape photography.

Thanks

Mike