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Landscape
Photography STEVE WATKINS
THE EXPANDED GUIDE > TECHNIQUES
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Landscape Photography THE EXPANDED GUIDE
Steve Watkins
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First published 2011 by Ammonite Press an imprint of AE Publications Ltd 166 High Street, Lewes, East Sussex, BN7 1XU, United Kingdom Text © AE Publications Ltd, 2011 Illustrative photography © Steve Watkins, 2011 (except where indicated) Copyright © in the work AE Publications Ltd, 2011 All rights reserved The right of Steve Watkins to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, sections 77 and 78. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner. This book is sold subject to the condition that all designs are copyright and are not for commercial reproduction without the permission of the designer and copyright owner. The publishers and author can accept no legal responsibility for any consequences arising from the application of information, advice or instructions given in this publication. A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Series Editor: Richard Wiles Design: Richard Dewing Associates Typeset in Frutiger Color reproduction by GMC Reprographics
Page 2 Clouds billow at dusk above the sea stacks known as the Twelve Apostles, in Victoria, Australia.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Introduction
Chapter 2
Equipment
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Chapter 3
Exposure
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Chapter 4
Composition
56
Chapter 5
Light
78
Chapter 6
Color
106
Chapter 7
Creativity
120
Chapter 8
Locations & subjects
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Chapter 9
Digital workflow
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Chapter 10
Using your images
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Glossary
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Index
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CHAPTER 1
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INTRODUCTION
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Landscape photography There has never been a more exciting time to be a landscape photographer. Powerful new cameras, accessible locations, and sources of inspiration abound—and in our otherwise frenetic world the sense of peace to be found in the great outdoors can be transformative. When pioneering landscape photographer Carleton Watkins set out in the 1860s to capture scenes of the Yosemite Valley in the American West, few could have imagined just how photography of the planet’s natural spaces would go on to impact the public consciousness. From encouraging countless millions or even billions of people to seek out the places featured to driving major conservation initiatives, landscape photographs have become a defining influence on what it means to be a human being living on this Earth.
Open season One of the inherent appeals of landscape photography as a genre is that it is open to anyone who owns a camera and who can step outside of their own back door. There is no absolute need to own the best, or even good equipment—though of course it helps in the pursuit of ultimate image quality—and landscapes of one form or another exist within walking distance of just about every house that has ever been built. There is no great level of training needed to
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be able to point the camera at any scene that creates an emotional response and to capture an image that will remind the photographer at least of his or her connection with that place at that particular moment in time.
Personal view As the genre has matured, the definition of what constitutes a landscape photograph has altered, too, further widening its popular appeal. Whether you love photographing the grand scene as the pioneers did or prefer seeking out more intimate, close-up views, we all have the ability to become landscape photographers, connected by a love for wilderness, wherever it can be found.
GRAND SCENE (right) The classic “big view,” such as this scene in Lofoten, Norway, is still as popular as ever with photographers
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CHAPTER 2
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EQUIPMENT
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Choosing equipment While it is true that great equipment does not make a great landscape photographer, the right kit can make the difference between getting the shot you are after or missing it, so plan your equipment needs carefully. One of the first decisions to make before investing in lots of equipment for landscape photography is just how you envisage undertaking your photography. If you are likely to shoot most of your images at locations that are within a short walking distance of your car, then you can buy as much equipment as your budget will allow. You can also pay less attention to the weight of the items you are considering and focus, instead, on the other features. If, on the other hand, you foresee that you will want to get away from the more easily accessible locations and venture off into the hills and mountains in search of rarer images, then it is essential that you don’t overload
yourself. Instead of buying several prime lenses, it might be worth getting one zoom lens that covers the same focal range. Your tripod will need to go with you everywhere, too, and these can be weighty and awkward enough to carry to seriously dent your enthusiasm for getting out there. So, if you can afford one made from lighter materials, such as carbon fiber, then you will reap the benefits on those tough hikes. Invest in the best quality of gear that you can and if you have to choose then opt for good lenses first and foremost, and then a good tripod. You will very likely upgrade your camera quite regularly anyway, whereas good lenses should serve you well for many years.
Kits for every budget
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Beginner
Intermediate
Advanced
Entry-level DSLR 28–70mm lens Aluminum tripod Polarizer filter Cable release Hotshoe spirit level
Mid-level DSLR 24–70mm lens 70–200mm lens Carbon-fiber tripod Polarizer filter Neutral-density graduated filter kit Cable release Hotshoe spirit level
High-end DSLR or medium-format camera 16–35mm lens 24–70mm lens 70–200mm lens 1.4x teleconverter lens Carbon-fiber tripod Polarizer filter Neutral-density graduated filter kit Neutral-density filter Cable release Hotshoe spirit level
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What type of camera? There are superb cameras on the market these days to suit everybody’s needs, tastes, and budget. You just have to decide what you want. If you are in the market to buy any type of digital camera, then you are going to be completely spoilt for choice. Fierce and increasing competition across all the sectors (aside from large format) has led to a glut of highly specified cameras being available for pretty much bargain prices. So, how do you go about choosing the one that best suits your needs? Following the steps below should help to narrow things down.
Decide your budget To some degree, this will govern both the type and the quality of the camera body that you can get—though it is hard to buy a truly bad camera these days. The key to getting the most value for your money is to be very specific about the features that you really need on the camera. Modern cameras have so many fancy functions that it is easy to be swayed by an extensive list of capabilities that in reality you will rarely or never use. It’s not that you can easily avoid getting excess features bundled into the package, but if you have a clear idea of which ones are the most important for your type of photography, then you can focus on the quality of those, rather than the superfluous ones touted by the salesman.
DSLR The digital single lens reflex (or DSLR) camera is the type used by just about every professional and advanced amateur landscape photographer. That is not to say that beginners cannot jump straight into this part of the market, since the main camera manufacturers have been doing their utmost to tempt beginners by manufacturing DSLRs with built-in help guides and a host of technological advances that significantly increase the likelihood of taking flawless landscape photos in almost any situation.
SONY ALPHA DSLR
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CANON 600D – MID-RANGE DSLR
NIKON D3S – FULL FRAME DSLR
A big advantage of buying a DSLR is that there is usually a comprehensive lens system available to go with it, offering the maximum level of flexibility and potential for the system to grow with you as your photography improves. DSLRs also offer greater control over composition compared to most other types of camera, thanks to their mirror and pentaprism systems, which give up to 100% image accuracy through their viewfinders. They also give maximum levels of control over exposure and the other main functions of the camera, which is ideal for working in tricky lighting conditions. The top-end DSLRs often feature better weatherproofing seals on the body, a real bonus for landscape photographers, and are more rugged than models farther down the range. They do tend to be big and heavy, though. Midrange DSLRs have improved enormously thanks to competition in this area of the market, and are very worthy of consideration, even for professional photographers. Entry-level DSLRs
are also improving in leaps and bounds, and often match their more expensive stablemates in some of the features they offer.
Full frame The term “full frame” refers to DSLRs with sensors that match the size of an old frame of film (36mm x 24mm). Because they have big sensors and thus don’t need to pack in the pixels, the image quality is often, though not always, better than cameras based on smaller sensor formats, with lower noise levels at high ISO ratings and a wider dynamic range, to better capture the subtle light in an image: an important consideration for landscape photographers. Using a full-frame camera means that your lenses will operate at their stated angle of view and won’t need a crop factor applied, as they do with smallerformat-sensor cameras. Full-frame sensors are, however, more expensive to manufacture, and the camera prices reflect that.
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APS-C This sensor format, which stands for Advanced Photo System type C, uses a sensor approximately sized at 25.1mm x 16.7mm, which significantly reduces manufacturing costs compared to full-frame sensors. Cameras featuring APS-C sensors have become immensely popular, since they offer very good image quality at lower prices. A downside for landscape photographers who love using their wide-angle lenses is that the smaller sensor introduces a crop factor, which reduces the angle of view of any lens attached to the camera. A camera with a 1.6x crop factor turns a 24mm lens into a 38mm lens (in equivalent terms to an old 35mm film or full-frame digital camera). To get an equivalent to a 24mm lens in APS-C format, you need to use a 15mm lens, which is more technically challenging and expensive to produce.
Micro Four Thirds These sensors are based on the Four Thirds system developed by Panasonic and Olympus. The sensor is smaller than APS-C, measuring OLYMPUS E-5 – FOUR THIRDS DSLR
just 17.3mm x 13mm. The Micro systems also do not include a mirror or pentaprism, instead relying on an electronic view finder (EVF), which allows the manufacturers to make far smaller and lighter cameras.
Compact Although compact cameras have improved enormously in recent years and now offer high megapixel counts and a wide range of incamera software for adjusting your images, they still fall short as serious landscape cameras, and so are best avoided unless you just want to take landscape snapshots.
Medium format Although they are significantly more expensive than DSLRs, digital medium-format cameras are preferred by many landscape photographers (film-based medium-format cameras are quite a bargain these days if you want to try the format out). One of the big advantages of mediumformat over smaller-format cameras is that the sensors do not feature an anti-aliasing filter, so the images you get from them are significantly sharper out of the camera and they resolve more detail.
Large format If you want to have fun and try something more challenging, then large-format film cameras are still very much a favorite for some landscape photographers. The quality of the images you get from them is simply breathtaking, but they are rather unwieldy to use and quite a load to carry around on location.
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Lenses Ultra-wide-angle (14–20mm) Wide enough to include detailed very near foregrounds all the way through to very distant backgrounds, these lenses give an extraordinary perspective on the landscape. You have to compose an image with great care, though, since they quickly introduce an unnatural look if they are tilted up or the main subjects are placed too close to the edges of the frame, where the distortion of the lens is at its worst.
Wide-angle (24–35mm)
Telephoto (85–200mm) After wide-angle lenses, the telephoto range is the next most popular with landscape photographers. They compress the perspective and are ideal for picking out smaller sections of an expansive landscape, or for recording abstract details.
Extreme telephoto (200mm plus) These large lenses significantly compress perspective, which can be great for making abstract images of the landscape. Point them at a rolling range of hills and the ridgelines will look like they are stacked one upon the other.
Lenses in this range are the workhorses of any landscape photographer. They provide a far more natural look than ultra-wide-angle lenses, yet retain enough angle of view to include large parts of the scene in the image.
CANON EF 300MM F/2.8L IS II USM LENS
Other lenses NIKON AF-S NIKKOR 24MM F/1.4G ED WIDEANGLE LENS
Standard (50–70mm) A much underused lens range in landscape photography, these lenses offer the most realistic portrayal of a landscape relative to our own human vision. They can also be among the cheapest lenses to buy, so it is always worth popping one into your camera bag.
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There are several other lenses that can be of use to landscape photographers. Tilt-shift lenses give fine levels of control over the depth of field in an image by allowing you to move the front element of the lens parallel to the sensor plane (shift) or by tilting it. Then there are fun lenses, like the Lensbaby, which gives only a very tiny “sweet spot” of sharply focused image, with the rest of the image being very softly rendered.
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Camera support Tripods An essential part of a landscape photographer’s armory is a tripod. No other piece of your equipment can bring you greater joy or more frustration, so it is wise to spend quite some time considering the options available. They may seem like simple, three-legged tools, but the level of sophistication available these days is quite astonishing. Fundamental tripod features to consider for landscape photographers are: • Maximum working height The height of the tripod without the tripod’s center column being extended is crucial. You don’t want to be bent over double to look through the viewfinder, and extending the center column turns your tripod into more of a monopod, with subsequent loss of stability. Don’t on t forget to add the height of your camera onto nto the maximum height of the tripod to get et the true working height. • Weight and rigidity Searching for great landscapes to capture usually entails a fair amount of hiking, so finding a lightweight tripod pod will significantly improve the chances of you ou carrying it with you on any trip. Carbon-fiber tripods offer superb levels of rigidity and weigh gh up to a third less than aluminum equivalents—the s—the downside is that carbon-fiber tripods are far more expensive. There are now other her lightweight materials being used to make tripods, such as basalt, which produces es lighter tripods than aluminum, but heavier than carbon fiber, and the prices rices for basalt tripods lie between the two. wo.
Aluminum tripods come in at the lowest prices and offer excellent rigidity, albeit at generally greater weights. • Leg lock mechanism There are two methods of locking tripod legs in place: lever locks or twist locks. There is no right or wrong choice with these; it purely comes down to personal preference. Whichever system you go for, make sure that the locks can be easily operated while wearing gloves.
Tripod heads Selecting a good tripod head is possibly more important than getting good tripod legs. There are many varieties and brands, and this is generally a product where you get what you pay for in terms of quality, ease of use, and durability. Make sure the head you choose can cope with the th overall weight of the camera and lenses you want to use with it. Ball heads are fast and easy to use, use but making fine adjustments to your composition will be more difficult, since the head can move in i all directions once the head is unlocked. un Heads where you can separately s adjust the horizontal horizont and vertical planes of movement movem give much better control contro over composition, but can be a little slower to u use.
STURDY TRIPO TRIPODS ARE ESSENTIAL
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Filters and accessories Neutral-density graduated filter If you decide to buy only one type of filter, then make it neutral-density graduated. These filters graduate from a neutral gray at the top to clear at the bottom. They are commonly used to balance the light between sky and foreground, thus allowing the limited dynamic range of the camera sensor to capture more detail in both the highlight and the shadow areas of the photograph. The filters come in varying strengths, so the effect can be fine-tuned. Although they are available to screw onto the front of your lens, this type offers no scope for manipulating where the split in the graduation effect falls on the image. The square and rectangular filter types that fit into a separate filter holder are the best option, since then you can slide the filter up and down in the holder to place the graduation effect exactly where you want it.
Neutral-density filter Unlike the previous filters, these do not graduate at all and are neutral gray across the entire surface. The increasingly popular 10-stop neutral-density filters give the opportunity to use far slower shutter speeds even during the brightest parts of the day, in order to blur movement of water, clouds, or other elements of the landscape. Also they are available in varying strengths. TOO MUCH LIGHT! Using a neutral density filter allows you to use slower shutter speeds to introduce motion into daytime landscape images.
HARD OR SOFT ND GRADS? ND grad filters come with either hard or soft transitions. Hard is good for clean horizons; soft is best for busy horizons.
Polarizer filter Another essential filter for your kit bag, the polarizer helps to eliminate glare and reflections from surfaces, and to saturate colors, especially the blues in the sky. They work most effectively when the camera is set at 90 degrees to the direction of the sun. They can either screw onto the lens filter thread or fit into a separate filter holder, such as those sold by Lee Filters and Cokin in their “P” filter series.
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Canon EOS 1DS MKII with 16-35mm lens at 22mm: (left) 1/320 sec. at f/7.1; (right) 1/180 sec. at f/7.1, ISO 100
BLUE, BLUE SKY A polarizer helps to saturate the blues in an image and reduce glare, which helps to add contrast to the scene, as seen here with the clouds.
Accessories There are a few extra accessories that are very useful for landscape photography. A bubble spirit level that plugs into the hotshoe of your camera is great for ensuring that the horizons are straight in your compositions. Remote shutter-release cables allow you to trigger the shutter-release button without touching the camera, which significantly reduces the possibility of your images being blurred by camera shake. The most sophisticated cable releases boast other useful features, such as multiple-frame shooting at customized time intervals. If you are shooting with a tripod in very windy conditions, a sand or rock bag, which attaches to the hook at the bottom of the tripod’s center column, can be filled on location to provide a substantial amount of added stability.
HOTSHOE SPIRIT LEVEL
REMOTE SHUTTER RELEASE CORD
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Outdoor equipment Any fool can be uncomfortable in the outdoors, but if you want to maximize your enjoyment of being in wild places and allow your mind to focus solely on photographic matters, then good-quality outdoor gear is essential.
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Waterproof clothing
Footwear
A good waterproof/windproof jacket and, when appropriate, waterproof pants are the most fundamental items of outdoor gear you will buy, so research them carefully and buy the best that you can afford. The difference they will make on any inclement day, as you head into the mountains during a storm or wait for the light to be right in an exposed place, will be significant. If you are too cold or wet, it is highly likely that you will abort the photo session before you get your shot. Key things to look for in a jacket are: a wired hood that stays out of your face in strong winds; sufficient ventilation options (you don’t want to be taking your jacket on and off in variable weather); and a large map pocket, which can also double as a temporary place to store a lens. With the jacket and pants, it is worth looking for those that are designed to cope with a good range of movement. You will often end up shooting from low angles, so you want your waterproof clothing to move with you rather than restrain you.
Depending on the type of terrain you are going to be covering during your location shoots, your choice of footwear can make the difference between an enjoyable hike and a miserable trudge. Sturdy boots that give good ankle support are advisable, especially as you will be carrying significant loads on your back, making you more susceptible to turning over on your ankle. Boots with a waterproof lining, such as Gore-Tex, are ideal for keeping your feet warm and dry, although they can be a little too warm in hot climates.
Outdoor accessories There is a host of other items of outdoor gear that may be useful on a landscape shoot. Top of the list would be a headlamp. These not only give superb, directional lighting when you are accessing locations in low light or at night, but also leave both your hands free to get on with taking photographs—indispensable. Also, I never go on a shoot without a pair of thin thermal gloves. They allow you to use all the controls on your camera, but stop your hands freezing and can be worn under a thicker pair of gloves in particularly cold conditions.
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Setting up your camera Image format RAW
JPEG
The two main image formats used within digital cameras are RAW and JPEG. The big advantage of shooting in RAW format is that the camera captures all of the available data, which means there is far more scope for adjusting the image later using RAW processing software. So, RAW is the format of choice for serious amateur and professional photographers. One disadvantage to the RAW format is that because the camera captures more data, fewer images fit onto the memory card—although this is less of an issue with the large-capacity cards available today. You also have to process RAW images before you can convert them to a format such as TIFF or JPEG, which are more commonly accessible by other computers. A little known fact is that when you shoot in RAW format, the camera also creates a fairly good sized JPEG image, which is embedded within the RAW image. This JPEG image is the one that you see on the LCD display on the back of the camera after taking a photo. There is a free and very useful piece of software called Instant JPEG from RAW, which can quickly strip out the JPEG image for it to be used—download it from: www.mtapesdesign. com/instant-jpeg-from-raw-utility/.
The JPEG format is a compression format, so the camera strips out data that it deems to be not important to the overall look of the image. This means there is less data to work with if you are adjusting the image later. JPEG images take up less space on your memory cards and are instantly shareable straight out of the camera with other people using other computers/software. Some cameras offer the option of shooting both RAW and JPEG formats at the same time, which may be useful if you need to send some off quickly from a shoot, but also want the maximum level of manipulation available. Using this option, though, does increase further the demand on memory space on your storage cards. If you opt to shoot only in JPEG then inspect the camera menu and ensure that the Image Quality is set to its highest setting, often referred to as “Fine” or “Super Fine” in the menu.
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Color space The color space on a camera dictates the extent of colors that can be captured in a photo at the point of pressing the shutter-release button. There are two common color spaces that are used: sRGB and Adobe RGB. Almost all digital cameras are sold with the default color space set to sRGB (or Super Red Green Blue) and although this sounds like a good option from its name, it is in fact a very limited color space. It was developed to represent the limited color palette that can be displayed on the screens of most computers.
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Adobe RGB (also referred to as Adobe RGB 1998) is a wider color space. It is the preferable option for shooting landscape images, since it captures more color tones, especially in the blues and greens, which are crucial in many landscape photos. It is easy to convert an Adobe RGB image to sRGB later for distribution to other computer users, but you cannot convert an image originally captured in sRGB to Adobe RGB and recover the missing colors. So, it is always better to shoot images in the Adobe RGB format. Almost all digital cameras, even the high-end professional models, are sold with the color space set to sRGB; the settings menu needs to sRGB be accessed to change it to Adobe RGB. ADOBE RGB
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SRGB VS ADOBE RGB The sRGB space records less data in the green and blue channels than Adobe RGB.
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Location planning and research Thoroughly researching a location is just as important as setting up your camera gear correctly if you want to get the best possible landscape photographs. Luckily, it has never been easier. Researching locations It doesn’t matter if you are planning to photograph your local patch or off to exotic locations, the more you know about a location before you go, the better your images will be. As well as finding out the simple logistical information you need, reading about and seeing other photos of a location will help to build a mental picture that can be invaluable in previsualizing the shots you want to obtain.
Maps and books Whether you look through traditional paper copies or go to the online versions, there is nothing better than a map to help build a visual image of a place you are going to visit. You can use them to look for potential vantage points and clues as to how the light may fall on the landscape at different times of the day. If you have online access to Google Maps, then the 3D imaging they offer when you zoom right into a landscape is very useful for making decisions on where to go. Read as many books or online articles about the place as you can, not just ones about the landscape itself, but also anything from which you can glean background
information, such as the history, geology, or culture of the location. This can all feed into your composition decisions later on, when you might be able to include some visual references to this background information.
Online images There are few places, if any, on the planet that haven’t been photographed, so there is a wealth of research material available on the internet. Search stock image libraries, Google Images, or the web sites of photographers local to your chosen location. This shouldn’t act as a prompt to copy what has already been done, but rather to give you the visual foundation to conjure up your own personal take on the place. I often carry with me a printout of the thumbnail images that I come across and like, just to act as a quick reminder in the field.
Photography forums The advice of a local photographer can prove invaluable. So, once you know where you are heading, try posting on photography web forums to see if anyone can offer inside advice on the location. You will be surprised at how forthcoming other photographers can be.
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GOLDEN HOUR The half hour before and the half hour after sunrise and sunset often offer the best conditions for landscape photography.
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RISING OR FALLING TIDE Knowing tide times will not only keep you safe, but also help to shape your thoughts on where to go to get the best coast shots.
Weather
Sunrise/Sunset times
Nothing will make or break a location shoot like the weather you encounter. It pays rich dividends to know as much about both general weather patterns for the area and more timespecific forecasts for when you plan to be there. Generally, the times when there are significant changes occurring in weather systems give rise to the best landscape photography opportunities. Blue skies make us all feel better in ourselves, but they are usually too bland to be of use to outdoor photographers. Weather forecasts become much more accurate when they are for the next 12–24 hours, so check them out as close to the time of your shoot as you possibly can. More often than not, though, you simply have to take a chance on the weather being right for your shoot. Some of the elements that make great photographs are unpredictable and so fleeting that you simply have to be there waiting with your gear set up.
The hour or so around sunrise and sunset is the “golden time” for landscape photography, so it is imperative to know exactly what time the sun is coming up or going down to be able to plan your shoot. There are many sources for finding out the times online, including www.sunrisesunset.com.
