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Education Field Instructional

How to Make Your Photo Look Like a Painting In-Camera

Chris Gampat
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08/29/2019
2 Mins read
Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Landscape Paintings on KANDO Trip 5

Making your photograph look like a painting in-camera is all about embracing camera shake.

One of the best things about photography is that it can combine with a variety of other mediums and  deliver really unique images. Even better, lots of those images can be done in-camera without the need for Photoshop, Lightroom, etc. Sure, you can shoot and fix it in post-production–but why bother? Why not get it right in the first place and worry less later on? If you’re a photographer with an excellent grasp of the technical side and also in touch with your artistic side, then this tutorial on how to make images of landscapes look like paintings is for you.

Stop the Lens Down, Use a Low ISO and a Slow Shutter Speed

Start by stopping down the aperture on your lens. F8, f11, or f16 work perfectly fine. Just make sure your entire scene is in focus (part of that depends on where in the frame you’re focusing). Combine this with a low ISO setting and a slow shutter speed. Cameras typically tend to fight the effects of slow shutter speed and camera shake with image stabilization. But in this case, you’ll really need to embrace the camera shake. To that end, you can turn off image stabilization if you please, but you don’t really need to.

Autofocus

Since you’re stopping the aperture down to such a narrow one, try to get everything in the scene in focus. Depending on your subject matter, this means either focusing in the middle of the scene or out to infinity. This will help develop the flatter perspective paintings usually have.

Start Pulling the Camera Down or Up

Once you’re autofocused out, start by pulling the camera up or down. This will increase the dramatic, blurry, and watercolor-like look we’re aiming for.

Shoot

Keep pulling the camera and then shoot. The combination of the low ISO, the slow shutter speed, and the narrow aperture should provide a lot of motion blur and camera shake. If you’ve ever seen the panning effect done with sports and wildlife shooting, you’ll realize that it’s very similar.

Adjust

Lastly, look at your image and figure out what’s wrong with it. What don’t you like about it? How can you fix that? Then make adjustments and repeat. After this, you’ll get a better photo in-camera.

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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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