What's the best way to get started with landscape photography

What kind of landscapes attract you most - mountains, beaches, forests?

Because the answer changes quite a bit depending on that, but in general the first thing is to stop thinking you need expensive gear. Honestly, your phone or a basic camera work perfectly fine for learning. What matters is understanding light and composition. Get out and photograph whenever you can (sunrise and sunset are the best, the light is way more interesting than at noon), and practice finding lines, points of interest, shapes that draw the viewer's eye. Bring a notebook if you want, jot down what worked and what didn't.

After that, get into technical stuff like exposure, shutter speed, that kind of thing. But don't do it backwards. I've seen lots of people buy themselves a camera worth thousands of dollars, learn how to punch numbers into manual mode, and take terrible photos because they don't understand where to point the camera. Watch tutorials on YouTube (there's tons of free content), download Lightroom or something similar to learn how to process images, and the most important thing: get out and photograph over and over again. Repetition is what really teaches you, not reading about photography on the internet.

The most important thing is learning to see light before you even think about what gear to bring, because with any decent phone you can already take landscape photos that look great if you know where to stand and when to shoot. The previous answer is right that expensive equipment isn't the first priority, but I'd go even further: you don't even need a special camera to start, and that frees you from the pressure of spending money without knowing if you'll actually get hooked on this genre. Later on, once you're clear about what kinds of landscapes appeal to you, then it's worth thinking about a more serious camera, but at the beginning what matters is getting out there, practicing composition, understanding how everything changes depending on the time of day and weather conditions.

I started taking landscape photos without thinking too much about it, just bringing my phone along on kayak trips, and I realized what really changed my photos was understanding how the time of day affects everything - it's not just about the light, but also about the shadows and colors that show up. What nobody tells you is that the best landscapes are often in places where you already are, not necessarily in exotic destinations; I have some of my favorites from local beaches that I shot almost without thinking. Start looking at other people's photos and ask yourself what exactly draws you in, then try to recreate that with whatever you have on hand, and that's when you'll start to improve without needing to spend money on expensive cameras.

The most common mistake I see is people buying a tripod, an ND filter and thinking that's going to save them. The reality is that if you don't practice composition - where to place the horizon, how to use the landscape's lines to guide the eye - even the most expensive camera won't help you. Start simple: go out with whatever you have, take lots of photos of the same place at different times, and then analyze why some turned out well and others didn't. That teaches you faster than any tutorial.