Tide times If you are planning a coastal location shoot, you will need the times of high and low tide for the day concerned. There are two high tides and two low tides per day, roughly six hours apart. At low tide, more of the shoreline will be on show, which may give you interesting rock features to include in your images. High tide holds more dangers, since it is easy to become cut off if you stray too far from a coastal access point. Tide timetables are available online for many locations around the globe. Be aware though that they can vary markedly for locations that are relatively close together.
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AGBC 210443 IS THIS OK? IF NOT PLEASE SUPPLY - OK
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CHAPTER 3
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EXPOSURE
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Understanding exposure Get the exposure on your images right and it will stand out from the crowd; get it wrong and the image won’t get a second glance. The most important aspect of any landscape photograph to get right, or just about right, is the exposure. Thankfully, exposure, at its most fundamental level at least, is also one of the easiest technical aspects of photography to get to grips with. There are only three factors involved in controlling the exposure levels of an image: aperture, shutter speed, and, to a lesser degree, the ISO rating selected within the camera. The in-built metering systems in digital cameras today are, on the whole, outstanding, so the camera will do much of the work for you,
Canon EOS 1DS MKII, 24–70mm lens, 1/100 sec. at f/18
especially when you are photographing scenes that have a fairly average overall brightness, such as landscapes with deep green fields and mid-blue sky. However, outside of these average scenes, and certainly as you become more creative with your photography, you will encounter more difficult exposure challenges. By improving your skills and increasing your experience in subtly manipulating the three governing factors of exposure, the better you will become at pulling the desired amount of detail out of any landscape scene.
TRICKY LIGHTING Shooting into the sun makes it difficult for the camera’s auto-exposure to cope. For this shot, a spot reading was taken off the sky.
LIGHT LAYERS (Right) If there are layers of light and shadow in a scene then it can make it more difficult to know which part to expose for. I wanted to keep the dark shadows in this image, so exposed for the highlighted rock.
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Aperture The word “aperture” simply relates to the size of the hole in the shutter of the lens when a photograph is taken. This in turn controls the depth of field in the resulting image—the amount of the image that is sharply focused. The bigger the physical aperture, the more light
is let in during the exposure. Big apertures are associated with very shallow depths of field, where only a small part of the image is in sharp focus. Small apertures let in less light and produce results where much of, or even the entire image is sharply focused.
APERTURE SETTINGS The aperture settings move in “f-stops” and the quoted numbers are inverse, so the bigger f-stop numbers represent the smallest aperture holes, and the smallest f-stop numbers represent the largest aperture holes. The available f-stop range will vary from lens to lens, but will go something like this: f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16, f/22, f/32.
f/2.8
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f/4
These are known as the full f-stops, and they will likely be broken down into one-third f-stops, too, giving you numbers between those shown. Each full f-stop setting lets in half as much light as the larger aperture preceding it.
f/5.6
f/8
f/11
f/16
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Canon EOS 1DS MKII, 70–200mm lens, 1/500 sec. at f/5.6, ISO 100
ISOLATING THE SUBJECT Using a large aperture, such as f/5.6 or more can help to isolate a single subject from an otherwise busy scene. Take care about the exact point you focus on.
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Lens choice and depth of field The amount of depth of field achieved at any given aperture setting varies with the type of lens you are using. A wide-angle lens offers a much greater depth of field at a given aperture setting than a telephoto lens, due to the
different magnification factors of the lenses. Depth of field is also influenced by the distance from the subject, with closer subjects giving relatively less depth of field than subjects that are farther away.
HYPERFOCAL DISTANCE The way depth of field works means that the area that is acceptably sharp at any given aperture is not split evenly in front of and behind the focus point. Instead, around one-third of the depth of field zone falls in front of the focus point and the other two-thirds lie behind the focus point. This knowledge can be used to calculate and set the focus point in a scene to the hyperfocal distance—a term that refers to the focus, at any given aperture, being set at the closest possible point while maintaining the depth of field zone reaching out to infinity. This ensures that you get the most possible detail acceptably sharp, from the very near foreground (typically around ½ the hyperfocal distance) all the way through to the far distance background. There are various depth of field and hyperfocal distance calculators available online, including from the following web sites: www.dofmasters.com (they also offer a DOF calculator for iPhone/iPod Touch) www.bobatkins.com
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Canon EOS 1DS MKII, 16–35mm lens, 1/50 sec. at f/18, ISO 100
WIDE-ANGLE SHARPNESS It is easy to get all of a scene sharply focused when using a wide-angle lens. This image was shot with the lens at 16mm so f/18 provided front to back sharpness.
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Aperture—Controlling depth of field Selecting either a large or a small aperture is one of the most powerful creative tools available to landscape photographers. The classic school of landscape photography dictates that you should always be aiming to capture the maximum amount of sharp detail throughout the image, from near foreground to far background, to allow the various relationships between the elements of the composition to be revealed without biasing the viewer—a sort of “it is what it is” approach. However, there is a growing movement of landscape photographers who are using large apertures and very shallow depths of
field to create an alternative way to engage the viewer. These images rely on precisely picking out the intended subject in the composition and then ensuring that this plane is in sharp focus while the other planes, both in front of and behind the main subject, are very softly focused. This creates an irresistible pull on the viewer’s eye to the main subject, but the brain still takes some account of the blurred surroundings to add context. Both approaches are equally valid, so it is well worth experimenting with both to see which appeals most. Some examples of these techniques are shown on the following pages.
HOW TO ACHIEVE ULTIMATE SHARPNESS Although it is useful to use the smallest available aperture to ensure that everything in your landscape photograph is in focus, the compromise is that camera lenses do not perform at their optimum levels of sharpness at either extreme of possible aperture settings. Most lenses produce their sharpest images somewhere in the middle of the range of possible apertures, so if the scene you are shooting does not demand an extremely small aperture (i.e., there is not very near foreground and very far background parts to the scene), then the final image will be sharper if you use the biggest aperture that you can while maintaining the depth of field necessary for the entire scene to be in focus. Each lens will have a different optimum
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aperture, so test all your lenses and make note of their sharpest apertures, so that you can aim to use these as often as is practical in the field. MID-RANGE APERTURES ARE BEST Optimum aperture for this shot was f/18.
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Canon EOS 1DS MKII, 70–200mm lens, 0.5 sec. at f/6.3, ISO 100
BLURRED BACKGROUNDS With this shot it would have been easy to lose the main subject. You don’t need to be able to see the detail in the background to know that it is also rock. The shallow depth of field, f/6.3, helps the pebbles to stand out.
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Big depth of field 1 This shot was taken very quickly when the sun suddenly broke through the storm clouds during the late afternoon. It is a tabletop mountain called Jugurtha’s Table, in Tunisia. The sunlight on the rocks was more than enough to draw the viewer’s attention to it, so I could safely use a small aperture to record full detail in the rest of the scene, without risking it becoming too confused.
Exposure mode: Manual Sensitivity: ISO 50 (Velvia) Shutter speed: 1/60 sec. Aperture: f/22 Support: Tripod
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Big depth of field 2 Down in the slot canyons of Arizona, in the USA, there is relatively little light available no matter what time of day you are down there. The main subject in this image was the patterns in the canyon walls and there was no dominant part of the wall that I wanted to “highlight” by using a shallow depth of field. Using f/20 allows all of the rich detail in the rock to show through.
Exposure mode: Manual Sensitivity: ISO 100 Shutter speed: 30 sec. Aperture: f/20 Support: Tripod
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Shallow depth of field 1 This feather was stuck to the lower part of the canyon wall in one of the slot canyons near Page in Arizona. I’m not sure if it was naturally there or whether someone had placed it. It made a great subject either way. I wanted to keep the viewer glued to the detail in the feather while giving a feel of the canyon beyond. An aperture of f/7.1 let the middle ground and background drift off softly.
Exposure mode: Manual Sensitivity: ISO 100 Shutter speed: 1/500 sec. Aperture: f/7.1 Support: Tripod
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Shallow depth of field 2 This photo was taken around the battlefields of the Somme, in France. It was a very somber experience and I was keen to try to convey what it felt like to be a soldier at the time. They spent much of the time at ground level, either lying on open ground or down in the trenches, so it felt natural to capture these poppies from the same perspective. The shallow depth of field ensured the scene remained simple.
Exposure mode: Manual Sensitivity: ISO 100 Shutter speed: 1/500 sec. Aperture: f/5.6 Support: Handheld
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Exposure—Shutter speed While aperture choices control the amount of light hitting the camera sensor through the size of the hole in the shutter, the shutter speed controls the level of light entering the camera through the speed with which it opens and closes the shutter. The faster the shutter opens and closes, the less light gets in; the longer it stays open, the more light gets in. Most
Canon EOS 1DS MKII, 70–200mm lens, 1/160 sec. at f/14, ISO 100
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DSLR cameras offer shutter speed ranges from 30 seconds to around 1/8000 of a second, although they all also offer a Bulb setting, where the shutter can be opened and closed for as long as you desire. One of the creative side effects of using different shutter speeds is the ability to determine whether a moving subject in the photograph appears sharp or blurred.
SUBTLE WATER MOVEMENT A shutter speed of 1/160 sec. was just right to allow the movement in the breaking waves to bur slightly to make the image more dynamic, without the sea becoming blurred overall.
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THE YING AND YANG OF EXPOSURE Shutter speed and aperture work together to control the overall amount of light entering the camera. The amount of light in a scene is a given factor at any particular point in time, but there are numerous combinations of shutter speed and aperture that can be used to correctly record the amount of light in the scene on the sensor. If you choose a faster shutter speed, you also need to make the aperture bigger to compensate, and if you choose a slower shutter speed, the aperture needs to be smaller to maintain the same overall level of exposure. On a bright sunny day and using ISO 100, a classic setting to use for landscapes is the so-called “sunny 16” rule, or 1/125 of a second at f/16. However, that is just one possible combination of settings that are correct for those particular light conditions. You could also use, for example, 1/500 of a second at f/8 or 1/60 of a second at f/22 and the overall exposure would remain the same for the image, but in the first image you would freeze the motion more of any moving elements in the frame and have less depth of field. In the second example, moving elements would appear more blurry, but you would have
a greater depth of field, so more of the image in focus. These are the constant decisions and compromises that every photographer needs to make with any given scene—so this is where you can apply your creative vision to what you want the final image to look like. SUNNY SIXTEEN! 1/125 sec. at f/16 works on sunny days.
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Shutter speed—Using fast shutter speeds Landscapes are not the most dynamic of photography subjects, so it is safe to assume that generally you do not need to be using the upper levels of your camera’s shutter speeds to be able to freeze the action in a landscape. However, there are often many moving elements in any landscape scene, and shutter speed can play an important role in determining the ultimate look and mood of an image. Some of the more obvious examples of moving elements in landscape photography are water and clouds. If you are shooting a scene that includes a river or the sea, then to freeze the motion you will need to use a relatively fast shutter speed—around 1/200 of a second should suffice for most moving water, but it depends on how rapidly the water is moving. A tumbling waterfall might need a shutter speed closer to 1/500 of a second to freeze the motion, while a gently lapping sea might only require 1/60 of a second. Your proximity to and FREEZING WATER A shutter speed of 1/800 sec. has “frozen” individual drops of water in this image.
alignment with the subject also play a part in the shutter speed equation—the closer you are, the faster the shutter speed you need to freeze the action, and if the water is moving across the frame, rather than toward or away from you, then, again, you must use a faster shutter speed to stop the movement in the image. The same thought process applies to clouds: the faster they are moving on the wind, the faster the shutter speed you need to stop them from blurring in the image. There are many other elements that move within a landscape, including the sun and moon, tree branches and leaves, and even long grasses blowing in the wind. All of these need to be carefully assessed and the movement of each factored into the calculations for shutter speed. One of the advantages of trying to freeze any motion in a landscape is that the higher shutter speeds may allow you to shoot handheld rather than using a tripod or monopod. If you are out hiking in the mountains and don’t relish carrying the extra weight of a tripod, then committing to using faster shutter speeds is one way to get around the problem of camera shake if you do not have a support for the camera. Also, by using higher shutter speeds, you are enforcing the use of wider apertures, too, which can help to dictate the creative appearance of your images. COUNTER THE WIND (Right) Fast shutter speeds can be very useful on windy days to stop the motion in trees and grasses, for example. A speed of 1/320 sec. kept this wheat field “calm.”
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Shutter speed—Using slow shutter speeds If using fast shutter speeds to freeze all movement harks back to the classic forms of landscape photography, then utilizing slow shutter speeds is most definitely a technique of the modern landscape movement. With our own eyes we tend to see the world as if it is all shot with fast shutter speeds, so using slower shutter speeds immediately injects a freshness of vision into your images, giving an abstract expression of time and motion. Rather than being caught up in the infinite detail of the moving elements, slow shutter speeds allow us to immerse ourselves in the soft and slightly dreamlike motion of water, clouds, tree branches, and grasses. Some photographers may feel that it is all a little too surreal at times, and that the technique of blurring movement
with slow shutter speeds, despite being a relatively recent trend in the history of landscape photography, is already being overused and over exaggerated. As with many photographic techniques, though, the ability to use them subtly and in moderation is where the real skill resides. Expose the ebb and flow of a tide for too many seconds and it almost seems to disappear in a swirl of ethereal milkiness. Try instead to find the shutter speed that allows the faster moving parts of the sea, such as the breaking waves, to display the blur of motion while the slower moving areas retain some details, and you will be on the way to creating powerful and memorable photographs. Again, there are no set speeds to use as it totally depends on
MILKY WATER A popular effect of using slow shutter speeds for shooting moving water is that it can make the water appear milky and soft. A shutter speed of 4 sec. was enough to create a lovely blur in this small waterfall along the Amalfi Coast, in Italy.
Canon EOS 1DS MKII, 16–35mm lens, 4 sec. at f/16, ISO 100
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the relative speed and direction of travel of the subject, but try exposures of between half a second and two seconds when you are taking photos of the sea to start with. Using a tripod or other firm support for the camera becomes critical to success when utilizing slow shutter speeds. With the shutter being open for long enough to register any vibration, it becomes more important still to use a remote cable shutter release, so that you don’t have to touch the camera at all to operate it. Even the gentlest of touches can result in minor
camera shake, which will soften or possibly even ruin the final image. Although the shutter is open for some time and will capture a range of motion, it is still crucial to try to time the shutter release to coincide with the moving elements being in the best possible position in the frame and at the peak of their movement. Any slow shutter speed photography usually involves some “hit and miss” experimentation, so study the image on the LCD screen (if you are shooting digitally!) to see how it can be improved each time.
MOON GHOSTS A note of caution if you are trying your hand at night photography and want to include the moon in a slow shutter speed exposure. The moon rises far more quickly than it appears to the naked eye, so even relatively short exposure times can see the moon’s movement recording on the image, resulting in a blurry or even elongated moon. As a general rule of thumb, you need to keep your exposure times below 1/8 of a second to prevent the moon from blurring across the image. This exposure time changes with the focal length of the lens you use, longer telephoto lenses requiring faster shutter speeds than wider lenses.
STOP THE MOON! An exposure of 1/40 sec. prevents blur.
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Shutter speed 1 One of the key decisions to make when shooting moving water is just how much blur you want to introduce. My preference is to show blur while still retaining some texture in the water. Around 1/5 sec. is often the speed that produces this, though it depends on the speed of the water and its direction of travel relative to the camera.
Exposure mode: Manual Sensitivity: ISO 100 Shutter speed: 1/5 sec. Aperture: f/8 Support: Tripod
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Shutter speed 2 Once your shutter speed goes to 2 seconds or slower, the water becomes a milky blur. It’s a nice effect, though a little overdone these days. Still, if this is the look you are after, then it is a good idea to find water that is tumbling over a boulder. The water thins over the top of the boulder, revealing the rock texture, before turning silky white beyond it.
Exposure mode: Manual Sensitivity: ISO 100 Shutter speed: 5 sec. Aperture: f/20 Support: Tripod
THIS ONE IS INTENDED FOR THIS SECTION. BUT SO IS 261512 AND 160416
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Exposure—ISO rating Although it was always possible to use films of different speeds for varying light conditions, the advent of digital cameras has brought the ISO rating far more into the exposure equation than it ever was before. The sheer ease with which you can flit from one ISO rating to another, and back again, means that it is just as much a useful exposure tool as aperture and shutter speed in influencing the creative mood of your images. Moreover, recent advances in noise reduction capabilities in digital camera sensors at high ISO ratings also mean that the low-light shooting capabilities of modern digital cameras are nothing short of staggering. It is now feasible to shoot day and night, and come back with very usable images. The ISO settings work in stops, too. So ISO 400 is two full stops faster than ISO 100, which equates to being able to use a shutter speed of 1/500 of a second rather than 1/60 of a second in the same light conditions—quite some
difference in what can be achieved, especially with handheld photography. Many new DSLR cameras produce pretty much flawless images up to around ISO 800, and some high-end pro cameras boast upper ISO ratings of 102,400, which basically allows you to take photographs of subjects at night or in low light when you can’t even see them with your naked eye! So, if you find yourself in a situation where you need a great deal of depth of field and you need to use fast shutter speeds to freeze the movement in a scene, then you can readily increase the ISO rating on the camera to allow you to achieve both goals. Higher ISO ratings do tend to desaturate the colors slightly compared to lower ISO ratings, and there is a slight increase in the levels of noise in the image at higher ISO settings, but the big advantage is that now at least you can take a photograph where before, in the days of film, that was almost impossible.
LOW LIGHT LIFE The advent of digital SLR cameras has opened up a whole new era for photography. When the sun has set, the cameras’ high ISO capabilities can reproduce low light scenes that were previously impossible.
Canon EOS 1DS MKII with 24–70mm lens at 30mm, 6 sec. at f/3.5, ISO 1600
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Controlling noise There was always an increase in the “grain” visible as you used films with faster ISO ratings, and there is a similar issue, called “noise,” with using faster ISO ratings on digital cameras, too. Noise appears as blotchy patches and becomes more noticeable in large areas of continuous color and tone, such as the sky. Generally, noise levels rise as you increase the ISO rating, but over the last few years great advances have been made by the manufacturers in controlling noise across a wider range of ISO settings. So, with the latest cameras, you can generally shoot at ISO 400 with little concern for the quality of the image deteriorating to a noticeable extent. With some of the best cameras, this even applies to ISO 800 and maybe ISO 1600, too. Beyond this, noise is an issue that needs to be taken into account when you are employing
a shift in ISO rating to help with the overall exposure of an image. Another cause of noise in an image is heat generated by the sensor itself. The longer the exposure time, the more heat is generated, so once you are looking at exposure times of more than a few seconds then, again, it is good to be aware that the compromise of doing this is increased noise in the final image. The best way to deal with unavoidable noise in an image is by using the excellent software available that can analyze a photo and reduce noise levels without impacting the quality of the image too much. Adobe Lightroom, from Version 3 onward, has excellent noise reduction capabilities included. In addition, there are some stand-alone packages that also provide effective noise control, including Noise Ninja, Neat Image, and Noiseware.
LESS NOISE PLEASE! Shot at ISO 1600, this night shot of Mount Kilimanjaro had excessive noise in it, both from the high ISO setting and the long exposure. Applying noise reduction within Adobe Lightroom has significantly improved smooth tones of the image.
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Expose to the right There is very little latitude for error when shooting slide film, but with digital capture it is possible, using RAW conversion software, to recover extraordinary detail from incorrect exposures. This does not mean that you shouldn’t aim to get the correct exposure in the first place, but the optimum exposure with digital differs from the one aimed for with film. Digital camera sensors capture light in a linear fashion, starting at the highlight end and finishing at the shadow end of the histogram. Based on the assumption that a digital sensor can record light across a range of about five stops of light, it would be natural to assume that each stop of the brightness range would record an equal amount of tonal values, but that is not the case. The brightest stop records half of all the tonal values captured by the sensor, the next brightest another half of the remaining tonal values, and so on. Thus, the shadow end of the range actually records significantly fewer tonal values than the brightest end. This has led to the theory that you should expose digital images “to the right”; i.e., slightly overexpose the image, without blowing out highlights, because this captures the maximum level of tonal detail possible. You then bring the exposure back to normal during post-processing. In most cases, creating your images in this way does result in more detailed, less noisy photographs.
EXTRACT MORE DETAIL Expose your image to the right of the histogram and bring it back to the levels you want in postprocessing to maximize detail. Canon 1DS MKII with 70–200mm lens at 200mm, ISO 100, 1/60sec. at f/20
BETTER SHADOWS (Right) Exposing this image to the right enabled more shadow detail to be extracted later.
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Using ND graduated filters There are many photographic filters available, but relatively few can be considered essential for landscape photographers. However, one type that you will find in the camera bag of just about any serious amateur or professional landscape photographer is the neutral-density graduated filter, or “ND grad” as they are affectionately known. Digital camera sensors can record detail across a range of light equivalent to about five stops, whereas our eyes are capable of seeing across about 11–12 stops of light. This leads to a significant difference in how we see the world and how the camera can record our view of it. ND grad filters help to bring those two varying views closer together by blocking light from the highlight parts of the frame—usually the sky—while allowing all the light from the shadow area—normally the foreground—to pass unimpeded. The filters come in both round
format, which screw into the filter thread on your lens, and square or rectangular formats, which require special filter holders that attach to the lens. If you are considering buying them, then without a doubt opt for the large rectangular ones, since they give the best levels of control over where the graduated zone (where the filter transitions from dark to clear) sits in the frame. Using ND grads is a skill that needs time to perfect. A good way to get a more accurate idea of where the split is sitting in the frame is to depress the depth of field preview button, if you have one, on your camera and slowly to slide the filter up and down in its holder; this makes it far easier to see the graduated area. Another advantage of the non-round filter types is that the holders can rotate on the end of the lens, too, so you can place the graduated zone on an angle if that best suits the scene you are
SOFTWARE ND GRADS Some image processing software, including Adobe Lightroom and Apple Aperture, offers tools for creating the effect of an ND grad filter in post capture. These work well and give very similar effects to the filters you can use in the field, but by using the filters in the field you will come back with a far better initial image, containing more data across the entire tonal range of the image, which makes a better starting point for processing your image.
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photographing. The filters are also available with different gradation zones: a “hard” ND grad moves quickly from dark to clear, whereas a “soft” ND grad transitions more slowly from dark to clear. The hard filters are more suitable when you have a fairly clean horizon line in the image, with no important elements from the foreground or midground jutting into the sky. If
Canon EOS 40D, 105mm lens, 1/40 sec. at f/10, ISO 160 (left); 0.3 sec. at f/22, ISO 160 (right)
you have an irregular horizon line, then the soft filters work best, since they avoid the problem of foreground and midground objects suddenly appearing unnaturally dark above the horizon line. As your skills in using the filters improve, you can start to experiment with multiple filters on each shot, since some brands of filter holder allow several filters to be stacked together.
FREEZE AND BLUR When shooting water, it’s a good idea to include a static object (such as a stone or leaf) in the frame to provide a point of reference for the viewer. “Freeze” (left) was taken at 1/40 sec.
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Other filters Neutral-density filter Extreme versions of these filters have become the “hot ticket” filters for many landscape (or should I say coastscape) photographers. Basically, an ND filter blocks some of the light entering the lens, which allows you to set longer shutter speeds or use bigger apertures than you would otherwise be able to in bright light conditions. This has opened up a whole new art form of blurry water daytime shots, perhaps best expressed in images containing the sea. There are several versions on the market, but one of the most popular has been the Big Stopper by Lee Filters. This filter reduces the amount of light entering the lens by 10 stops, allowing you to use multiple second exposures in the middle of the day to get blurry water usually reserved for low-light conditions.
MILKY WATER A 10-stop neutral-density filter allowed a slower shutter speed to be used to blur the water.
Canon EOS 1DS MKII with 24–70mm lens at 24mm, 4 sec. at f/8, ISO 100
Polarizer One of the most favored filters for landscape images, a polarizer can help to deepen the blue color of the sky and also reduce reflective glare from the surface of nonmetallic elements within the scene, such as water. Polarizers work most effectively when they are used at 90 degrees to the direction of the sun. As well as deepening blue skies, the filter will enhance the contrast of clouds, too, making them stand out sharply against a blue sky. You can buy polarizers that screw into the front thread of a lens, or that are square or rectangular for use with a filter holder. The latter is better if you intend to use square- or rectangular-format ND grad filters, because you can mount the polarizer at the same time. The polarizer does not work in a simple on-off manner; rather it moves seamlessly through all the gradations between those two extremes as you rotate it, so try to employ it subtly. Using one will reduce the amount of light that enters the lens by up to two stops (depending on how strong the effect you have opted for), so be aware of this when setting your exposures in manual mode.
SATURATED COLORS (Right) A polarizer filter helps to saturate colors and reduce reflections in water.
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CHAPTER 4
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COMPOSITION
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Introduction to composition Faced with the grand sweep of a dramatic landscape, it is easy to think that you can simply point the camera at the scene and that it will magically capture the essence and mood of the vista. Nothing could be farther from the truth, unless you are exceptionally lucky. How many times have you heard a photographer mumble apologetically to their gathered friends or family that they “really needed to be there, because the photo doesn’t do it justice”? This muchused and usually entirely accurate statement results from the mistaken belief that a camera can “see” exactly what we see and feel. The most significant difference about how a camera sees the world compared to a person is that the image it captures is in two dimensions, while we, of course, see the world in three dimensions. Beyond that, the camera frame has straight and clearly defined edges, whereas our own vision has rounded and soft edges (our peripheral vision). Also, when we are standing at a location taking a photograph, we are taking in the sounds, smells, and the nonvisible elements of nature, such as the wind, cold, and heat. These extra factors are then all mixed together with our emotional response to the scene to provide us with a dense and complex view of the landscape before us. It is hardly surprising that a metal box full of circuitry and a sensor has trouble replicating the scene as we recall it!
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How cameras see the world One of the most important skills to nurture as a landscape photographer is understanding the limited way in which a camera sees the world and then constructing an image within those boundaries in a manner that can hint at the elements of the scene that lie beyond its capabilities. At the forefront of the ways in which we can overcome the camera’s limitations is composition: the parts of the scene we choose to include in the frame and the way in which we order them. There are no finite answers to how to compose an image; this particular skill is one that will continue to develop over your entire life as a photographer. For those just setting out, there are some really good fundamental guidelines about how to generally order the elements of a scene in a photograph, which, once grasped, will quickly enable you to improve the impact of your images. More advanced elements of composition technique include the use of shapes and patterns to add depth and direction, and how we can use other factors, such as color and context, to add a greater degree of meaning to an image. Inject some of these into your images and you will be well on the way to banishing the words “you should have been there” to the history books.
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Basic rules of composition Photography is a subjective art, so technically there are no absolute rules governing how you go about composing images. However, there are some simple guidelines that will quickly and effectively elevate photographs above the masses. As with most learning processes, if you can practice the basics enough that they become second nature, then it opens the doorway to more spontaneous experimentation and “rule” bending.
Rule of Thirds One of the most widely recognized “rules” of landscape photography, the rule of thirds refers to the placement of key elements of the image on or near imaginary lines that divide the
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image frame into equal thirds, both horizontally and vertically. Placing important elements around these lines, and in particular where they intersect, rather than in the middle of the frame helps to add instant visual interest and balance to an image. The classic interpretation of this with landscapes is to place the horizon line on the lower third, then have another important element, such as a tree, in the middle third zone
DIVIDE THE FRAME Place the subjects on the thirds for impact.
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and placed where the lines intersect, and the sky filling the top third of the image. If there are smaller key elements in the scene, such as a person or animal for example, then it makes for a strong image if they are placed on or near one of the “hotspots,” where the vertical and horizontal lines intersect. It is not too clear why the rule of thirds is more appealing to us visually than simply placing a subject in the center of the frame, but it does contribute to the viewer’s eye having a more definite path to follow around the photograph.
Straight horizons Our view of the world is based on our entire evolution as a species on the planet, so it is far from simple. Deep within us and our brains, we like to have order in our lives, and we become restless when things appear to be not how they should be. Yet, in our excitement to capture a glorious landscape photograph, it is
easy to forget that we, as a species, prefer it if the horizon is straight! It is one of the most common errors in landscape photography, yet it is a fairly simple problem to solve, especially if you routinely use a tripod. No matter how good you think your eye is at being able to tell if the horizon is straight in your image, the purchase of a simple and inexpensive bubble spirit level (the type that slots into your camera’s flash hotshoe is the best) will guarantee that you never have wonky horizons again. Just set up your camera on the tripod, attach the bubble spirit level, compose your photograph, check the bubble and adjust to get it exactly in the middle, and you are there. Even if your eyes tell you the horizon still isn’t level, it will be.
KEEP IT LEVEL Straight horizons are critical in landscapes.
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Fill the frame One of the most critical things to decide when setting up a photograph is what the main subject will be. It is easy to have the subject in mind, but then forget to transfer that knowledge to the image composition process. Think carefully before you press the shutter-release button: what is the main subject of this image? Once you have that clearly defined, you need to decide how to use that main subject in the frame of the image. An obvious way to ensure that a viewer knows that it is the main subject is to fill or nearly fill the entire frame with it. With little or nothing else to look at in the composition, there is no room for ambiguity, and it can add some meaning to the image. For example, if you are taking a photograph of one of the towering sand dunes in Morocco, then filling the frame with the dune not only makes it a simple and easily understood composition, but also it adds the feeling of the dune being massive, If you zoomed out and had lots of sky and foreground in the image, the dune would look far less imposing.
completely from the image can make the image slightly claustrophobic, since there is no exit point for the viewer’s eye. However, if the patterns and shapes within the abstract are strong enough, they can, in themselves, lead the viewer on a journey through the image. A good example of this, staying on the desert theme, is an abstract shot of the ripples running across a sand dune. PATTERNS IN NATURE When shooting abstract landscapes, it is good to include repetitive patterns. Minolta Dynax 9, 24–70m lens, Fuji Velvia 50, shutter and aperture details unrecorded
Abstract landscapes Taken to its extreme, filling the frame with the subject results in an abstract view of the landscape, which can be particularly effective if there are bold patterns. Omitting the sky FILLING THE FRAME (Right) By filling the frame with the subject, like this dune in Namibia, it adds to the feeling of it being large and imposing. The people gives it added scale.
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Shapes & patterns When you first cast your eyes over a landscape scene, it is entirely normal to see trees, hills, rivers, valleys, clouds, etc. However, once the more human response to the landscape has been assimilated, the photographer needs to start seeing the view in a different manner: a way that strips out the familiar forms, and instead seeks simple geometric shapes and patterns. It is these design principles rather than the subject itself that can help turn an ordinary photo into a great photo. It takes some time to train the eye to view the world in this slightly disconnected way, but seeing how more compelling the resulting images are will help to drive the hours of practice needed to fine-tune this skill. Luckily, our brains have evolved in such a way that they fill in missing information in what we see, to help us make sense of the world around us, and this is of crucial importance to photographers looking to create shapes and patterns in their images. It means that you don’t literally have to find triangles, circles, etc to include in your compositions, because you can simply imply them through careful placement of elements of the scene.
Triangles Of all the shapes that you can look to include in your images, the triangle is both the most dynamic and powerful, and perhaps the easiest to incorporate. If there are three elements, such as trees, rocks, and flowers, in the frame,
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then it is relatively simple to organize them in a way that implies a triangle, even if there are no connecting lines between the three points.
Circles Finding circles, literal or implied, in a scene is a good way to bring cohesion to an image, although they tend to be harder to come by or form than triangles. You could, for example, look for naturally occurring frames, such as a cave entrance, round pebbles, plants, or ponds. They don’t have to be perfect circles, just something close to a circular shape.
Squares and rectangles These shapes are much harder to come by in nature, but do occur: for example, the water channels created in limestone plateaux. There may often be manmade squares and rectangles in a landscape, such as a barn, a house doorway, or ranch-style wooden fencing around a property, which can all be used in the composition. These shapes suggest a sense of strength and certainty in the image.
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Triangles It is not crucial to literally have triangle-shaped subjects in your images. You can easily imply the shape by including three objects that form the “points” of the triangle.
Circles Round objects in an image help to focus the viewer’s attention within the circle. They also add a feeling of cohesion and completeness.
Squares and rectangles Squares are harder to find occurring naturally in nature, but there are often man-made structures that will fill the role. Square and rectangular shapes add a sense of solidity and certainty to an image.
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Diagonal lines
Vertical lines
These lines offer the most dynamic graphic addition to any image. They are particularly good for creating a sense of three-dimensional depth to the photo as well as a very strong directional pull on the viewer’s eye. With them being so powerful, it is important to use diagonal lines with some care, because if they are included haphazardly, they can easily distract from the main subject. There are many forms of diagonal line that can be found in nature, from coastal shorelines and rivers to tree branches and mountain ridges, so you should almost always be able to include one if your composition requires it. Although they can enter or leave the image frame at any point, they are usually more effective when they are placed near one of the corners. This helps to maximize their directional effect across the composition and adds tension to the image by contrasting more with the straight sides of the image frame. It is important to control where the diagonal lines lead within the composition. If the viewer follows the line and there is no payoff, in the form of an important or intriguing subject, then interest in the image will be quickly lost. The good thing is that the directions of the diagonals are heavily influenced by your own vantage point, so they can easily be “pointed” at the most interesting parts of the image simply by changing your perspective—shooting from down low is often the most effective technique.
The most obvious manifestations of vertical lines in the landscape are trees, which can be used to compose powerful photographs that give a sense of strength and impenetrable nature. If you venture into a forest, it is worth looking for a stand of trees that offers the opportunity to shoot a relatively abstract photo. Then much skill and patience is required to find the best vantage point to minimize the overlap of tree trunks, and to decide which trees to include and which to exclude from the final shot. Misty, bright mornings can be the best for adding some atmosphere to forest photos and avoiding blown-out highlights in the sky seen through the trees.
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Horizontal lines The most prevalent line in any landscape photo, of course, is the horizon line, and this is one line that you should endeavor to get straight in all your compositions. We are genetically programmed to expect the horizon to be straight, and even the slightest slope in it can turn a masterpiece into an also-ran image. There are also many other horizontal lines that can play a significant role in your images, bringing a feeling of layers or barriers to the composition. A good example of horizontal layers or lines is a receding range of mountains when it is backlit by the sun and has haze or mist between the ridges. When combined with the use of a long telephoto lens, which helps to compress the perspective, it is possible to create an image where the mountain ridges look like they are stacked one on top of another. .
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Diagonal lines Lines that run from near one corner of the frame and go into the image are very dynamic and powerful. They add a sense of movement into the image. When diagonal lines converge, they give a strong visual depth cue.
Vertical lines These can give a sense of strength to an image, but can also block the viewer’s journey through the photograph. Repetitive vertical lines, such as stands of trees, often work well for abstract images.
Horizontal lines These can also serve to block a viewer’s journey into the image, so they need to be used carefully. Using a long lens to compress the perspective can provide real impact with some horizontal line scenes where you have a high vantage point.
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Third dimension The fundamental difference in how we see the world compared to how a camera can record it is the third dimension; we see it, but the camera can’t (well, at least non-3D cameras can’t record it). So, we have to incorporate visual and graphic elements into our photographs to trick the eye into perceiving the extra dimension. There are many ways to accomplish this in landscape photography, but those described here are among the most effective.
Five layers Most photographers think about constructing their landscape images in terms of foreground, middle ground, and background. While this is perfectly acceptable and to be applauded, there is no reason why you can’t take this concept farther by adding even more layers. If you add to that list near foreground and far background, and place an important and distinct segment of the photograph in each layer, then you open the door to creating images that are full of visual depth clues.
Converging lines When two similarly positioned diagonal lines, such as the two banks of a river or the two sides of a road or railroad track, run away from the eye, they appear to converge as they get farther away from the vantage point. This effect adds a powerful depth cue to the image and, when used skilfully, can create an irresistible third dimension in the image. For maximum effect,
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a good idea to take an image from a low vantage point, which can help the lines nearer to you to spread further apart in the image. It can also help you to place the lines so that they come into the frame from near the bottom corners, which magnifies the depth effect. It is important with converging lines to have something of interest at the point the eye is led to, otherwise the viewer can fell cheated.
Repetition of subject If we see several similar objects in a photograph and some seem smaller than others, then the brain interprets this to mean that the smaller objects are farther away than the bigger ones. Now, of course, this may not be true: the objects could actually be in the same horizontal plane relative to the camera and be of different sizes (this is a popular ruse employed by magicians to trick onlookers!), but the brain is difficult to convince in this way. It will fight hard to maintain the assumption that the smaller object is farther away than the larger one. Some possible objects that might work in this manner in a landscape are trees, rocks, boats, cars, people, and animals, so if you can include these in the composition, you will be well on the way to making an image that appears to be three dimensional.
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Five layers Rather than just trying to get a foreground, middle ground and back ground into an image, try adding near foreground and far background, too. This provides irresistible depth to a landscape photo.
Converging lines Our brains are preprogrammed to interpret converging lines in a particular way. Where the lines are further apart is read by the brain as being nearer than where the lines are closer together. This creates the visual third dimension.
Repetition of subject If there are several similar subjects in the frame and they vary in size, the ones that are bigger are perceived to be closer than ones that are smaller. Footsteps in the sand or snow are a good example of this.
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Third dimension
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Adding meaning Composition isn’t only for adding order to a photograph; used with premeditated intent, composition can also influence the meaning a photograph carries to the viewer. For instance, the classic rule of thirds, as we have seen, suggests that the horizon line should be placed on the bottom horizontal third of the image, but this only implies normality. If you are in a wide open expanse with a glorious, unimpeded view of the sky, you may want to enhance the feeling of this in your photos by including only a sliver of the landscape at the bottom of the frame and leaving the rest to be taken up by the sky (below). With some preshoot research and a modicum of luck on location, you can make images that tell some of the stories that lie behind the landscape. For instance, on a shoot in Argentinean Patagonia, in the Los Glaciares National Park, it was my background reading about how Mount Fitzroy was known as the “fire mountain” by local tribes that guided my thinking when a huge cloud seemed to be billowing like smoke off the top of the peak. I had initially zoomed in far closer, but this wider view carries more meaning (right).
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Cropping and formats In the days of film, unless you were very dedicated, you pretty much had to stick with the original format of the film you used in making your final images, especially if you were shooting slide film. The digital revolution has opened a whole new area of creative composition control by providing easy ways to change the format of the final image, either in-camera or in post-processing on the computer. Many digital cameras offer various built-in crop modes so that you can capture scenes with crops that range from standard 3:2 and 4:3 all the way through to 16:9 panoramic. Most image editing software offers a crop tool, and there are several software packages, including Adobe Photoshop, that make it easy to stitch images together to make a panoramic image. For cropping, it takes just seconds to move from a traditional 3:2 format to a square or even an extended panoramic format, or any other format that takes your fancy. With the stitching software, you shoot a series of slightly overlapping frames of the scene and then simply load them into the software. Although it is possible to make many refinements to the process, it only takes a minute or so for the software to magically stitch the series of images together to make a single panorama. It is incredibly accurate at analyzing the images and working out exactly how they fit together.
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CHAPTER 5
LIGHT
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Light “I almost never set out to photograph a landscape, nor do I think of my camera as a means of recording a mountain or an animal unless I absolutely need a ‘record shot.’ My first thought is always of light.” Galen Rowell The late Galen Rowell, one of the modern masters of landscape and adventure photography, and a great influence on my own journey into photography, knew that it was possible to take a great photograph of an ordinary subject if you had stunning light. The word “photography” comes from the Greek words, phos, meaning light, and graphos, meaning writing. So, if there is one major leap in the mind that you need to make if you are going to take powerful landscape images, it is that first and foremost you are on the lookout for great light and not a great subject. The latter without the former is unlikely to result in a satisfactory image, but if the two things coincide, then you really do have a “wow” image on your hands!
Quality of light
will become more trained at differentiating the types and varying qualities of light. There are far more layers to light than simply highlight, midtones, and shadows, and the more adept you become at discerning the light levels in between, the better your images will become. There are many things that influence the quality of light in the outdoors, from its direction and the time of day to atmospheric conditions. Light is constantly changing and, on the whole, fairly unpredictable, which is why the art of being a landscape photographer is as much about being a patient and knowledgeable observer as it is a technical master. HINT OF LIGHT Although images with bright and stunning light have instant impact, more subtle light can often be even more impressive.
Great light does not have to be dramatic light; it only has to be the best light for your chosen subject. While a solitary shaft of sunlight might be superb for lighting up a mountain top, far more subtle and diffused light may be ideal for capturing the clouds drifting over its summit. As you spend more time focusing on seeking out extraordinary light conditions, so your eye
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Dramatic light
Subtle light
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Direction of Light The direction in which light falls on the subject plays a significant part in the overall look and mood of a photograph. Although in the outdoors we often have to take the light that we are given at any particular point in time, it is still often possible to “manipulate” the direction of light by changing your position relative to the subject. There are six main types of directional light that landscape photographers need to be aware of, and there are specific ways for dealing with each.
SIDELIGHT Landscapes lit from the side display far more texture and depth than ones lit from the front.
Canon EOS 1DS MKII, 16–35mm lens, 1/13 sec. at f/16, ISO 100
Front lighting This type of lighting was once championed by camera manufacturers when they included basic instructions about how to take a photograph with their equipment: “Stand with your back to the sun…” they proclaimed. While this method does help to stop the sun from shining directly onto the camera lens and causing flare in the image, it is relatively unexciting as a light source. Any shadows from subjects within the frame tend to disappear, leaving the scene looking very two-dimensional, so it is best avoided in most circumstances.
Sidelighting Far more enthralling as a light source, sidelighting helps to sculpt a landscape into three dimensions. The shadows from anything within the scene are all visible and cut across the image, adding visual depth clues. It adds texture to subjects, too, bringing out intricate patterns in rocks, trees, terrain, etc. This is the
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light that you want to seek out most often, especially at the start and end of the day, when the colors in the landscape are at their most saturated, and the shadows are at their longest and most dynamic. Exposing for this type of light is slightly more difficult, because the light goes from bright highlight to dark shadow. It is usually best to opt for an exposure that sits somewhere between these two extremes, while ensuring not to blow the highlights.
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Backlighting If you want to add an instant sense of artiness to your photographs, then try photographing them with backlighting. It is an extreme and abstract type of light that is seldom used by most photographers, so your images will have more of a unique look if you do use it. There are several pitfalls to avoid with backlighting, including incorrect exposure—you really don’t want to be using your camera in automatic
DRAMA IN THE FOREST Backlit leaves add real impact to forest shots.
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AVOID SUN FLARE By letting the sun “clip” around the edge of an object, you reduce the chance of sun flares. Canon EOS 1DS MKII, 16–35mm lens, 1/100 sec. at f/18, ISO 100
mode for these shots—and distracting sun flares appearing in the final image. There are no hard-and-fast rules for getting the exposure right with such extreme light, so it is always worth bracketing your shots (shooting several different exposures) so that you can pick the best one later. To avoid flare, try to find something in the scene, such as a tree, to block the sunlight from directly hitting the lens. If you use a small aperture, such as f/16 or f/22, and carefully place the sun so that it just creeps around an edge of an object, you can create an effective and atmospheric sunburst in the image. Backlighting can also add an attractive halo of light to the rim of a soft-edged object and, of course, bring translucent objects, such as leaves, to life. It can also bring to life mist and fog lying over the landscape. Be warned, though: looking directly at the sun can damage your eyesight, so take precautions.
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Diffused lighting You may be forgiven for thinking that overcast days are not the best friends of landscape photographers. For big sweeping landscapes that might well be true, but the soft diffused light that falls through the clouds can be the best light for more intimate photographs of the landscape and the fine detail that makes it up. The reduced range of light means that digital camera sensors can record the full range of tones in the scene, and it also helps to saturate colors. If the day is bright and overcast, and the prospects of dramatic light are low, then either head into the forest, which works particularly well in diffused light, or turn your eyes downward and search for more abstract images of the landscape.
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OVERCAST DAYS Light grey clouds act as a huge lighting softbox, making overcast days ideal for shooting detail. Canon EOS 1DS MKII, 70–200mm lens, 1/5 sec. at f/25, ISO 100
UNDER THE CANOPY Forests with thick canopies also offer excellent diffused lighting conditions. It is perfect for teasing out subtle hues from subjects.
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Overhead lighting When the sun is directly overhead, around midday, it is more difficult to find landscape subjects that work well. The shadows cast are harsh and the highlights are too bright for most scenes. It’s a good time to avoid, if you can, but if you are in a situation where you have to be shooting at this time of day, then it is better to look for more shaded scenes, such as those found in dense forest, and try to avoid including the sky in the frame. It really is an ideal time to take a break for lunch and to plan your activities for later in the day once the sun descends in the sky.
STAY A WHILE Once the sun sets, don’t rush home. Digital cameras produce great in results in low light.
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Low light The advent of digital SLR cameras that can produce exceptional image quality at high ISO settings has opened up a whole new period of the day for shooting photographs. Once the sun has gone down and until it rises again the next morning, there is an ethereal and relatively unexplored realm awaiting landscape photographers. The best things are that because it is a fairly new opportunity, there are relatively few competing images out there and the viewing public have not had a chance to become jaded by them—all good news if you intend to try selling your images. Twilight, both at dusk and dawn, is a particularly magical light in which to shoot photographs, since the sun’s light from below the horizon illuminates the sky, which in turn reflects light onto the landscape.
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Dawn
Rise and shine
This is, without doubt, my favorite time of day to be out taking landscape photographs. The quality of the light and the clarity of the air can be extraordinary, in part due to the lack of dust in the atmosphere after everybody has been sleeping rather than going about their daily business. Most other people still are wrapped up snugly in their beds, so there is an excellent chance that you will be the only person watching the new day arrive, which is guaranteed to lift the soul.
Despite being such a glorious time to be out, there is no denying that it can be a struggle to leave bed in the dark, gather your kit, and head out the door, but I can genuinely say that once I have got up, assessed the weather conditions, and decided to go, I have never once regretted that decision, even if the photographic results aren’t anything to shout about. It is just a wonderful time to commune with Mother Nature.
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REFLECTED LIGHT OF DAWN Before the sun rises, there is a period of up to an hour where the landscape is lit solely by reflected light from the sky.
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Dawn light On the whole, dawn light tends to be slightly cooler than sunset light, again due to the lack of dust in the air; the dust allows the transmission of red light, but blocks some of the blue light. Dawn light is still significantly warmer than the light you get around midday, though. The range of light at this time of day is quite limited, especially as the first light of dawn emerges. So, you should be able to shoot without a neutraldensity graduated filter for a while. As soon as the sky starts to lighten more, the range of light
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will quickly increase, so you will need to use filters to help balance the light in the scene if you want to retain some details in the shadow areas. Your eyes will naturally try to counter the temperature of the light in any scene, so you may find colors showing on your final image that you didn’t think were there. If you want to catch the dawn, then you will need to be in position around one hour before the sunrise time. Dusk can last for anything up to an hour or so after sunset.
INCREASING DRAMA As the sun nears the horizon before rising, the sky can take on a stunning range of warmer hues if there is mid-level cloud.
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Sunrise Although most photographers skip the dawn shoot, there will be many who will make the effort to get out of bed and to a location in time for sunrise. The first rays breaking the horizon have held a fascination for humans dating right back to our first presence on the planet, and the allure of them has not dwindled since. It is the return of life, and many photographers hope to capture at least a few stunning sunrise images in any given year.
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One of the most exciting challenges about shooting sunrises for a landscape photographer is the fact that usually it all happens very quickly. One moment the sun just peeks above the horizon, but within minutes it can be high in the sky, where it rapidly loses its warming soft light qualities. So, be prepared a while before the sunrise time, and be ready to react to the changing light situation. It’s not good to be reaching for your neutral-density graduated filters and trying to screw in the filter holder once the sun has broken cover.
THINK FAST, ACT FASTER Once the sun breaks the horizon there is no time to waste. You need to make rapid final adjustments to your viewpoint and composition, then keep shooting as it rises.
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Sunrise light The light at sunrise tends to be slightly cooler than that at sunset, due to the lack of dust in the atmosphere and the often low wind conditions first thing in the morning (it is the sun being up that starts to heat the land and drive the convection currents). The advantage of all this is that the air quality is usually better, too, giving crystal clarity over far-reaching landscapes. It is usually better if there is some level of cloud in the sky to get the best results, since a truly clear sky will give you very little to work with in the upper parts of your image. Mid-level clouds are usually the best for reflecting light. Even if, upon first inspection, the day appears to be very cloudy, it is still worth taking a chance on heading out, since it is amazing how many times there is a small, clear band of sky right next to the horizon when the sun rises. The light may only last for a few brief moments, but if it does break through in these conditions, then you could be in for a treat, with fiery red and orange clouds to include in your composition. The light contrast is extreme as the sun rises, with the sky being far brighter than the land, so it is a good idea to seek out any landforms, such as trees, mountains, rocky pinnacles, etc, that can act as bold silhouettes against the sky to add interest to the composition.
Avoiding lens flare One of the technical difficulties with shooting sunrise (or sunset) is that to have the sun in the frame means that there is a greater risk of lens flare appearing in the final image.
CRYSTAL CLEAR AIR With less dust in the air, early light has a crisp quality that is hard to match later in the day. Canon EOS Minolta Dynax 9, 14mm lens, exposure unrecorded
Whether this makes or breaks the photo is down to your own subjective interpretation, but if there is significant sun flare, then the image will almost certainly fail. If you are using large neutral-density graduated filters, then it will be impossible to also use your lens hood, so you have to improvise to shade your lens when possible. You can use your hand or a hat, or invest in one of the commercially available antiflare tools, such as the Flare Buster. You can also try taking your images as soon as the sun edges above the horizon, before its full glare comes into play.
SUNRISE/SUNSET CALCULATORS It is important to plan your shoot around the sunrise and sunset time, and the best way to do this is to use a sunrise/sunset calculator. There are several available online, including www.sunrisesunset.com.
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Midday The light at midday is the least satisfactory of all the possible conditions for landscape photographers, but if you are out in the midday sun and want or need still to take photographs, then there are some simple ways by which you can help ensure that you get the best images from a relatively bad situation.
STRONG DESIGN When the light conditions are poor, it is more important to emphasize design elements.
Canon EOS 1DS MKII, 70–200mm lens, 1/50 sec. at f/20, ISO 100
Find great subjects Great pictures are usually made with great light, but if the light isn’t playing ball, then you need to really search out some fascinating subjects to compensate for this as far as possible. With landscapes, you want to find something very interesting to put in the foreground and include some strong depth cue graphics, such as leading lines like rivers or twisty country roads. It is also quite astounding what a good cloud can do to command attention in an image, so if you happen to be shooting a landscape with lovely fluffs of cumulus clouds drifting across a blue sky or the billowing masses of a cumulonimbus storm cloud brewing over a horizon, then you might still get some “wows” when you show your midday images.
SAVED BY THE CLOUDS (right) Cumulus clouds can save a midday landscape image. Their striking shapes distract from the poor light.
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Sunset This is the big money shot for many landscape photographers, whether complete amateur or consummate professional. It is by far the most popular landscape subject in the world. So, what makes it so special? Well, the first thing is that it is achievable: there is no unsociable predawn start to capture the sunset, and it can be added on at the end of any day, as long as you don’t mind delaying dinner a little at times. It is also often the most spectacular time of day for photography, since the accumulated dust in the atmosphere combines with the raking, warm low light of the sun to produce some truly stunning skyscapes and reflected light to include in your image. At some of the world’s most famous landscape photography spots, sunset can see an entire legion of photographers standing shoulder to shoulder with their tripods vying for space on the ground. Even if you find yourself in this sort of situation, keep your creative thinking hat on and you may still come up with a fairly original idea for a photograph of the scene.
Sunset light The time around sunset provides the warmest light of the entire day, wrapping the land, sea, and sky in swathes of orange, red, and pink. Because of the matter in the air, it is rare to have great clarity of light at this end of the day, so quite often more intimate scenes work better than truly grand sweeping vistas.
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The magic moment As the sun progresses toward the horizon, it is often difficult to determine the optimum time for shooting your photographs. It is advisable to carry enough memory cards with you so that you are not limited in what you capture by the availability of storage space. If you do have to ration your shooting, then try to tune your eyes into the subtly changing light conditions: are the clouds above your head getting pinker or more gray, does it look like there is thicker cloud right on the horizon that may curtail the sunset light? By really observing closely, you can narrow the window in which you know the light is at or near its best. Often the best sunset light conditions will occur 10–20 minutes prior to the sun getting to the horizon, where it can start to lose its intensity, so don’t wait until the final moments to start taking pictures. As with sunrise, you need to be aware of the potential problems caused by the sun flaring on your lens, though when the sun is shining through a thick dust layer (when it can appear like a giant, red, welldefined orb), this will significantly reduce the chances of your image suffering from flare.
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Minolta Dynax 9, 100–300mm lens, exposure unrecorded
IN THE SPOTLIGHT An exciting effect of the sun setting is that it starts to spotlight parts of the landscape. This can be especially dramatic in the mountains.
Canon EOS 1DS MKII, 70–200mm lens, 1/6 sec. at f/22, ISO 100
SUN SHIELD If there is a band of thin cloud on the horizon, it can make a lovely diffuser for the red light of the sun.
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Twilight There are few more startling scenes in landscape photography than watching the mass exodus of tripod-toting photographers the moment the sun sets at a popular location. I recall an evening I spent at the Grand Canyon, when it seemed there was barely a spare vantage point to be had as the sun headed toward the top of the cliff edge and the clatter of shutters going off was enough to scare birds from a nearby tree. Then, within a matter of minutes of the sun disappearing from view, I was pretty much alone on the rim of one of the world’s greatest landscapes. I wasn’t complaining that they had left me with an almost “private viewing” of this stunning place, but I was equally mystified as to why more didn’t stay for longer, especially as many seemed to be using professional-level camera gear. As the pale orange sky turned into a deeper purple, I kept firing off shots until the camera was starting to record far more detail than I could discern with my naked eye. It was enthralling, and the resulting images are among some of the favorites that I have ever taken, not least because I know they were fairly unique from that day at the canyon.
Glorious nature
some of the most extraordinarily subtle light that Mother Nature can conjure. It is the time when your neutral-density graduated filters can help to make a landscape photo explode into life, with a richness of tones that are often missing at any other time of the day. The long exposures needed during twilight also mean that you can easily turn any moving elements in the scene, such as leaves on trees, rivers, or the sea, into a milky, artistic blur.
VOLCANIC OPPORTUNITIES If you spot abnormally red sunsets, thin striated clouds, or a deepening of the purple light in a twilight sky, then there is a good chance that this is due to volcanic activity somewhere in the world. So, if you hear on the news that there has been a major eruption somewhere, such as that at the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland in 2010, then seize the moment, and head out with your camera and tripod to capture the extraordinary light conditions that will accompany it. The volcanic matter can spread around the globe, so you don’t have to wait for an eruption close to home.
Ask the savviest landscape photographers to name their favorite light for shooting images, and most will say “twilight.” For those with the patience to wait, the period of 30 minutes to an hour after the sun sets offers a glorious palette of saturated colors, more balanced light, and
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Canon EOS 1DS MKII, 70–200mm lens, 20 sec. at f/13, ISO 100
TRIPODS RULE Shooting at twilight needs long exposure times, so shooting without a tripod is virtually impossible.
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BEYOND HUMAN VISION Modern DSLR cameras are capable of recording colour and detail in low light conditions where even our eyes can’t make things out.
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Twilight
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Night Once all of the sun’s light has disappeared from the landscape and the only light on offer is the ethereal, silvery light of the moon or the stars, it takes a far more committed approach to get out there and start taking photographs. In the days of film, night photography was very much the preserve of the few who knew how to deal with the extended exposures needed (if you haven’t come across “reciprocity failure,” then look it up on the web to see what you were missing out on!) and the practicalities of keeping camera gear working in often testing temperatures. Now, with digital SLRs providing astounding low-ight shooting capabilities at high ISO ratings, the night realm has become a more inviting place to linger. From capturing a landscape bathed in the light of the moon to recording spiralling star trails, there are many exciting subjects for those willing to venture out in the dark. You will need a remote release cord, so that you can trigger the camera without touching it and lock the shutter open in the Bulb setting, a very stable tripod, and a fully charged battery to ensure that your camera doesn’t shut down halfway though the energy-sapping long exposures needed at night. Even the best pro digital cameras will struggle to take an exposure lasting much more than a couple of hours. You also need to be careful about your camera gear suffering from the effects of condensation if the temperature of the air changes substantially during the night.
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Moonlight On a clear night at or close to full moon, there will be ample light for modern DSLR cameras to work with. With any night exposures, it is good if you can find strong foreground subjects that will silhouette against the sky to add interest. If you want to try adding another layer of creativity, then take a powerful flashlight and “paint” in the foreground objects in your composition with its light. If you want to take photos of the moon itself, then be aware that exposures that are longer than about six seconds will suffer from the moon starting to blur due to its movement across the night sky.
Star trails As the Earth rotates, the stars appear to rotate around the night sky, and it is possible, using a very long exposure, to record this perceived movement as star trails, or streaks, in an image. The most dramatic examples of this are often where the pole star is placed in the frame and the star trails then create circles in the photograph. The exposures you need to record the trails vary, from around 10 minutes for short trails to several hours for a full circle of star trails. You need a particularly dark night to succeed with star trail photos; the light of even a half moon will wash out the scene in a very long exposure.
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ADVANTAGE FILM? Despite the huge technological leaps forward made by manufacturers of digital cameras, there is still a valid argument for using slide film for night photography. Digital cameras do work extremely well at high ISO settings, but the long exposures needed for capturing images at night can still lead to unacceptable or undesirable levels of noise in the final photograph. This is due to the heat generated in the image sensor while it is active. Film, of course, does not suffer from heating up when it is being exposed, though it does suffer from increased noise at higher ISO ratings. It is worth experimenting with both to see which works best for your own particular type of night photography.
Canon EOS 1DS MKII, 24–70mm lens, 30 sec. at f/3.5, ISO 400
LIGHT PAINTING Use a powerful flashlight to “paint in” foreground elements in night photos. Move the flashlight slowly and evenly over the subjects.
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COLOR
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Color If light is the crucial factor in making a landscape photograph work, then color is a factor that can help turn it from a good photo into a powerful image that is capable of eliciting an emotional response.
One of the fundamental building blocks of your color knowledge is the color wheel, a simple
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The color wheel
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Although it is often best to go with your intuition when deciding what to include and exclude from a composition, it is well worth spending some time looking at and getting to grips with color theory: about how colors work, how they work together, and how humans perceive colors and their associated messages about mood. One thing about nature is that chaos often reigns, so although the theory can provide ideal scenarios for color combinations and quantities in your images, the reality on the ground is almost always going to be more complex. The landscape photographer’s challenge is to interpret, decipher, and gather all these colors together into a composition that works at the graphic level.
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Color theory
diagram representing the main colors of the spectrum and how they relate to each other. It gives a simple insight into why some photos that are based on color work and some don’t. Sir Isaac Newton first created a graphic circle to illustrate color relationships in 1666, and since then it has become a heavily debated subject. In it simplest form, the color circle just shows the primary colors—red, yellow, and blue—as “pie segments” of the circle (below). These are not that helpful for photographers, but once you start to add the secondary and then the tertiary colors to the circle, then it starts to become far more interesting. The color combinations can either be harmonious (adjacent on the wheel) or complementary (opposite), and applying this RED knowledge to your landscape subjects can help to heighten the reaction and engagement that viewers will have with your photos. YE
Nature is a smorgasbord of colors, and although the obvious, punchy colors demand much attention, there is far more to capturing color skilfully and knowledgeably when it comes to producing compelling landscape photographs.
NATURE’S BEST (Right) Nature has an uncanny ability to produce landscapes with stunning colors that match color theory!
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NEED GENERIC FLASH IMAGE
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Perceiving color Human perception of color is based not only on the physics of how our visual system is “hard wired,” but also on the contexts we place on colors, the causes of which stretch all the way from the present day back through our entire existence as a species. For example, red is a color very much associated with danger, which stems from our early encounters with dangerous foods and creatures in our world. RED EQUALS DANGER The red poppies of the Somme, in France, reflect the danger the soldiers faced there during the First World War.
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What you see is not what you get Our brains are wonderfully powerful and will do their utmost to normalize things for us to help our understanding of the world, and this applies to our vision as well. It will trick us into seeing things that do or don’t exist, purely to make things seem normal. If you have ever taken a photograph inside your house and then wondered why the image that comes out of your camera is all tinged with orange, then your brain has been tricking you, too. The tungsten light bulbs that burn in most homes emit a warm, orange light, but when we are in the house our visual system modifies this view to make it seem as though we are seeing the scene under standard, nontainted light conditions. The same applies to landscape photos taken when color casts are present in the light, such as the blue shadow areas that you find when taking images around midday, or the warm light of sunrise and sunset. We see some of this warmth in reality, but it seems accentuated in our images of the same scenes. This phenomenon is known as the issue of constancy: our visual system’s endless campaign to adjust what we see to make it easier and faster for the brain to process what is going on around us, to reduce our confusion. So, be warned: the colors that we see in our final photographs will almost always differ from what we thought we were seeing live on location. As with most things, however, the more you practice, the more chance you will have of predicting what the differences will be and then can adjust your photograph accordingly to take account of them.
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Correction filters and white balance There are a couple of tools in the landscape photographer’s kit that can help to balance out the difference between what we see with our own eyes and what the camera records on the image. We can attach color correction filters to the front of the lens to counter whatever color cast the light conditions are throwing up: so a warming filter, such as one from the 81 series, to eradicate blue casts in shadow areas when shooting around midday, or blue filters to balance the warm light encountered at the start and end of the day. For photographers using digital cameras,
Canon EOS 1DS MKII, 24–70mm lens, 1/50 sec. at f/11, ISO 100
there is also the option of changing the white balance of the image, either in-camera if you are shooting in JPEG format or in post-processing software if you are shooting RAW format. It is good to remember, though, that just because it is possible to counter color casts caused by natural light, it may not always be desirable to do so from an artistic point of view. We have become very skilled at interpreting photographs as a subjective representation of reality, so keeping those saturated warm color casts of sunrise and sunset, for instance, may actually help people to interpret the image in a way that evokes what it was like to actually be there.
WARM IN THE RAW A major benefit of shooting in RAW format is that you can easily change the colour balance later. This shot had a cool cast that needed to be warmed up in post-processing.
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Using single color
Warm colors
Although there are usually an abundance of colors in any one landscape scene, it is often possible to isolate or almost isolate a subject based on a single color. This is a sure way to create bold and simple images that command attention, even if they lack some subsequent visual depth to keep a viewer engaged with the image for a long period of time. Because of this, when single color images are printed, they are often good background images, useful for adding a rapidly assimilated mood to an environment, such as a room in your house, an office, or a café. You have to search hard for some colours in nature, but others will be around you almost everywhere you go. The important thing is to be alert for them.
Red
Canon EOS 1DS MKII, 70–200mm lens, 1/500 sec. at f/5.6, ISO 100
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This is one of the boldest colors to seek out in a landscape; it may, for example, come in the form of berries on a tree or poppies swaying in a field. It isn’t the most prevalent of colors in nature, but it does exert a great pull on a viewer’s eye, so if you can isolate a red subject for an abstract image, then it will definitely jump out at you when you look through your images later. Red is associated with danger, blood, daring, energy, and boldness, and can also be used to illustrate power and vitality. It commands great visual attention, so you need to be careful how you use it, because if it isn’t the subject of the photograph, it can easily distract from the true subject.
POPPY FIELDS There are few things as alluring to landscape photographers as a field full of poppies. The red petals complement the green grasses. Get down low to fill the frame with as much red as possible.
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Orange DEMANDING YELLOW Yellow is so bright that you can have slightly less of it in the frame and it still dominates.
You would be hard pressed to be a landscape photographer and not encounter the color orange in nature on a regular basis. From the orange rocks of Utah and the blaze of a wild bushfire to the warm orange glow of the setting sun, orange is one of the easiest colors to include in your images. It also happens to be one of the most comforting, although also it can be used to add the feel of energy or serenity, depending on the brightness of the orange you encounter. UTAH ROCKS! There are few better places on the planet than Utah, USA, for indulging in shooting orange.
Yellow Pow! Photographs based on yellow subjects will simply leap out at you. It is the brightest of all colors and is representative, among other things, of health, sunshine, happiness, and playfulness. It is vibrant and emotionally stimulating, and thankfully it is relatively easy to find occurring in nature. From vast swathes of sunflowers or fields of rape to the gentle nodding daffodils of spring, or even the sun itself, there are plenty of inspiring examples of yellow to focus on. Be aware, though, that the visual power of yellow will overpower any other color (except white) in an image, so it needs to be handled with caution and placed carefully in the frame.
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Cool colors Blue This is one of the most prevalent colors in nature, thanks to the sky, sea, and ice, plus a host of obliging flowers. It is a quiet, peaceful color that can be used to infer serenity, soulfulness, or loneliness, for example, but is also the color most associated with cold. So, it is useful for communicating winter conditions, such as when taking photographs of an icebound lake. While a strong blue cast is not always what you want in your images, it can be useful if you are attempting to show any of the concepts mentioned above, so think carefully about the subject matter of the image before trying to remove a blue cast, either with the use of warming filters or in post-processing. It is quite bold when used on its own in an image, but recedes markedly if combined with the more dominant red or yellow.
create images dominated by green, especially if you head into a forest or woodland during spring and summer when the trees are swathed in leaves.
GOT THE BLUES Glaciers and their crevasses, like this one in Patagonia, are ideal locations for blue images.
Minolta Dynax 9, 14mm lens, exposure unrecorded
Green This is the granddaddy of nature’s colors, and it is hard to avoid for a landscape photographer. Green, of course, is directly associated with the concept of nature (just look at how many companies employ green in their logos to try to make them seem more eco friendly!), but it can also be used to suggest growth, renewal, youth, health, and wellbeing. It is usually fairly easy to ABUNDANT GREEN (right) You would be hard pressed to spend a day outdoors without seeing green. The elevated vantage point makes filling the frame with the fields far easier.
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Using complementary colors With nature being so complex, it is relatively rare to find scenes where just one color dominates. The challenge with most scenes is to find compositions that use the powerful tool that is color, but combine the various colors present in an intelligent way that adds to the impact of the final image, rather than detracting from it.
Opposites attract Complementary colors are those that sit opposite each other on the color wheel, so green lies opposite red, blue lies opposite orange, and yellow is opposite violet. These colors readily appear in nature: the red and green of berries on a leafy tree or poppies in a grassy field; blue and orange can be found in the sky and rocks, or the sky and the sea; while yellow and violet are to be seen together in many flowers. The reason that we find these color combinations attractive is again partly due to
our brain wanting to bring order to our chaotic world. If you stare at a red apple for a minute or two and then look straight at a white piece of paper, you momentarily see a green apple on the paper. This illusion is caused by our visual system trying to balance the red by adding green to the scene in an attempt to obtain a mid-gray level of brightness. If you want to test your vision further with some optical color illusions, then just do a quick search online for them; there are many to be found.
BLUE SKY DAY Complementary colours, such as blue and orange, are naturally attractive to the eye.
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Balancing brightness Although featuring these complementary colors in roughly equal quantities in an image can be successful, the German poet J.W. von Goethe first expounded the idea that they are likely to appear more attractive when the quantities of each are balanced relative to the brightness of the colors themselves. For this theory to work in practice, however, it does demand a high level of purity in the colors, which is not that common in the natural world, but, having said that, it is worth bearing in mind the
Canon EOS 1DS MKII, 70–200mm lens, 1/5 sec. at f/25, ISO 100
brightness of the colors when putting together a composition. For example, orange is a lot brighter than blue, so to maintain balance in an image containing both, it is a good idea to include around a third orange and two-thirds blue. Red and green are fairly even in brightness, so aim to divide the space in the frame equally between the two. On the other hand, yellow is far brighter than violet, so the ratio with these colors needs to be closer to 1:5 to ensure the yellow doesn’t overwhelm the violet.
FINDING VISUAL BALANCE Once you have found complementary colors to shoot, you need to consider how much of each color you need to create balance. Roughly one-third orange and two-thirds blue is just one example.
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Surrounding colors Being aware of how to balance complementary colors in an image is important, but the surrounding colors in the scene can also have a big impact on how the colors are perceived. This is quite a complex part of color theory, but it is well worth exploring in a little more detail. If red is surrounded by black, then the red looks bright and punchy, but it appears somewhat duller when surrounded by white. When placed among blue-green subjects, red
starts to look more active and dynamic, and the edges where the colors meet can appear to vibrate due to the visual tension between them. However, place something red among a sea of orange subjects and the red loses much of its liveliness. Similar effects can be seen with any color combination, so it pays to be aware of how the relative saturation and warmth or coolness of the hues can play a big part in how much visual attention a color commands in a landscape photo.
POSITIONING COLORS Once you have wrapped your head around the role that color plays in an image and how to assess the impact of the combination of colors included in a composition, the next step is consciously and carefully to place those colors in the frame. The bright colors, yellow and red, draw much attention, so if any subjects are included that feature these colors, then you need to decide whether these bright objects are part of, or are the main subject of the image. If they are, then you need to place those bright subjects in the most prominent parts of the composition, such as on the horizontal and vertical junctions invoked by the rule of thirds. If the bright objects are not the main subject of the image, then you need to try to minimize their impact by either placing them in the less interesting parts of the frame, such as the bottom left-hand corner, or simply excluding them altogether if no satisfactory compromise can be found.
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If you are including a certain color in the photo to represent a concept, then you need to work out how that concept relates to the main subject and how they can be arranged to maximize the viewer’s understanding of that relationship. For instance, if you are taking a photograph of a river and surrounding forest to illustrate the concepts of calm and nature, then is the main thrust of the photograph the calm or the nature? Once that question has been answered, it is easier to decide how much of the frame will be taken up by the river (calm) and how much by the forest (nature).
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Using analogous colors Far from the drama of the world of complementary colors lies the more serene realm of analogous colors—those colors that sit next to each other on a 12-segment color wheel. The subtly different analogous colors, such as yellow-green, yellow, and yelloworange, blend together easily to create images that are pleasing to the eye, although you have to take care not to let that drift into boring! Because these colors are more subtle, they may take a fair bit of searching for in a landscape. They are often within relatively small areas, or even on the same object, such as a tree trunk or in the leaves of a plant. Some other appealing analogous color combinations that you will be able to find quite readily in a landscape are those around red,
red-orange, and orange, and of course green, green-yellow, and green-blue. As with the complementary colors, it is important to bear in mind the relative brightness of each of the analogous colors you are wanting to include, and to ensure that the balance of the brightness levels is controlled as much as possible to assist the viewer in quickly identifying the main subject of the photograph. For example, if the focus of your image is the intricate detail on a green leaf, but there are some green-yellow flower buds in the background, the buds will naturally command more attention because of the extra brightness of the yellow in their color. To get around this, you might decide to recompose the image so that the buds are hidden, or perhaps to use a shallower depth of field to render the buds more blurred.
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CHAPTER 7
CREATIVITY
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Be creative Once you have a good command of landscape photography fundamentals, you can start to spread your wings by playing with the rules and the norms of how landscapes are represented. Although photography seems like a very “true to life” form of art, in reality it is no less subjective than painting or drawing. By opening up your mind to explore the moods and nuances of the landscape, and tapping into your own emotional connection and reaction to it, you can begin to take your images beyond the literal. There are many ways in which you can do this, limited only by your imagination, but this chapter will provide a few techniques to get you started.
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Slow shutter speeds Of all the photography genres, landscape photography can sometimes appear to be one of the least dynamic. However, there are many elements in a landscape that will be on the move, and using slow shutter speeds to emphasize these can help introduce a feeling of movement into an image. PUSHING THE LIMITS This shot of a sea kayaker in Baja California used a slow shutter speed to blur the Sea of Cortez. The kayaker stayed very still!
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Two of the most common moving elements in the landscape are rivers and the sea, both of which provide great opportunities for creating very arty images. The long exposure time allows the details of the water to be lost in a soft, milky blur, which adds a surreal and slightly spiritual feeling to the image. The key to making the blur really work is to finely judge the exposure time: too long, and the blur becomes so ephemeral in appearance that it loses impact; too short, and the details of the water become a distraction. There are no hard-and-fast rules about the shutter speed to use because it depends very much on how rapidly the water is moving and its direction of movement relative to the camera sensor plane, so take the trouble to experiment with different speeds to determine which of them works best. For best results, it is good to have a contrasting element in the scene for the movement of the water, so try to find a rock or fallen tree branch, or use the riverbanks themselves, to provide something still in the foreground of the composition. If you are photographing the movement of waves on a beach, then try to time your exposure so that it captures the outward flow, rather than the inward flow, if you want to get interesting water patterns in the sand. Also, be aware if you are using your tripod, that the water washing around the tripod legs can cause it to become unstable. Other good moving subjects to consider including in an image are long grasses or crops swaying in the wind. Maram grass growing on sand dunes at the coast can look particularly
effective when there is a breeze blowing it around. If you happen to be travelling somewhere that experiences volcanic activity, then the eruptions of geysers can look very dramatic when photographed using a slow shutter speed. DIRECTION OF TRAVEL Blur is affected by direction of the moving elements. Things that travel across the camera blur more readily. Canon EOS 1DS MKII, 70–200mm lens, 1/30 sec. at f/9, ISO 200
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Panning Classic landscape photography theory emphasizes how crucial it is to keep the camera absolutely still, normally by using a heavyweight tripod. Creative thinkers, though, have started to play around with the concept of deliberately moving the camera to create swishing interpretations of the landscape and its elements. To try your hand at panning the camera during an exposure, you can either simply handhold the camera or, if you want a little more control over the direction of the pan, you can mount it on a tripod and release the tripod adjustment levers so that it is free to move in one plane. Both techniques are valid, so it is worth trying them both to see if you prefer one over the other. You can try panning with just about any landscape subject matter, though the trees in a forest, and the sea and sky have become popular aspects to work with. Again, there are no hard-and-fast rules about what shutter speed to use, as it depends on how you want the image to look and also how quickly you pan the camera, but try starting out with a shutter speed of about half to one second. The resulting images are usually more successful if you can limit the movement in the panning motion to just one plane (hence you may find it easier to mount the camera on a tripod).
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High dynamic range photography This is a new kid on the landscape photography block and very much a child of the digital age. HDR, as it is known, is a technique where you take several images of exactly the same scene, each being exposed to optimize the highlights, midtones, or shadows. A good sequence for many scenes is to shoot exposures at 0EV, +2EV, and -2EV based on the camera’s matrix metering exposure for the scene (the easiest way to do this is to use aperture priority mode and dial in the
IMAGE 1 – SHADOWS This image was exposed to bring out the maximum detail in the shadow areas, in the foreground grass, and the water.
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under- and overexposure). These images are then blended together in HDR software, and the best exposure for each of the three areas is allowed to show through, thus expanding the dynamic range of light that can be seen in the final image, over and above what a digital camera is capable of capturing in a single exposure. One of the keys to a successful HDR image is learning to use the software to obtain subtle results; far too often, the images look garish and slightly comic book in style, especially when the range of light shown exceeds even what we can see with our own eyes.
IMAGE 2 – HIGHLIGHTS The second image was produced to get the best details out of the sky. The shadow areas are too dark in this one.
HDR SOFTWARE There are several popular stand-alone HDR software options available, while Adobe Photoshop can also create them. Stand-alone software includes: Photomatix—www.hdrsoft.com easyHDR—www.easyhdr.com Adobe Photoshop—www.adobe.com Artizen HDR—www. supportingcomputers.net
IMAGE 3 –FINAL HDR IMAGE The final combined HDR image has good detail in both the shadows and the highlights, without looking too garish.
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Creating panoramas If you have ever taken a photo of a sweeping vista and rued the fact that you couldn’t fit it all into the frame, then the wonderful world of panorama photography is most definitely for you. In the days of film, shooting panoramic images was really only open to those who could afford expensive panoramic cameras, but digital imaging and the powerful software that has become increasingly affordable now make it open to the masses. It’s not even technically challenging any more. With some popular digital cameras now, you can even create panoramas in-camera by simply switching to panoramic mode, taking three or more images of the scene so that they overlap slightly and, hey presto, the camera’s software will miraculously analyze the images and stitch them together to create a perfect panorama. It is quite breathtaking to see. For those photographers who want to do things at a higher level or who do not own a camera with the panoramic facility built in, there are plenty of software options for doing it
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yourself. They all follow much the same pattern: shoot a series of overlapping images, load them into the software, press a button, and then wait for the software to do its magic. For those wanting to take it to extremes, you can shoot images not just horizontally, but also vertically too, and then stitch all of them together to create a massive final image. With some software, you can even go “full circle,” so to speak, and create 360-degree virtual images.
PANORAMA SOFTWARE These are just some of the software packages available that allow you to stitch your images together to make panoramic photographs: Adobe Photoshop—www.adobe.com PTGui—www.ptgui.com PanaVue Image Assembler—www. panavue.com Panorama Maker—www.arcsoft.com
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LEFT-HAND SIDE This is the first of a series of five overlapping images that went into creating the stitched panorama.
RIGHT-HAND SIDE This is the final image in the sequence. Note the loss of sky in the final panorama due to the need to crop it.
FINAL PANORAMA The final panorama (below) was stitched together in Photoshop. It gives a lovely view of the valley and peaks.
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Abstract landscapes Landscape photographs are generally composed to include as much of the big view as can be fitted in, but there is much to be gained from leaving out a lot of the context of the scene, too. Zoom in on the details of a landscape to take some abstract photos, and you will find that often “less is more” when it comes to making landscape photos with visual impact. When faced with a big scene, train your mind to start seeking out potential mini-scenes within it. These could be the layered ridges of a distant mountain range, the way the light falls across a particular part of a field, or the silhouettes of trees upon otherwise open moorland. To discover abstract scenes within big landscapes often requires you to find a higher vantage point, so look around for anything that may help you climb higher: a nearby hill, a forest fire watchtower, or a cliff overlooking a coastal bay. Once you reach your vantage point, mount a telephoto zoom lens, if you have one, onto your camera and spend some time scouring the scene with it to see what might work as an abstract image. You are not looking for great depth to these images, since they are often all about simple, graphic patterns, colors, or details. Once you have spotted something that works, resist the temptation to quickly fire away a few shots and consider the job done. Composing an abstract image takes just as much care and attention as a broader landscape image. Assess various ways of arranging the patterns or details in the frame, trying both horizontal and vertical formats; does including
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one more mountain ridge add to or detract from the power of the photograph? Keep the framing as tight as possible to avoid distracting elements creeping into the edges of the image.
Why not try…? Flashlight magic One of the classic issues of photographing at night is that the landscape is generally cloaked in darkness while the sky retains at least some of the light reflected from the moon and the stars. An interesting and highly creative way to get around this problem is to “paint” the landscape into the photograph with a flashlight. You will need a fairly powerful flashlight, especially if you are hoping to paint in elements of the landscape that are more than a short distance away. Set the camera exposure time to match what you need to correctly render the stars and sky. Once the shutter is open, carefully play your flashlight over the elements of the landscape that you want to reveal in the photo, such as trees or rocks. Move the flashlight slowly and methodically over the subjects, trying not to pause in any one spot for too long. It takes a little trial and error to perfect the technique, but the results can be both unique and compelling.
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Minolta Dynax, 100–300mm lens, exposure unrecorded
ADDING MEANING This shot was taken in Nepal in the early morning. The light was dramatic on the terraced sloped while the valley walls were shadowed. By zooming in and omitting the sky, it was possible to capture the feeling of this being an imposing, isolated location.
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Locations—Mountains & Hills One of the greatest subjects for landscape photography, mountains and hills offer a dramatic backdrop to any photograph. Capturing images of high places involves not only being a good photographer, but also knowing how to operate and, to some extent, survive in some of the planet’s most inhospitable places.
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Light is right
Plan to be there
Unless you are a professional and need to carry your entire arsenal of photo equipment on every assignment, then the best way to ensure that you maximize your chances of having a fun time while photographing in the mountains is to travel light. One camera body and, at most, a couple of lenses—one wide and one a medium telephoto—should suffice for just about any situation. Tripods are a necessary evil, unfortunately, and if you make regular excursions into the hills and mountains, then it will be well worth investing in a sturdy, lightweight example, such as those made from carbon fiber. This will ease your burden. Although there are many good camera backpacks on the market, I often use a chest mounted camera bag to ensure that the camera is always accessible on the move. When your legs are tired and the weather is challenging, it is amazing how mentally hard it becomes to keep stopping and taking a backpack off to get your camera out.
A difficult thing to get right in the mountains is simply being in the right place at the right time. Your speed on foot is far slower than normal due to the terrain, so you need to allow plenty of leeway in your schedule to make sure that you don’t miss out on the optimum light. To catch sunrise, of course, you will need to set out on your route in the dark, so make sure you take a headlamp. If you have a definite vantage point that you want to reach, try not to be distracted by other photo opportunities en route, unless you have ample time.
Bold compositions There is a plethora of mountain images out there, so if you want to shoot something a little different, try to visualize some very bold compositions that use a medium-to-long telephoto lens to compress the perspective. Wide-angle lenses tend to make mountains look smaller, since the ridges are often placed between the midground and background. By zooming in on the craggy summits, especially when dramatic light is falling on them, you can add drama to the image.
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BOLD COMPOSITIONS Zooming in on a mountain can add real drama to the image and simplify it at the same time.
MOUNTAIN LIGHT Mountains are great placed to find subtle light.
Mountain light The direction and quality of the light is critical for successfully taking mountain photographs. They are subjects on a grand scale, and anything other than dramatic lighting will usually leave the image looking rather flat and dull. Try to find a vantage point that allows the scene before you to be lit by sidelighting, since this will give the greatest feeling of depth to the images. When sidelit, the mountains and valleys between will offer contrasting areas of light and shadow. If there is some mist in the valleys, then you may be lucky to see that mist being lit up by the sun, too, which can produce awe-inspiring photographs. Mistfilled valleys and ridges of mountains can also provide dramatic compositions when they are backlit. In this situation, they become almost monochromatic; a telephoto lens can make the ridgelines appear to be stacked one on top of the other.
ALPENGLOW This is a light phenomenon that can often be seen in the high mountains. As the sun rises or sets, the peaks opposite the sun, especially if they are covered in snow, will be ablaze with warm orange light. However, around 30 minutes before sunrise and after sunset, the mountains can become bathed in a striking purple light, known as alpenglow. As the sky behind the mountains darkens, the purple light appears to strengthen. It is caused by the mountains reflecting the twilight arch. The Expanded Guide
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Locations—Coast Where the land meets the sea has always been one of the favorite locations for landscape photographers. From crashing waves to sweeping, glorious beaches, the coast offers not only beauty, but also drama aplenty. Tide times & weather forecasts Photographing at the coast can be one of the wildest encounters with nature you can have, so you need to be both knowledgeable and prepared to ensure that you make the most of the opportunity and don’t get into any unnecessary danger. Knowing the tide times is crucial, since it allows you to plan to be there when the sea is at its optimum state for getting the shots you are after and at a time when it is safe to get down onto the beach or shoreline. There are two high tides and two low tides per 24-hour period, so if you want to access an area of the beach that is covered by the high tide, then you need to be arriving at your location when it is close to low tide to give yourself a few hours to take photographs. Tide times are available online for many locations. If you want to make coastal images with lots of dramatic impact, you should be heading there when big storms are approaching. As low pressure systems push toward a coastline, they can send huge waves crashing against cliffs and onto beaches. Taking photos of crashing waves often works best from a slightly elevated vantage point, so scout the location to see if there is a rock or clifftop that might give you the desired perspective. Be wary of getting too close
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to the waves themselves, though, since rogue waves, which are bigger than the rest, regularly occur and can swamp spots that seem way above the danger line. COASTAL LIGHT You will often get dramatic light right up to sunset at the coast. This can add real shape and depth to an image. Canon EOS 10D, 105mm lens, 1/45 sec. at f/2.8, ISO 400
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Coastal light There are few scenes more beguiling than being at the coast at sunrise or sunset. The lack of physical obstacles out to sea means the sun’s rays can be seen right up until the moment they drop below the horizon, and the reflective qualities of the water add to those of the sky to produce a very special light that is much heralded by photographers. If you are fortunate enough to have some mid-level cloud overhead, then you could be in for a real treat, since the clouds pick up the first or last light of the day and are often reflected in the wet sand of the beach as the sea ebbs.
Moving water With the sea being so dynamic, it is worth trying to capture this movement in your images by using slow shutter speeds. If you set up your camera close to the water line, try
Canon EOS 1DS MKII, 24–70mm lens, 1/50 sec. at f/18, ISO 100
using a shutter speed between one and two seconds to see how lovely the blur of water can look as it comes and goes through the frame. If you can, find a solitary rock to focus on in the foreground to provide contrast to the movement of the water. Look out, too, for ripples in the sand that can add attractive patterns to your image.
Why not try…? Beachcombing Beaches are superb places for shooting abstract photos of the stones, shells, and even the detritus that is washed up by the tide. If you are photographing stones, try to find or gather together a collection with similar colors, then add one that has a strongly contrasting color to make the focal point of your image.
MOVING WATER More subtle movement in the sea can be recorded by using a shutter speed of around 1/50 sec.
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Locations—Desert It’s hard not to conjure up images of Lawrence of Arabia when you are photographing in a desert, and there is nothing wrong with heading down the slightly romantic route with your images of these riveting sandy landscapes. The classic deserts with huge dunes, such as those in Namibia or around the Sahara region, are a dream destination for many photographers, but getting great photos from them can be more challenging than it first appears.
Sand trap One of the most important things to do when you are in a desert environment is to protect both yourself and your camera gear from the harshness of the elements. In the heat of the midday sun, even the shortest of hikes into the dunes can turn into a struggle if you don’t cover exposed skin with lightweight clothing and wear a good hat. You should always carry water with you, even if you think you are only venturing off for a few minutes. It is easy to underestimate the brutal nature of the dry, hot air, and how quickly it can sap your energy and any moisture in your mouth. There are few environments that endanger your camera gear more than a desert. The slightest of winds can whip the sand into every nook and cranny of your camera and lenses, and you will find yourself listening to the resulting grind for many months or even years
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after you leave. First and foremost, you need to protect the camera in the same way as if you were taking it out in a rainstorm. Ideally, put your camera into a completely sealed bag, such as those made for underwater photography, but a good camera raincover will also do the trick in all but the most ferocious of sandstorms. Whatever you do, don’t be tempted to change lenses with the camera out in the open: fine grains of sand will almost certainly get into the camera body.
Going to extremes One of the other great challenges of photographing in the desert is the extreme and rapidly changing temperatures that occur there. Within an hour of the sun coming up, the temperatures can be unbearably hot, yet within half an hour of the sun going down, you could be forgiven for thinking that you have been transported to the Arctic! You have to be very wary of condensation forming with the changes in temperature, so carry a resealable plastic bag with you to pop your camera into around sunrise and sunset to give it a chance to adjust more slowly to the ambient temperature.
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Desert light Given how hot things get, you will be glad to know that it is fairly futile to try to get great photographs of the desert in the middle of the day, because the light is way too harsh. The prime times to be shooting images are for about half an hour before and after sunrise and sunset, when the low sun sends spectacular rays of light dancing across the desertscape, illuminating all the ripples and indentations in the sand. Again, sidelight is the type you want to seek out, since this gives maximum relief to the scene. Look out for dunes with sharp ridgelines, since the low sun will often illuminate one side of the dune completely while leaving the other side
in shadow, which can produce very dramatic images of the ridge itself.
Why not try…? Patterns in the sand By getting down low and using the endless ripples in the sand as leading lines for your foreground, you can create very bold and dynamic images, especially if you can use the leading lines to direct the viewer’s eye to a major subject in the composition, such as a large dune, a camel, or an oasis.
RIPPLES IN THE SAND Restricting your composition to colors that are low in saturation can have a harmonious effect.
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Locations—Jungle & Forest Jungles and forests harbor some of the least known plants and creatures on our planet, so offer a real wealth of photo opportunities for those photographers dedicated enough to venture into them. They are far from easy environments to work in, though, since the darkness, the complexity of the scene, and, quite often, high levels of humidity provide substantial creative and logistical challenges.
Canon EOS 1DS MKII, 70–200mm lens, 0.4 sec. at f/22, ISO 100
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ORDER FROM CHAOS Bringing simplicity to forest and jungle shots requires a lot of hard work in seeking out simple elements. Dramatic light and some mist can help to separate the many layers in a scene.
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Dark and dank Through a heavy tree canopy, very little light manages to penetrate all the way to the forest floor. While this creates an ideal habitat for a plethora of fascinating creatures and plants, it can make life extremely difficult for the landscape photographer. Shutter speeds will drop alarmingly, and the use of a tripod becomes almost mandatory if you are going to produce images that have any degree of technical quality. The best photos in the forest also tend to be detail ones, because the overall scene is a jumbled mess of tree trunks, branches, and leaves. So, not only will you find yourself with hardly any light to work with, but you are highly
likely to be scrabbling around on the ground, trying to find good subjects, too. If your chosen location is a rainforest or in any of the world’s humid regions, then you will also have to battle the insidious creep of moisture into all your kit. I have only ever lost two camera bodies to the elements, and both of those were on one trip into a Canadian rainforest, where a week of high humidity and relentless rainfall left the cameras in a fatal state of dampness. Even if it isn’t raining, you need to look after your equipment as if that were the case. Keeping the cameras in sealed plastic bags with plenty of sachets of silica gel inside is a must. If you have one, then a completely
DETAILED STUDIES With a forest being so visually busy, it is often best to find close-up details that can help represent the overall feel of the scene.
Canon EOS 1DS MKII, 16–35mm lens, 1/160 sec. at f/3.5, ISO 100
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waterproof camera bag is also worth utilizing. When you have finished shooting for the day, take all your camera gear out of the bag, wipe it down with a cloth, and allow to air dry in a warm, dry environment. Also, avoid changing lenses, if possible, when out in the field.
Order from chaos The biggest challenge in any jungle or forest is being able to “see the trees from the wood,” so to speak. The scene is so complex that you need to train your eye to see beyond the chaos, to find simple graphic patterns and shapes that hint at the expanse of the forest around, but don’t literally show it. The mind is very powerful at adding the missing information to an image, so if you show a few trees and include subtle hints that there are more (such as ensuring the branches of your chosen trees extend beyond the frame), then your brain will calculate that there are probably more trees beyond those included in the photograph. There are no harder creative environments to work in than jungles and forests, so take your time over composing each image and assess the importance, or not, of every element that you include. General snapshots of forests are doomed to fail. Abstract images, such as backlit leaves or bark patterns on the trees, on the other hand, are likely to prove to be winners, as are close-up images of broadleaf plants with the forest receding into softness in the background. Forests are the perfect place to use large apertures to achieve a shallow depth of field, since this starts to simplify the image and the main subject itself.
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Why not try…? Underexpose The dominance of dark tree trunks and generally dark green leaves means that you will need to slightly underexpose your images (either in the field or in postprocessing) in a forest to capture the rich tones within. A setting of about -2/3 to -1 stop usually works for most situations. BACKLIT DRAMA Light diffusing through the forest canopy can provide dramatic backlit shots of the leaves.
Canon EOS 1DS MKII, 24–70mm lens, 1/200 sec. at f/5, ISO 100
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QUIRKY FEATURES Always keep your eyes open for unusual elements in a forest. This bowed tree trunk contrasted nicely with the straight lines around it .
THIS ONE’S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE... BUT IT DOES FIT IN SO WE’LL LEAVE IT
Canon EOS 1DS MKII, 16–35mm lens, 1/40 sec. at f/10, ISO 100
UNUSUAL ANGLES Look for creative angles to shoot from in forests and jungles. It can help to both simplify the image and add visual impact.
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Locations—Rivers & Lakes Ever since Ansel Adams and his contemporaries began shooting the landscapes of the Yosemite Valley and the Merced River, lakes and rivers have been a central focus for landscape photographers. They offer dynamic subject matter, with fast flowing rivers bringing real drama to an image, and some of the most striking visual attractions in nature, almost pure reflections in mirror-still lakes. Freeze or flow? One of the most critical artistic decisions you need to make about shooting lakes and rivers is whether you want the water to be blurred or sharp. Personally, I prefer to retain some detail in the water, so usually opt for faster shutter speeds to freeze the motion, but the blurry, soft water approach has become increasingly popular, too. The key to success with the latter is to make sure that the exposure isn’t so long that the water loses all of its form. Try an
exposure of between ½ and 1 second to start with and work from there. If you want to use extended exposure times during the day, then the only way to achieve them is to use a heavy neutral-density filter, such as the Big Stopper (a 10-stop ND filter) from Lee Filters. If you are photographing reflections in a very still lake, a long exposure time will likely blur the reflection, because although it looks still, there will probably be some currents moving the water in the lake.
STEAMING LAKES This volcanic lake in Dominica is very active and very hot, so a high vantage point was essential!
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Dark reflections One of the most common errors when using neutral-density graduated filters for photographing reflections in lakes is to make the reflection as bright as, or even brighter than the scene being reflected. Our natural vision is geared to expect reflections in water to be darker than the scene being reflected, so if you apply too much of a filter effect, the end result will look instantly unnatural. The quality of the reflection in the water will also improve the farther away it is from your vantage point, because of your viewing angle of the surface of the lake. So, if you are tempted to wade into the lake to get closer to the good reflection, then forget it; the reflection quality will recede as you walk in.
Early birds If you want to maximize your chances of catching a lake when its surface is perfectly still, then you need to get out early in the morning. More often than not, the convection
air currents that are generated once the sun rises and begins heating the ground will create enough breezes and winds to disturb the surface of a lake.
Depth of the river Rivers are one of the best possible depth cues that a landscape photographer can include in an image. When shot looking up or down the river, the banks converge to the vanishing point in the distance, adding an irresistible “third dimension” to the photo. The visual pull of a river is so powerful that you need to be careful that it doesn’t draw the viewer’s eye away from the main subject of the photograph. The river will lead the viewer on a journey through the photograph, and it is important that when they get to the end of that journey that there is something of note for them to see. It doesn’t matter if the river leads them to a castle, a mountain peak, or a dramatic cloud formation; it just needs to lead somewhere interesting.
FOLLOW THE RIVER Rivers provide the perfect leading lines into an image, providing a strong feel of a third dimension.
Canon EOS 1DS MKII, 24–70mm lens, 1/125 sec. at f/16, ISO 100
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Subjects—Waterfalls Few elements of a landscape can rival waterfalls for sheer romanticism and drama. Whether they tumble just a few feet or tens of feet, the dynamism they bring will take anyone’s breath away. Although they are beautiful to behold, waterfalls do present a number of challenges to photographers, ranging from framing them in a meaningful and balanced way to simply protecting the camera gear from the inevitable spray that drenches everything within reach.
A balanced fall Because waterfalls tend to be made up of white or near-white foaming water and their surroundings are often dark green forest or jungle, it can be difficult to balance these two
extremes in a composition. The far brighter waterfall tends to drag all the attention to it, so it needs some clever thinking to avoid it completely overwhelming everything else in the frame. Depending on the shape and extent of the waterfall, the first choice to make is whether to shoot it in a landscape or portrait format. High, thin waterfalls tend to look good when shot in portrait format, since this helps to emphasize the sense of the water falling from the sky, but this can restrict the amount of surrounding scene that can be included to
A BALANCED FALL Shooting a waterfall in landscape format allows more of the surrounding landscape to be included.
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balance the image. Try offsetting this type of waterfall to either side of the center of the frame—just a little will suffice—because this adds interest to the composition in itself. Avoid placing high waterfalls too near the edge of the frame, since this makes it almost impossible to counter the resulting heavily one-sided look with the dark green forest in the rest of the frame. Placing the waterfall nearer to the middle of the frame also helps to give the sense that it is buried deep in the forest or jungle. Broad falls can be shot more easily in landscape format and you can stick more closely to classical composition techniques. Find a good subject, such as a fallen tree branch or large boulder in the water below the fall, to add foreground interest, and try to avoid showing too much sky, since it is likely to be overexposed compared to the fall and forest. Include just a sliver of sky to give the fall both context and a
sense of scale—it is far easier for the mind to work out a rough size when the sky is included in the composition.
BLUR THE WATER Waterfalls are one of the subjects that work particularly well with slow shutter speeds, which turn the fall into a milky smooth tumble. Try using a shutter speed of around 1/6 of a second or slower to get the best effects. If you are in really close to the fall and shooting a wide-angle view of it, then try going to the opposite extreme of shutter speed. A very fast one, such as 1/4000 of a second, will freeze all the tiny droplets exploding out of the fall, revealing detail and drama that is not visible to the naked eye.
SENSE OF SCALE It is hard to know how high a waterfall is. A person in the frame helps to give an easy reference.
Canon EOS 1DS MKII, 70–200mm lens, 1/100 sec. at f/4.5, ISO 100
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Subjects—Clouds There are few things that get me as excited about taking landscape photographs as some billowing or distinctive clouds! They can turn even the most mundane terrain into a powerful image and are mesmerizing to watch as they scoot across the sky. Indeed, if the land isn’t providing anything of note to include in a photograph, then clouds can form a great subject in themselves. Stay ahead of the game Clouds form and dissipate at an alarming rate, so if you happen upon some that compel you to take your camera out, then you need to act and think fast to capture the moment. As you move through the landscape, it pays to keep one eye on the sky, to give yourself as much notice as possible of potential cloud formations heading your way. I often find myself imagining scenes on the ground and how they might look with
dramatic clouds added to the equation, so if the clouds do come along, then at least I am a little mentally prepared to react effectively. One of the most interesting clouds to look for is a lone cumulus or stratocumulus that can be isolated above your chosen ground subject. These fluffy, low-level clouds are some of the most well defined to be seen and make a strong addition to a photograph, especially when caught against a clear blue sky.
HEAD IN THE CLOUDS It is worth keeping an eye on the sky for impressive clouds as you travel through a landscape.
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KNOW YOUR CLOUDS Starting from the highest clouds, these are the main types to attempt to include in your landscape photos: Cirrus (up to 45,000 feet/13,716 meters) Looking like a herd of unruly white horse manes swishing across the upper sky, cirrus clouds are made up of ice crystals. Cumulonimbus (up to 45,000 feet/13,716 meters) Hold onto your hats. This is the most dramatic cloud in the sky, and often is known as the thunder cloud or anvil cloud, because of its shape. At times, it appears to be billowing upward at great speed, as if it were a volcanic eruption. Its base is usually at low level, around 2,000 feet (610 meters), but the top can be up to 45,000 feet high, and it can look particularly stunning if photographed rising above a clean ridgeline dotted with a few trees or other subjects that add a sense of scale.
Altocumulus (up to 23,000 feet/7,000 meters) This mid-level type of cloud is a landscape photographer’s best friend. They often look like a vast layer of cotton wool balls filling the sky and, given the right conditions as the sun rises or sets, can ignite with spectacular reds and oranges. Cumulus (up to 6,500 feet/1,981 meters) Looking like giant bundles of cotton wool barreling across the landscape, these are some of the most eyecatching and frequently occurring clouds. They form from around midmorning until late afternoon, and can rescue a midday photograph from being sent to the trashcan if they are distinct enough. Stratocumulus (up to 6,500 feet/1,981 meters) These fill the sky to a greater extent than cumulus clouds and are often dark enough to suggest that a storm is on its way. They can add real drama to a landscape, especially when witnessed in the mountains, and can have enough tiny breaks in their cover to allow occasional shafts of sunlight to break through.
CLOUD APPRECIATION SOCIETY If you enjoy watching and photographing clouds as much as I do, then you will be fascinated to know that there is Cloud Appreciation Society for likeminded cloud lovers, formed by English writer Gavin Pretor-Pinney, the author of the international bestseller The Cloudspotter’s Guide. You can find out more and join, for a small fee, by going to www.cloudappreciationsociety.org.
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Subjects—Flowers & Plants As winter turns into spring, landscapes around the world explode into life as colorful flowers and other plants emerge. Previously bare patches of land suddenly become appealing foregrounds for photographs, and the flowers and plants, in themselves, offer up a plethora of striking image making opportunities, with more abstract and macro shots becoming possible. The best thing about this time of year is that even if you don’t live in an ordinarily stunning location, the flowers and plants can bring great photography closer to your doorstep.
Near or far? Faced with a swathe of blossoming flowers in an attractive landscape, the first choice to make is whether you want the flowers to be the main act or just to play a supporting role in the image. If the flowers are to be the main act, then swap to a medium telephoto lens—around the 100mm mark should suffice—or a macro lens if you want to get really close, and set about hunting out strong abstract or close-up compositions. If you are shooting macro or close-up images, then you need to be acutely aware of any wind, or even gentle breeze, that is blowing, because the flowers will be constantly on the move. In anything other than a light wind, taking an image that shows the flowers “frozen” still may well prove to be impossible. If so, then consider channeling your creative thoughts into how you can make a more surreal photograph
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by incorporating the movement into the look of the image. Using a slow shutter speed of around one second or more will melt the flowers into a lovely blur, although it is hard to predict what the final image will look like, so shoot plenty of frames to increase the chance of success. If the flowers will form a vibrant foreground to a grander landscape image, then it is still important to decide how the combination of elements will be represented in the image. Will all the parts of the scene be given equal weighting? If so, you want to use small apertures of f/16 or smaller to ensure everything in the image is sharply focused. If the flowers will still be the main focus of attention, try using a wide-angle lens and getting in close enough have one or two flowers sharp and prominent in the near foreground, and fill the rest of the frame with the other flowers and the landscape beyond. Using a large aperture to throw the middle ground and background out of focus will help the viewer to easily decipher what you want them to look at, while the blurred scene beyond the flowers will still add context.
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Canon EOS 1DS MKII, 70–200mm lens, 1/800 sec. at f/7.1, ISO 100
SOFT FOCUS Using shallow depth of field adds a touch of atmosphere to images of plants and flowers. Focusing on flowers in the mid distance can enhance the effect.
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Subjects—Trees Given that you can find trees pretty much everywhere, even in the most extreme regions on the planet, it is no surprise that they play a part in a majority of landscape photographs. They are great subjects at any time of the year, from their bleak, leafless looks in winter to being verdant in spring and summer, but it is autumn when photographers find trees truly hard to resist. The onset of autumn in many parts of the world leads to a procession of red, yellow, and orange marching across the treetops in one of Mother Nature’s greatest spectacles.
Tree techniques Whether you shoot images of them as part of a forest, isolate single trees to show their shape and form, or get in really close to show off the intricate patterns and details in their leaves or bark, you need a range of photography skills to make the images work. We have already covered some of the techniques and creative approaches of shooting trees as part of a forest or jungle (see pages 144–7), so here we will focus on taking more intimate portraits of trees. One of the key factors in capturing successful images of trees does not involve the camera at all; it just involves your eyes. Trees, whether solitary or part of a forest, are very complex, and finding the picture to take in the first place is a real challenge. Put your camera down for a while and spend some minutes walking around the tree, not just observing it as a whole, but also peering into the details of its
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structure: clusters of leaves or even an individual leaf, the shapes of its branches or its trunk, how the light falls on the tree and, perhaps, backlights the leaves. When you have found something with potential, retrieve the camera and start to explore in even more detail through the viewfinder. Analyze how changing your viewpoint changes the clarity and simplicity of the image, and how changing the aperture settings to achieve a shallower depth of field influences how the main subject stands out from the background. Try to prevent competing elements overlapping too much in the image. For backlit leaves, take a spot meter reading off the leaf itself and add a little exposure compensation depending on the color of the leaf—you will need to add more for yellow leaves and less, or none at all, for green leaves. Even though you are shooting close-ups, don’t forget to apply the basic rules of composition: place the subject on one of the thirds in the frame and try to lead the viewer’s eye into the image by having part of the subject come into the frame from one of the corners.
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Minolta Dynax 9, 100–300mm lens, exposure unrecorded
CAN’T SEE THE WOOD FOR THE TREES? One of the classic problems with photographing trees is trying to simplify the composition. One way around this is to find a nearby hill to climb for an aerial view.
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Subjects—People in the Landscape I know some of you will be wondering why the word “people” is appearing in a book about landscape photography—but every now and again the addition of a person to a scene can make a substantially better photograph. One of the biggest issues that a viewer can have with interpreting an image is deciding how big or small something is. So, one of the best ways to quickly solve this dilemma for them, and remove the obstacle to them enjoying the image, is to add something into the image that gives it a sense of scale. Some things give that scale more readily than others, depending on how well we know the average size of whatever you include. A tree, for example, could be a fairly good subject to add a sense of scale, but there are very large trees (giant redwoods spring to mind) and very small trees (bonsai trees if you want an extreme example!). So, although they may give some idea of how large the main landscape subject is, it is not crystal clear. However, we humans don’t vary so greatly in size at all. Include one of us in the landscape, and any viewer would be able to immediately discern the scale of everything else in the photograph.
Visual balance An important creative aspect to take into account revolves around how much we like to look at other people. It’s probably a quite primordial reaction in us, but the power a
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person has on our attention far outweighs the space that person takes up in our vision; the same applies in photos. If the person you include in the frame is too big in the composition, or has other attention-grabbing elements about them, such as they are wearing a red or yellow jacket, then not only will they be the first thing a viewer looks at, but also very hard to ignore as the viewer attempts to explore the rest of the image. Aim to make the person in the landscape no bigger than they have to be to be clearly visible, and place them out of the center of the image, preferably on or around one of the thirds.
The viewer in the picture Another useful role a person can play in a landscape image is to serve as the photo viewer’s eyes, allowing the viewer to put themselves in that place looking at that view. To do this, you may need an obliging friend with you who can pose looking into the scene. Don’t forget about visual balance, though, so avoid getting any of the person’s face in the image— show the back of their head instead—since the face and eyes hold the strongest attraction of all our features.
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Minolta Dynax 9, 100–300mm lens, exposure unrecorded
A SENSE OF SCALE This shot a rock arch in Arches National Park, in the USA, would not work at all without the silhouetted person in it. There would be no sense of scale.
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Workflow—in the field To be able to deal effectively with the huge number of digital images you create, it is essential to have a robust set of processes, or workflow, for taking each image from capture to an end output. Although it feels like the physical process of photography in the field hasn’t changed a great deal between film and digital cameras— you point the camera and take a photo—the process of handling all the data that comes with digital images has changed a lot. These new demands start on location; well they do if you want to stay on top of your collection of images.
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Back up, back up, back up When photographers talk about backing up their work, it is easy to assume that this is part of the workflow when you return home with all your images. However, consider this situation: you have been on the trip of a lifetime to Antarctica and have shot over a thousand images of the icebergs, glaciers, and snowtopped peaks. The precious memory cards have been carefully placed in bombproof wallets
GET STARTED AS SOON AS POSSIBLE Even if you are camping, you can still carry a small laptop computer with you to start working on your workflow.
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and are safely ensconced in your carry-on bag for the long flight home (putting them in your checked baggage is akin to handing them over to a stranger). During the flight, you open your bag to retrieve that novel you were reading, but forget to zip up the bag again. A memory card wallet slides out during all the shaking caused by turbulence…you get the drift. It is never possible for your one set of images to be totally safe, no matter how careful you are.
Tip Whichever system you opt for, it is crucial that you have two copies of your images at any point in time, but if you want to be really sure (or some may say paranoid) about keeping your images safe, then three copies is more secure.
ON LOCATION BACK UP SYSTEMS The need to back up starts the moment you begin shooting in the field. There are several ways that you can achieve this, some more robust than others. Duplicate memory cards Some DSLR cameras come with dual memory card slots, and you can usually configure these in-camera to record every image you take onto two separate memory cards, one in each slot. Memory cards are relatively cheap these days and this system gives you an immediate backup without having to do anything else. One potential downside, for example, is that if your camera were to be dropped in water, then both sets of images would go with it. Portable download drive There are several portable download hard drives on the market that allow you to slot in a card and transfer all the images directly to the drive. Some of these drives are quite basic, but others have large, high-quality LCD screens so that you can view your images on them, too—a real
benefit if you can otherwise only get to see them on your camera’s LCD display. So, as soon as you fill a card, or even if you just feel that there are important images on it, you can download them on the spot. Be sure to keep the portable hard drive separate from your camera (just in case the water dunking event occurs!). You don’t get immediate back up with this method, so you could still lose your images if the memory card corrupts in-camera (very rare), but it is pretty close to being immediate. Laptop computer If the location allows you to take your laptop with you, at least to the overnight accommodation, then you can easily use that to back up your images when you return to base each evening. Make sure you leave it in a secure place while you are out shooting during the day. There are many advantages to having your laptop with you in the field, however, and we will go on to look at these in the next section about workflow on location.
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Feet up time? Okay, so now you have multiple copies of your images on location, does that mean you can switch off the workflow until you get home? Well, that depends. If you don’t have your laptop with you, then you can take it slightly easier. It is important, though, that you have access to precise information about where you took your pictures. So, in this situation, you need to use some of your spare time each day to make comprehensive notes about the places you have been shooting: geographical names, any technical aspects you want to include in the keywords later, and any additional information about the place that you have been able to glean from books or tour guides.
Steal a march Smart photographers who happen to have their laptops on location can really steal a march on their rivals by spending spare time breaking
the back of some of the workflow tasks that otherwise await you on your return home. Renaming the images, selecting the keepers and discarding the definite rejects, and even the dreaded keywording can all be done while you are away. One of the big advantages of doing these tasks on location is that you are still full of enthusiasm for the place, whereas several weeks later at home, you might not be quite as fired up about each image.
Renaming images Digital cameras are set up with only rudimentary file naming capabilities, and it won’t take you long to reach the outer boundaries of them. Most can only count up to 9999 and then return to 0001 again. So when you shoot your 10,000th image, it will have the same filename as the first image you took, making it a nightmare to track those images in your library. There are many other naming conventions
KEYWORDING You can easily add specific keywords to images with software like Adobe Lightroom.
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WHO TOOK THIS IMAGE? Don’t forget to add crucial identity, contact and copyright data for the image, so that people know who took it.
file names that stand the test of time. If the camera assigns a file name of, say, img_1234 to an image, then simply replacing the “img” with the date on which the image was taken works well as a unique identifier; it could become 20120423_1234 for an image taken on April 23, 2012. Note: the date should always be written yyyy/mm/dd rather than the other way around, since this ensures your images are always listed sequentially on the computer. Most image management software, including Adobe Lightroom, Apple Aperture, Photo Mechanic, and ACDSee, offers an image renaming facility upon import. You just set up the naming strategy template once, and the software handles the renaming for all your images as they are downloaded by the software. This is far and away the best way to do it.
Adding metadata
that you can adopt, but the fundamental factor about whatever strategy you choose is that it should create absolutely unique file names, not only for the images you are taking now, but also for all the images you will take in the future. This is not something to take lightly if you want to manage your image library effectively. Although many photographers will shoot more than 10,000 images in their lifetime, not many will get anywhere near shooting that many in a single day. The date, therefore, becomes a powerful tool in creating unique
You may well know exactly who took all your photographs, but when the images are sent to other people, such as magazines, web sites, etc, then there is nothing in the image itself to identify the owner. What you need to do is embed all your relevant contact details into the image, so that they move around with it. This is a very easy task with good RAW processing software, since you can simply set up a template with all the details included, and that template can be embedded into every image during the import process when you are first downloading your images. Within the template, there are fields for your name, address, phone numbers, web site, etc.
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Kick out the rejects
Top-level keywording
With it being so easy to shoot and keep shooting digital images, it is safe to assume that these days most photographers will be “swimming” in images. Some of those images, for sure, will be looked at again and again, but a significant number will never again see the light of a computer screen once they have been downloaded. At this stage in your workflow, in the field, it is wise to be cautious about deleting large numbers of images that might not have the instant wow factor. Some of these may become more useful or more appealing with the passage of a little time. So, rather than getting rid of lots of images based on their creative merits, you can simply clean out all the images that absolutely didn’t work—go on, admit it, there are some that fall into that category aren’t there? Images that are unintentionally blurred, those where the composition is all wrong, the ones that were taken when you accidentally pressed the shutter button while cleaning the filter on the lens… you know the ones. Cleaning them out at this stage reduces the clutter in your mind as well as the clutter on your hard drive. In this way, you will know that when you get home, you will be dealing only with the reasonably good or better images. If you have time on location, then you could do some initial rating of the images, giving the ones that stand out one more star than the rest of the pack. Avoid using your top star ratings at this point, since those decisions usually need more time and a better, larger screen than you will have available in the field.
If there is one bane of a digital photographer’s life, then keywording images is probably it. Having to record all the details about an image and where it was taken in order to quickly relocate that image later in a database just isn’t what gets photographers out of bed in the morning. The solution to doing it, therefore, is to reduce the pain factor to the lowest point possible. Partial keywording on location is one of the best ways to achieve this. Now, we have to keep this realistic, because nobody will have a lot of spare time on their hands when they are out shooting somewhere, especially if that somewhere is supremely photogenic. We landscape photographers are well known for being antisocial beasts who like to roam the wilderness while others eat breakfast or dinner. We would much prefer to be out hunting photographs. So, don’t put yourself under a lot of extra pressure to go through all the images you are shooting to keyword them in as much detail as you would apply if you were back home faced with far fewer distractions. Image processing software will often give you quick ways of adding batches of keywords that apply to a number of images. Adobe Lightroom, among others, allows you to do this during import, saving you even more time and tedium. So, the keywords that you can apply on import are of the highest level, the generic titles that apply to all of the images being imported in that session. These may be the following: continent; country; region of country; name of specific place (such as a national park or a
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desert, etc.); name of exact location (the lake or valley, etc.); plus any other generic words that apply to all (sun, snow, etc.). If you are short of time, then this may be as far as you get with it, but if you have some spare moments, you can easily start adding more image-specific keywords. The real skill with keywording is to find the balance between the time you spend doing it and the usefulness
Canon EOS 1DS MKII, 24–70mm lens, 1/10 sec. at f/18, ISO 100
of the words selected. If you want some guidance on the sorts of keywords associated with landscape photographs, then do a search on any of the online stock image libraries. Don’t copy them, though, since they are copyrighted! There is little point in going overboard, either. Pick words that are completely relevant to what is actually in the photograph, not what is going on outside of the frame.
MULTI-LEVEL KEYWORDS Top level and more specific keywords for this image of Kilidonya Lighthouse, in Turkey, were added in the field.
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Workflow—in the field You’ve finished your session in the field and now find yourself back at home staring at the computer screen. This is where much of the unsung work of photographers goes on. Being out in the field is like scoring a touch down; being sat in front of the computer is where the hard yards are gained. Transfer your images First up, you need to transfer the images from your location storage systems onto your fulltime storage systems. Some software, such as Adobe Lightroom and Apple Aperture, makes this relatively easy, ensuring that all the work you put into your images is mirrored on your home system. The next important thing to do is to ensure that you make backups within your permanent storage solution. Of course, if catastrophe strikes right now, you still have the location backups to call on. (You did make those, didn’t you?) Make sure you create at least one and preferably two permanent backups at home before you wipe clean your location storage.
on all the images from the shoot, rather than keywording. This is because keywording has a nasty habit of overrunning the time you have available for it, so if you rate your images first, you can begin by keywording the very best. If you run out of time or steam, then at least the most critical images from the shoot are done. I find it easier to go through the images in several stages, as opposed to trying to nail a final rating on every image I view. So, instead of trying to decide whether every image is one of my best ever or just pretty good, I simply rate it as pretty good or better and add a star to its rating. On the next pass through the higher rating set, I simply decide if the image is very good or better. On the final pass through (by which time, I know the images well), I am simply
Shoot for the stars Digital workflows are intensely personal, so you can play with the order of things here, as long as you don’t skip the crucial bits. My preference at this stage is to do a full-blown rating session
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STARS WILL SHINE In order to keep control of a collection of images, it is crucial to rate the images. Only have a handful of five star ones.
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looking to highlight the outstanding images from that shoot. This may only be a handful, which makes it fairly easy to see if any of those deserve the highest rating, as one of my best ever shots, those that I would show in my portfolio (this happens relatively rarely!).
Processing If you are bored with keywording still—it does take a while to recover your sanity—you may find it easier to get on with processing the outstanding images. Forget about the rest for now; if you have a use for something from the “very good” or “good” pile, you can process it then. Spend your valuable time on perfecting the outstanding images. There are no hard-and-fast rules about how to process an image; it is every bit as subjective as photography is in the first place. If you are shooting in RAW format, then every image will need some work done to it, unless you like your
images to look flat and lifeless that is. If you are shooting JPEGS, the camera will do some processing to the image as you capture it. There is usually an array of “effects” modes that you can also employ with JPEGS to obtain unusual or improved looks straight out of the camera. Assuming that you are shooting RAW, though, there are some basic things that you need to do (these examples are based on Adobe Lightroom, but there are similar features in most RAW processing software) 1. Set the black and white points To get the best possible range of tones out of an image, you need to set the black and white points of the image as close to the start and finish of the histogram curve as you can, while maintaining a realistic look to the image. 2. Add contrast Tweak the histogram to form a very slight S-shape, which will help to increase contrast in the image.
GO WITH THE FLOW In Adobe Lightroom, there is a fairly intuitive flow to the image processing tools.
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3. Saturate colors Add a little saturation to the colors in the image. In Lightroom, this is best done via the Vibrance tool, which intelligently saturates colors that need it, while leaving already saturated colors alone. 4. Remove dust spots Zoom into the image at 100% and systematically go through the entire image looking for any dust spots. Depending on the aperture you have used, they may be quite well defined (f/16 or higher) or they may look like very soft, barely distinguishable blobs (f/5.6 and below). Either way, use the Heal tool to remove the spots, paying careful attention to the resulting fix; at times, the Heal tool can select inappropriate areas of the photograph to use for the source material for the fix. In Lightroom, you can simply “grab” the source circle and move it to a more appropriate spot on the image. 5. Sharpen the image By default, Lightroom adds a little sharpening to an image. You may well need more sharpening at this stage, although the main sharpening should be tailored to the output for your image. You will need different amounts of sharpening for an image destined for the web than you would for one being output from your home printer. There are default options available in Lightroom for many of the popular outputs.
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Back to keywording You might have been hoping to escape this bit, but it is important to keyword at least the outstanding and the very good images in more detail than you did in the field. Go through every image carefully and add as many specific keywords that you can, as long as they are very relevant to the image. If you plan to send your images to a stock image library, then they may well have specific ways that they want their images keyworded, so check with them first. Although the obvious nouns are important to include, you should also try to think of conceptual keywords if you want other people to find the images. Not many image researchers will look for “XYZ glacier, Antarctica,” but more will look for “Freezing weather.”
KEYWORDING SOFTWARE If you want to speed up the process of keywording your images (and who wouldn’t want to do that?), then it may be worth investing in some keywording software. There are a few options on the market, and they vary greatly in how they operate. They all offer free trials, though, so use that facility to test them out to see which one suits you best. Some of the most popular are: Image Keyworder— www.imagekeyworder.com FotoKeyword Harvester— www cradocfotosoftware.com A2Z Keywording— www.a2zkeywording.com
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Minolta Dynax 9, 24–85mm lens, exposure unrecorded
NOT TOO SHARP It is easy to overdo image sharpening. It may look good on the screen but it can have jagged edges if you printed. Lees is usually more with adjustments.
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USING YOUR IMAGES
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USING YOUR IMAGES
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Printing at home The development of inkjet printers that can deliver exceptional quality at affordable prices means there has never been a more exciting time to be producing prints of your own work Buying an inkjet printer It seems there is a new inkjet printer being launched every week, so you would be excused for feeling a little overwhelmed with the choice. There are some fairly easy questions to answer, though, to get you started on the decision making process:
What size prints? The most fundamental decision is about the maximum size of the prints that you want to produce. Most photo printers are designed to go up to A4, but there are increasing number, which are still relatively affordable, that can print up to A3. If you want to make larger prints than that then you are beginning to get into the serious investment end of the market. If you only want to make prints that are smaller than A4, then there are some printers available to do this; although, of course, you can print smaller than A4 on an A4 printer, too, so it is probably worth getting a bigger format one just in case the urge to “go large” strikes you.
Cheap printer or cheap inks? Any day of the week you can open a national newspaper and find an advert for an incredibly cheap photo printer. But, as the saying goes,
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you don’t get anything for nothing in this world. Some of the manufacturers that sell their printers at discount prices charge a premium price for their replacement ink cartridges. If you print a lot of images the extra cost for the cartridges will soon wipe out any savings you made in the printer purchase price. Research the ink cartridge prices and consult the printer manufacturer’s guidelines on how much ink the printer will typically use. If you can, avoid buying a printer where all of the colors are contained within one cartridge. The inks will get used at very different rates, so if they are all in one cartridge you will end up throwing a lot of ink away every time any one of the colors runs out. Ideally, you want every color ink to be in its own separate cartridge so that you can replace each one as it runs out, not before.
What types of inks? There are basically two types of inks that are used in inkjet printers; dye-based inks and pigment-based inks. Dye-based inks are fairly inexpensive but tend to have a shorter archival lifespan than dye-based inks. These cost more but often offer museum grade archival
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Printing at home The development of inkjet printers that can deliver exceptional quality at affordable prices means there has never been a more exciting time to be producing prints of your own work Buying an inkjet printer It seems there is a new inkjet printer being launched every week, so you would be excused for feeling a little overwhelmed with the choice. There are some fairly easy questions to answer, though, to get you started on the decision making process:
What size prints? The most fundamental decision is about the maximum size of the prints that you want to produce. Most photo printers are designed to go up to A4, but there are increasing numbers, which are still relatively affordable, that can print up to A3. If you want to make larger prints than that, then you are beginning to get into the serious investment end of the market. If you only want to make prints that are smaller than A4, then there are some printers available to do this; although, of course, you can print smaller than A4 on an A4 printer, too, so it is probably worth getting a bigger-format one just in case the urge to “go large” strikes you.
Cheap printer or cheap inks? Any day of the week you can open a newspaper and find an advert for an incredibly cheap photo printer. But, as the saying goes, you don’t get
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anything for nothing in this world. Some of the manufacturers that sell their printers at discount prices charge a premium price for their replacement ink cartridges. If you print a lot of images, the extra cost for the cartridges will soon wipe out any savings you made in the printer purchase price. Research the ink cartridge prices and consult the printer manufacturer’s guidelines on how much ink the printer will typically use. If you can, avoid buying a printer where all of the colors are contained within one cartridge. The inks will get used at very different rates, so if they are all in one cartridge you will end up throwing a lot of ink away every time any one of the colors runs out. Ideally, you want every color ink to be in its own separate cartridge so that you can replace each of them as it runs out, not before.
What types of ink? There are basically two types of ink that are used in inkjet printers; dye-based ink and pigment-based ink. Dye-based inks are fairly inexpensive, but tend to have a shorter archival lifespan than dye-based inks. These cost more, but often offer museum-grade archival
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properties. It used to be that dye-based inks gave a more vibrant final print, but the gap between the two has narrowed significantly over the past few years. Unless, you are looking to sell your prints to the public as fine-art then the dye-based ink printers are probably the best way to go. Inkjet printers use four basic colors to produce the printed photograph; cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. However, in order to achieve ever finer degrees of subtlety the manufacturers have started to add in additional variations on these colors, such as light magenta, light cyan, and light yellow. Some also offer different variations of black to further enhance the ability to produce the subtle nuances in a photograph. Although these additional inks do lend themselves to better quality prints, they also add a significant amount to the overall running costs of the printer. PROCESSING PICTURES In order for your pictures to reach their full potential you need
What print speed? If you only print off the occasional photograph then the speed of the printer probably won’t have much bearing on your buying decision. However, if you do more than that then a fast average print time can save you tearing your hair out as you watch the print emerge millimeter by millimeter onto the printing tray. Beware though that speed isn’t everything. The faster a printer works the more likely it is that the final print quality will suffer a little. It’s a good idea to ask for a demonstration of the printer instore before you buy.
What resolution? The maximum resolution of the printer (expressed in dots per inch, or dpi) dictates the ultimate quality that the printer is capable of producing. Higher dpi means that you will get prints with more subtle tone gradations through the colors. The downside of higher dpi is that it puts down more ink on the paper, eating into your ink supplies more rapidly, and print times can increase significantly.
Which printer? Once you have assessed the features above, then it is well worth getting to see your shortlisted printers in action. Although big electronic goods stores are less likely to offer the opportunity to do this, a smaller chain or an independent photographic store will probably be set up to do just that. In the end, it is how the final print appears to your eye that will clarify the last parts of the decision making process.
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properties. It used to be that dye-based inks gave a more vibrant final print, but the gap between the two has narrowed significantly over the past few years. Unless, you are looking to sell your prints to the public as fine art, then the dye-based ink printers are probably the best way to go. Inkjet printers use four basic colors to produce the printed photograph: cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. However, in order to achieve ever finer degrees of subtlety, the manufacturers have started to add additional variations of these colors, such as light magenta, light cyan, and light yellow. Some also offer different variations of black to further enhance the ability to produce the subtle nuances in a photograph. Although these additional inks do lend themselves to better-quality prints, they also add a significant amount to the overall running costs of the printer. PUNCHY PICTURES Modern inkjet printers can bring vivid life to the colors in an image.
What print speed? If you only print off the occasional photograph, then the speed of the printer probably won’t have much bearing on your buying decision. However, if you do more than that, then a fast average print time can save you tearing your hair out as you watch the print emerge millimeter by millimeter onto the printing tray. Beware though that speed isn’t everything. The faster a printer works, the more likely it is that the final print quality will suffer a little. It’s a good idea to ask for a demonstration of the printer instore before you buy.
What resolution? The maximum resolution of the printer (expressed in dots per inch, or dpi) dictates the ultimate quality that the printer is capable of producing. Higher dpi means that you will get prints with more subtle tone gradations through the colors. The downside of higher dpi is that it puts down more ink on the paper, eating into your ink supplies more rapidly, and print times can increase significantly.
Which printer? Once you have assessed the features above, then it is well worth getting to see your shortlisted printers in action. Although big electronics stores are less likely to offer the opportunity to do this, a smaller chain or an independent photographic store will probably be set up to do just that. In the end, it is how the final print appears to your eye that will clarify the last parts of the decision making process.
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Print on demand products One of the most exciting developments in photography has been the explosion in opportunities to turn your photographs into cool, professional standard products, such as books and calendars Print on demand books This is possibly the best thing to happen to photography since the digital revolution began. Prior to print on demand books becoming available the only way to get your work published in a book was to either pitch an idea to a publisher, where the rejection rate was frighteningly high, or to invest a great deal of money and time in publishing a book yourself via the traditional channels, where large print runs were needed. Both of these routes offered little cheer to any photographers other than already successful professionals or the incredibly wealthy. Print on demand pretty much does what it says on the tin. You can upload your photos to a web site, lay out the book using easy to use
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software interfaces and then print off just one copy or as many copies as you like. The price per copy comes down significantly the more copies you order. A few days later, or a week or so at most, a professionally produced book arrives in the post. Voila, you are a published photographer! They are a brilliant way for you to make your favorite images more accessible to other people, friends and family for instance. There are few things as gratifying for a photographer as seeing your images in a book, so you can use it to as a motivator to get out there shooting more landscape images. To ensure you get the best possible quality of book back, it is vital that you spend the time processing your images. If you send poor quality images to the publisher, don’t expect stunning photos to miraculously appear in the book. Ask the print on demand publisher if they have specific printer profiles available that you can use to view your images as close to how they will print as possible (assuming you have a properly calibrated monitor). Don’t add too much contrast to the images and boost color saturation. Make sure you sharpen your images too. It is pretty much impossible to exactly match the printed images with what you see on your computer screen, so be prepared to accept some variance in their appearance.
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Print-on-demand products One of the most exciting developments in photography has been the explosion in opportunities to turn your photographs into cool, professional-standard products, such as books and calendars Print-on-demand books This is possibly the best thing to happen to photography since the digital revolution began. Prior to print-on-demand books becoming available, the only way to get your work published in a book was to either pitch an idea to a publisher, where the rejection rate was frighteningly high, or to invest a great deal of money and time in publishing a book yourself via the traditional channels, where large print runs were needed. Both of these routes offered little cheer to any photographers other than already successful professionals or the incredibly wealthy. Print-on-demand pretty much does what it says on the can. You can upload your photos to a web site, lay out the book using easy-to-use software interfaces, and then print off just one copy or as many copies as you like. The price per copy comes down significantly the more copies you order. A few days later, or a week or so at most, a professionally produced book arrives in the mail. Voila, you are a published
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photographer! They are a brilliant way for you to make your favorite images more accessible to other people, friends and family for instance. There are few things as gratifying for a photographer as seeing your images in a book, so you can use it as a motivator to get out there shooting more landscape images. To ensure you get the best possible quality of book back, it is vital that you spend the time processing your images. If you send poor-quality images to the publisher, don’t expect stunning photos to miraculously appear in the book. Ask the print-on-demand publisher if they have specific printer profiles available that you can use to view your images as close to how they will print as possible (assuming you have a properly calibrated monitor). Don’t add too much contrast to the images and boost color saturation. Make sure you sharpen your images, too. It is pretty much impossible to exactly match the printed images with what you see on your computer screen, so be prepared to accept some variance in their appearance.
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Calendars There is a huge number of printers offering calendar publishing. It is a great and very personal way to present your photography as a gift for friends, family, or clients. Some of the book publishers listed above also offer calendar products. Producing a calendar each year can be an effective way to focus your photography efforts; how about trying to shoot something each month to go into the calendar, which would make it reflect the seasons. Another idea may be to shoot the same landscape location throughout the year to capture the different
moods of it. Designing the calendar works in the same way as the book design systems, where you can upload your images online and then choose the format and layout of the calendar pages.
Other products There are many other personalized products available that can carry your landscape images. From mugs and mouse mats to jigsaw puzzles and T-shirts the ways to show off your work and rescue them from your hard drives are limited only by your imagination.
PRINT ON DEMAND PUBLISHERS
Blurb www.blurb.com A highly popular print on demand publisher, Blurb offers a range of photography book printing options, and they have a successful online store where you can put your book up for sale.
order around 100 or more copies. The quality is excellent and they print for trade publishers, too.
Photobox www.photobox.com They have a range of photographic book options and very affordable prices. There are often special offers on photo books, such as “3 for 2.” Very Lulu www.lulu.com One of the top photography book publishers. There quick turnaround time. are many options for the type of book you want to Bob Books www.bobbooks.com produce, including hardback and paperback. Lulu Offer both hardback and paperback photographic also offers the ability to sell your book via their books, with up to 154 pages in the hardback and website store. 130 pages in the paperback versions. They also offer books printed on photographic paper for Print on Demand-Worldwide www. ultimate quality. printondemand-worldwide.com Offers a range of photographic book publishing options at very affordable prices, especially if you
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Calendars There is a huge number of printers offering calendar publishing. It is a great and very personal way to present your photography as a gift for friends, family, or clients. Some of the book publishers listed here also offer calendar products. Producing a calendar each year can be an effective way to focus your photography efforts: how about trying to shoot something each month to go into the calendar, which would make it reflect the seasons. Another idea may be to shoot the same landscape location throughout the year to capture the different
moods of it. Designing the calendar works in the same way as the book design systems, where you can upload your images online, and then choose the format and layout of the calendar pages.
Other products There are many other personalized products available that can carry your landscape images. From mugs and mouse mats to jigsaw puzzles and T-shirts, the ways to show off your images and rescue them from your hard drives are limited only by your imagination.
PRINT-ON-DEMAND PUBLISHERS
Blurb www.blurb.com A highly popular print-on-demand publisher, Blurb offers a range of photography book printing options, and they have a successful online store where you can put your book up for sale.
order around 100 or more copies. The quality is excellent and they print for trade publishers, too.
Photobox www.photobox.com They have a range of photographic book options at very affordable prices. There are often special offers on photo books, such as “3 for 2.” Very Lulu www.lulu.com One of the top photography book publishers. There quick turnaround time. are many options for the type of book you want to Bob Books www.bobbooks.com produce, including hardback and paperback. Lulu also offer the ability to sell your book via their web Offer both hardback and paperback photographic books, with up to 154 pages in the hardback and site store. 130 pages in the paperback versions. They also offer books printed on photographic paper for Print on Demand-Worldwide www. ultimate quality. printondemand-worldwide.com Offer a range of photographic book publishing options at very affordable prices, especially if you
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Web sites and social media The potential for photographers to share their work with others took a quantum leap with the advent of the internet. It is now possible to take an image and moments later upload it for the whole world to see Create your own web site This is so easy and affordable to do these days that there really is no reason why every photographer shouldn’t have a web site. If you happen to be conversant with html coding then you can set about building your site from scratch. However, it is far more likely that your skills are in photography and the idea of designing and coding your own web site fills you with dread. Don’t worry; there are plenty of easier ways to get your web site up and running. Some companies, such as Clikpic, offer simple template-based photography sites for a monthly fee. With these you can basically tweak the template to some degree to personalize the look of the site and then you can upload your images to the gallery pages on it, write the text needed for the various pages and include your contact details. The site can often be upscaled for a higher fee, if you find that you need more pages as your photography develops. Other companies are aimed more closely at the serious amateur and professional photographers. Sites such as Photoshelter offer comprehensive packages for a monthly or annual fee that allow you to not only fully customize your site but also provide a mechanism for you to sell your images direct to
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clients. The basic costs of sites like these are still affordable, though, so even if you don’t intend to sell images it is still worth checking out what they have to offer. There are also several independent software packages available that sit between the two examples above. Software such as that offered by Pixaria is very customizable and gives you the tools within the software to be able to sell your images and other image-based products, including prints. They do require more knowledge about coding though (or a willingness to pay for someone to do it for you). Still, Pixaria is a very professional product that is worth looking at if you don’t mind engaging more with the technical aspects of creating a web site.
PHOTO WEB SITE COMPANIES Clikpic—www.clikpic.com Photoshelter—www.photoshelter. com Pixaria—www.pixaria.com Moonfruit—www.moonfruit.com Photobiz—www.photobiz.com
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Web sites and social media The potential for photographers to share their work with others took a quantum leap with the advent of the internet. It is now possible to take an image and moments later upload it for the whole world to see Create your own web site This is so easy and affordable to do these days that there really is no reason why every photographer shouldn’t have a web site. If you happen to be conversant with html coding, then you can set about building your site from scratch. However, it is far more likely that your skills will be in photography, and the idea of designing and coding your own web site may fill you with dread. Don’t worry; there are plenty of easier ways to get your web site up and running. Some companies, such as Clikpic, offer simple template-based photography sites for a monthly fee. With these, you can tweak the template to some degree to personalize the look of the site and then you can upload your images to the gallery pages on it, write the text needed for the various pages, and include your contact details. The site can often be upscaled for a higher fee, if you find that you need more pages as your photography develops. Other companies are aimed more closely at the serious amateur and professional photographers. Sites such as Photoshelter offer comprehensive packages for a monthly or annual fee that allow you to not only fully customize your site, but also provide a mechanism for you to sell your images direct to
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clients. The basic costs of sites like these are still affordable, though, so even if you don’t intend to sell images, it is still worth checking out what they have to offer. There are also several independent software packages available that sit between the two previous examples. Software such as that offered by Pixaria is very customizable, and gives you the tools within the software to be able to sell your images and other image-based products, including prints. They do require more knowledge about coding, though (or a willingness to pay for someone to do it for you). Still, Pixaria is a very professional product that is worth looking at if you don’t mind engaging more with the technical aspects of creating a web site.
PHOTO WEB SITE COMPANIES Clikpic—www.clikpic.com Photoshelter—www.photoshelter. com Pixaria—www.pixaria.com Moonfruit—www.moonfruit.com Photobiz—www.photobiz.com
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Photo sharing web sites and social media
their reach—even if the royalty percentage paid to the photographer is not that great.
The easiest way to get a web presence without creating your own web site is to upload your images to one of the popular photo sharing web sites, such as Flickr (www. flickr.com) and SmugMug (www.smugmug. com). Both allow you to create your own online photo galleries and then share them with whoever you want to share them with. They can be viewable by the entire online community or you can limit the access to close friends and family, for example. They interface seamlessly with other social media web sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, so you can easily publish your images to those sites too. to make global adjustments:
SmugMug This company offers a host of integrated features more suitable for the professional or semiprofessional photographer, including being able to sell your images online as prints and other products. You can upload unlimited numbers of images and on the higher level categories of membership you get access to slick professional sales tools. You can geotag your images so that they can be displayed on Google Maps, add photos directly from many of the most popular image processing software packages, and upload video. Prices start from just US$5 per month for the basic package.
Facebook and Twitter Flickr The big difference with Flickr is that it is free to use, which has helped to make it popular with photographers (over 5,000 images were uploaded to the site per minute at the time of writing!). There are numerous ways for you to upload your photos to the site, including from your mobile phone and directly out of image processing software, such as Adobe Lightroom and Apple Aperture. You can organize your images and even geotag them so that they can be plotted on a map. Flickr has signed a deal with the giant Getty Images stock library so that images from Flickr can be made available for purchase via the Getty Images web portal; an exciting opportunity for many photographers who might have thought that Getty was beyond
If you haven’t heard of these two social media web sites then you must have been living on another planet! Both are free to use and allow you to show your photos to friends, family, and the entire online community if you wish. Facebook is more useful for photographers, as you can upload images and then create galleries of images for people to view. Click on an image to see it bigger and it is easy to scroll through large galleries. There aren’t any great image management features on Facebook, but that is not the intention of the site. You can tag people with their names and they will automatically be alerted about the image being available, so it’s a great way to share images if, for example, you were out with your local camera club for a dawn shoot or on a photography workshop.
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Photo sharing web sites and social media The easiest way to get a web presence without creating your own web site is to upload your images to one of the popular photo sharing web sites, such as Flickr (www. flickr.com) and SmugMug (www.smugmug. com). Both allow you to create your own online photo galleries and then share them with whomever you want to share them with. They can be viewable by the entire online community or you can limit the access to close friends and family, for example. They interface seamlessly with other social media web sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, so you can easily publish your images to those sites, too.
SmugMug
Flickr
Facebook and Twitter
The big difference with Flickr is that it is free, which has helped make it popular with photographers (over 5,000 images were uploaded to the site per minute at the time of writing!). There are numerous ways for you to upload your photos to the site, including from your cell phone and directly from image processing software. You can organize your images and even geotag them so that they can be plotted on a map. Flickr has signed a deal with the giant Getty Images stock library so that images from Flickr can be made available for purchase via the Getty Images web portal; an exciting opportunity for many photographers who might have thought that Getty was beyond their reach—even if the royalty percentage paid to the photographer is not that great.
If you haven’t heard of these two social media web sites, then you must have been living on another planet! Both are free to use and allow you to show your photos to friends, family, and the entire online community if you wish. Facebook is more useful for photographers, since you can upload images and then create galleries of images for people to view. Click on an image to see it bigger, and it is easy to scroll through large galleries. There aren’t any great image management features on Facebook, but that is not the intention of the site. You can tag people with their names and they will automatically be alerted about the image being available, so it’s a great way to share images if, for example, you were out with your local camera club for a dawn shoot or on a photography workshop.
This company offers a host of integrated features more suitable for the professional or semiprofessional photographer, including being able to sell your images online as prints and other products. You can upload unlimited numbers of images, and on the higher level categories of membership, you get access to slick professional sales tools. You can geotag your images so that they can be displayed on Google Maps, add photos directly from many of the most popular image processing software packages, and upload video. Prices are very affordable for the basic package.
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Making slideshows When we were all shooting slide film there was nothing more pleasing than to organize a slide night and get all your fellow photographers around for an evening of “oohing” and “ahhing” over stunning landscape images projected beautifully on a screen. Well, those days have not gone away at all; in fact, things have got even better in many ways.
Digital projectors If you want to project your slideshow onto a screen, rather than view it on the computer monitor or television, then you will need a digital projector. There is a plethora available, and a huge range in prices, too.
LCD or DLP There is one basic decision to make; whether you want one that projects using an LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) system or one that has a DLP (Digital Light Processing) system. LCD projectors are relatively inexpensive, but they lack the subtlety of some DLP projectors. So, you need to decide whether you are willing to forego a little image quality to save money.
3,000 lumens to make it show up well. It is always preferable to darken the room first and foremost though.
Resolution The resolution of the projector is also an important consideration. There are three common resolutions on the market; SVGA 800x600 pixels); XGA (1024x768 pixels); and SXGA+ (1400x1050 pixels). Ideally, you want to match the resolution to that of your computer screen, because if you buy a higher resolution projector than your computer is capable of supporting then the projector will simply compress the images to fit so there is no benefit to spending extra for the higher resolution projector. SVGA is starting to become outdated, though, so even if you have a computer with this resolution, then it might be worth buying an XGA projector to cover you for when you upgrade your computer. SXGA+ projectors are expensive, so you will need to be sure that you require the extra image quality they deliver before investing in one.
Preparing your images Brightness If you are projecting the slideshow in a dark room then you don’t need a bright projector (the brightness is measured in ANSI lumens), around 1800 lumens will suffice. If you are planning to project in a room that isn’t dark and has natural or artificial light falling on the screen then you will need something north of
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Once you have processed your images after a shoot, it is quite straightforward to prepare them for inclusion in a slideshow. Depending on what software you are using to create the show, you may need to resize the images to make them smaller, so that they don’t take too long to load during the slideshow. The general practice is to make the images no
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Making slideshows When we were all shooting slide film, there was nothing more pleasing than to organize a slide night and get all your fellow photographers around for an evening of “oohing” and “ahhing” over stunning landscape images projected beautifully on a screen. Well, those days have not gone away at all; in fact, things have got even better in many ways.
Digital projectors If you want to project your slideshow onto a screen, rather than view it on the computer monitor or television, then you will need a digital projector. There is a plethora available, and a huge range in prices, too.
LCD or DLP There is one basic decision to make: whether you want one that projects using an LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) system or one that has a DLP (Digital Light Processing) system. LCD projectors are relatively inexpensive, but they lack the subtlety of some DLP projectors. So, you need to decide whether you are willing to forego a little image quality to save money.
of 3,000 lumens to make it show up well. It is always preferable to darken the room first and foremost though.
Resolution The resolution of the projector is also an important consideration. There are three common resolutions on the market: SVGA 800 x 600 pixels); XGA (1024 x 768 pixels); and SXGA+ (1400 x 1050 pixels). Ideally, you want to match the resolution to that of your computer screen, because if you buy a higher-resolution projector than your computer is capable of supporting, then the projector will simply compress the images to fit, so there is no benefit to spending extra for the higher-resolution projector. SVGA is starting to become outdated, though, so even if you have a computer with this resolution, then it might be worth buying an XGA projector to cover you for when you upgrade your computer. SXGA+ projectors are expensive, so you will need to be sure that you require the extra image quality they deliver before investing in one.
Preparing your images Brightness If you are projecting the slideshow in a dark room, then you don’t need a bright projector (the brightness is measured in ANSI lumens): around 1800 lumens will suffice. If you are planning to project in a room that isn’t dark and has natural or artificial light falling on the screen, then you will need something north
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Once you have processed your images after a shoot, it is quite straightforward to prepare them for inclusion in a slideshow. Depending on what software you are using to create the show, you may need to resize the images to make them smaller, so that they don’t take too long to load during the slideshow. The general practice is to make the images no bigger than the
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bigger than the maximum resolution of your projector/computer. So, if you are using an XGA projector and computer then you want to size your images to fit 1024x768 pixels (that is for landscape format; for portrait format the images need be no bigger than 768 pixels high). The resolution of your images needs to be only around 100dpi for XGA projection (higher, around 150dpi if you are using SXGA+) and save them as maximum quality JPEGs.
Decide the running order If you want to keep your audience enthralled throughout your slideshow then you need to think carefully about the order you show the images and the narrative that they tell. A good general rule is to think a little like a Hollywood film director; start with a big scenesetting opener and then move in for more intimate photos of the landscape. Try not to duplicate the types of image shown. If you have six good PROCESSING PICTURES In order for your pictures to reach their full potential you need to organize and edit them.
SLIDESHOW SOFTWARE ProShow Gold www.photodex.com Apple Aperture www.apple.com Adobe Lightroom www.adobe.com Microsoft PowerPoint www. microsoft.com Magix PhotoStory on CD & DVD www. magix.com
shots of a particular desert landscape, for example, then you only need to show one or two to communicate with the audience. If you are struggling to decide which ones to leave out ask a friend or colleague to pick the one they like best. You can wrap the show up with a run of a dozen of your most impressive landscapes to leave the audience wowed.
Adding music/soundtrack Almost all slideshow software now has the ability to add music and sound to the show. If you are adding music, then choose carefully; your personal favorite choice tunes may not be a big hit with the audience. Opt for something middle of the road that has a sense of movement or journey to it. Be aware also that you may need to get copyright clearance to use commercial music. If you happened to record some ambient sounds on location, then these adding these to the show can be a great way to enhance the audience’s connection with the place. An image of a cloud swirling over a mountaintop really comes alive when the sound of a galeforce wind is added to it.
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maximum resolution of your projector/computer. So, if you are using an XGA projector and computer, then you want to size your images to fit 1024 x 768 pixels (that is for landscape format; for portrait format, the images need be no bigger than 768 pixels high). The resolution of your images needs to be only around 100dpi for XGA projection (higher, around 150dpi, if you are using SXGA+), and save them as maximum-quality JPEGs.
Decide the running order If you want to keep your audience enthralled throughout your slideshow, then you need to think carefully about the order you show the images and the narrative that they tell. A good general rule is to think a little like a Hollywood film director: start with a big scene setting opener and then move in for more intimate photos of the landscape. Try not to duplicate the types of image shown. If you have six PROCESSING PICTURES For your pictures to reach their full potential, you need to organize and edit them.
SLIDESHOW SOFTWARE ProShow Gold—www.photodex.com Apple Aperture—www.apple.com Adobe Lightroom—www.adobe.com Microsoft PowerPoint—www. microsoft.com Magix PhotoStory on CD & DVD— www.magix.com
good shots of a particular desert landscape, for example, then you only need to show one or two to communicate with the audience. If you are struggling to decide which ones to leave out, ask a friend or colleague to pick the one they like best. You can wrap the show up with a run of a dozen of your most impressive landscapes to leave the audience wowed.
Adding music/soundtrack Almost all slideshow software now has the ability to add music and sound to the show. If you are adding music, then choose carefully; your personal favorite tunes may not be a big hit with the audience. Opt for something middle-of-the-road that has a sense of movement or journey to it. Be aware also that you may need to get copyright clearance to use commercial music. If you happened to record some ambient sounds on location, then adding these to the show can be a great way to enhance the audience’s connection with the place. An image of a cloud swirling over a mountaintop really comes alive when the sound of a galeforce wind is added to it.
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Glossary Aberration An imperfection in the image caused by the optics of a lens. AE (autoexposure) lock A camera control that locks in the exposure value, allowing an image to be recomposed. Angle of view The area of a scene that a lens takes in, measured in degrees. Aperture The opening in a camera lens through which light passes to expose the sensor or film. The relative size of the aperture is denoted by f/stops. Autofocus (AF) A reliable through-the-lens focusing system allowing accurate focus without the user manually turning the lens. Bracketing Taking a series of identical pictures, changing only the exposure, usually in half or one f/ stop (+/-) differences. Buffer The in-camera memory of a digital camera that temporarily holds image data before writing to the memory card. Burst size The maximum number of frames that a digital camera can shoot before its buffer becomes full. Cable release A device used to trigger the shutter of a tripod-mounted camera to avoid camera shake. Center-weighted metering A way of determining the exposure of a photograph placing importance on the meter reading at the center of the frame. Chromatic aberration The inability of a lens to bring spectrum colors into focus at one point.
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Color temperature The color of a light source expressed in degrees Kelvin (K). Compression The process by which digital files are reduced in size. Depth of field (DOF) The amount of an image that appears acceptably sharp. The range of this sharpness depends on four factors: the aperture of the lens, the chosen focal point, the subject-tocamera distance, and the focal length of the lens. Differential focus The practice of teaming wide apertures (resulting in shallow depth of field) with a small, precisely controlled area of focus. dpi (dots per inch) Measure of the resolution of a printer or scanner. The more dots per inch, the higher the resolution. Dynamic range The ability of the camera’s sensor to capture a full range of shadows and highlights. Evaluative metering A metering system whereby light reflected from several subject areas is calculated based on algorithms. Exposure The amount of light allowed to hit the camera sensor, controlled by aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. Also the act of taking a photograph, as in “making an exposure.” Exposure compensation A control that allows intentional overexposure or underexposure. Extension tubes Hollow spacers that fit between the camera body and lens, typically used for close-up work. The tubes increase the focal length of the lens.
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Fill-in flash Flash combined with daylight in an exposure. Used with naturally backlit or harshly side-lit or top-lit subjects to prevent silhouettes forming, or to add extra light to the shadow areas of a well-lit scene. Filter A piece of colored, or coated, glass or plastic placed in front of the lens. F-stop Number assigned to a particular lens aperture. Wide apertures are denoted by small numbers such as f/2, and small apertures by large numbers such as f/22. Focal length The distance, usually in millimeters, from the optical center point of a lens element to its focal point. Focusing distance Term used to describe the distance between the focal plane (the sensor/film) and the subject. fps (frames per second) The ability of a digital camera to process one image and be ready to shoot the next. Histogram A graph used to represent the distribution of tones in an image. Hotshoe An accessory shoe with electrical contacts that allows synchronization between the camera and a flashgun. Hotspot A light area with a loss of detail in the highlights. This is a common problem in flash photography. Incident-light reading Meter reading based on the light falling on the subject.
Interpolation A way of increasing the file size of a digital image by adding pixels, thereby increasing its resolution. ISO The sensitivity of an image sensor to light, measured in terms equivalent to the ISO rating of film. The higher the ISO, the more sensitive the sensor is to light. JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) A universal image format supported by virtually all relevant software applications. JPEG compression can reduce file sizes to about 5% of their original size with little visible loss in image quality. LCD (liquid crystal display) The large screen on a digital camera that allows the user to preview images. Megapixel One million pixels are equal to one megapixel. Memory card A removable storage device for cameras. Mirror lockup A function that allows the reflex mirror of an SLR to be raised and held in the “up” position, before the exposure is made to reduce vibration. Pixel Short for “picture element”—the smallest bits of information in a digital image. Predictive autofocus An autofocus system that can continually track a moving subject. Noise Colored image interference caused by stray electrical signals. Partial metering A metering system that places importance on a relatively small area at the
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center of the frame to calculate the exposure of the photograph. PictBridge The industry standard for sending information directly from a camera to a printer, without having to connect to a computer. RAW The format in which the raw data from the sensor is stored without permanent alterations being made. Reproduction ratio A term used to describe the relationship between the size of your subject in real life, and the size it is recorded on the sensor/ film. For example, a reproduction ratio of 1:2 means that the subject will appear half its actual size on the sensor or film. Resolution The number of pixels used to capture or display an image. The higher the resolution, the finer the detail. RGB (red, green, blue) Computers and other digital devices understand color information as a combination of red, green, and blue. Rule of thirds A rule of thumb that places the key elements of a picture at points along imagined lines that divide the frame into thirds. Selective focusing (see differential focus). Shading The effect of light striking a photo sensor at anything other than right angles incurring a loss of resolution. Shutter The mechanism that controls the amount of light reaching the sensor by opening and closing.
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SLR (single lens reflex) A type of camera that allows the user to view the scene through the lens, using a reflex mirror. Spot metering A metering system that places importance on the intensity of light reflected by a very small portion of the scene. Teleconverter A lens that is inserted between the camera body and main lens, increasing the effective focal length. Telephoto lens A lens with a large focal length and a narrow angle of view. TTL (through-the-lens) metering A metering system built into the camera that measures light passing through the lens at the time of shooting. TIFF (Tagged-Image File Format) A universal image file format that can be compressed without loss of information. USB (universal serial bus) A data transfer standard, used by the EOS 60D when connecting to a computer. Viewfinder The camera’s small window used to compose the picture, giving an approximate view of what will be captured. White balance A function that allows the correct color balance to be recorded for any given lighting situation. Working distance The space between the front surface of the lens, and the point on the subject where the lens is focused.
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Useful web sites General Ammonite Press Photography books and Expanded Camera Guides www.ammonitepress.com
Equipment Adobe Photographic editing software such as Photoshop and Lightroom www.adobe.com Apple Creators of photo editing software, including Aperture, plus notebook and desktop computers www.apple.com/uk
Olympus Camera & lens manufacturer www.olympus-global.com Panasonic Camera & lens manufacturer www.panasonic.com Sigma Camera & third-party lens manufacturer www.sigmaphoto.com
Photography Publications
Canon Camera & lens manufacturer www. canon.com
Black & white Photography magazine Outdoor Photography magazine Inspiration and information for monochrome enthusiasts www.thegmcgroup.com
Nikon Camera & lens manufacturer www.nikon.com
Digital Photography Review Independent digital camera reviews and news www.dpreview.com
Pentax www.pentax.com
ePHOTOzine Photographic news, reviews, techniques, and tips www.ephotozine.co.uk
Sony Camera & lens manufacturer www.sony.com
Luminous Landscape Features, insight and forums all about landscape photography www.luminous-landscape.com
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Index A abstract landscapes 62, 128 accessories 19 Adobe Lightroom 52 RGB 22 Advanced Photo System type C (APS-C) sensor 15 Alpenglow 133 aperture 28, 30 settings 30 Apple Aperture 52 B backpacks 132 backup 166, 167 balance 117, 162 beachcombing 137 boots, sturdy 20 brightness 117 C calendars 181 camera bag, chest mounted 132 bag, waterproof 146 choosing 13 compact 15 DSLR 13 how it “sees” 58 setting up 21 circles 64 Clikpic 182 Cloud Appreciation Society 155 clouds 154, 156 identifying 155 coast 136 coastal light 136, 137, 138 color 106–119 casts 110 perceiving 110 single, using 112 space 22 theory 108 wheel 108
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colors analogous 119 complementary 116 cool 114 positioning 118 primary 108 saturating 174 secondary 108 tertiary 108 warm 112 compact camera 15 complementary colors 116 composition 56–77 basic rules 60 converging lines 70 correction filters 111 creativity 120–129 crop factor 15 cropping and formats 76 D dawn 86 depth of field 32 big 36, 37 controlling 34 shallow 38, 39 desert 140 light 141, 142 diagonal lines 66 digital camera sensor 50 projector 184 workflow 164–175 dust spots, removing 174 E equipment 10–25 choosing 12 outdoor 20 expose to the right 50 exposure 26–55 understanding 28
F Facebook 183 film, advantage 105 filters correction 111 neutral-density (ND) 18, 54 neutral-density graduated 18, 52 ND grad 52 software 52 polarizer 18, 52 five layers 70 flare, avoiding 91 flashlight, using 128 Flickr 183 flowers and plants 158 focus, soft 159 footwear 20 format large 15 medium 15 frame, filling the 62 f-stops 30 full frame 14 G gloves, thermal 20 Google Images 23 Maps 23 golden hour 24 Gore-Tex 20 grain 49 H headlamp 20 high dynamic range (HDR) 124 software 125 horizons, straight 61 horizontal lines 66 hotshoe spirit level 19 humidity, exposure to 145 hyperfocal distance 32
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I image format 21 image management software 169 images keywording 170 online 23 printing 178–179 processing 173, 174 rating 172 rejecting 170 removing dust spots 174 renaming 168 sharpening 174 transferring 172 using 176–185 iPhone/iPod Touch 32 ISO rating 28, 48 J jacket, waterproof/windproof 20 JPEG 21 jungles and forests 144 K keywording 170, 174 software 174 kit (equipment) 12 L landscape, people in 162 landscapes abstract 62, 128 laptop computer 167, 168 large format 15 lens choice 32 flare, avoiding 91 Lensbaby 16 lenses extreme telephoto 16 standard 16 telephoto 16 tilt-shift 17
ultra-wide-angle 16 wide-angle 16 light 78–105 back 83 dawn 85, 86, 88 desert 141, 142 diffused 84 direction 82 front 82 low 85 manipulating 82 midday 94 mountain 133 overhead 85 painting with 128 quality of 80 side 82 sunrise 91 sunset 96 lines converging 70 diagonal 66 horizontal 66 vertical 66 locations & subjects 130– 165 M magic moment 96 maps and books 23 meaning, adding 75 medium format 15 memory cards 167 metadata, adding 169 Micro Four Thirds 15 midday 94 moonlight 104 moon, photographing 45 mountain light 133 mountains and hills 132, 134 music/soundtrack, adding 185 N night 104 noise 49, 105
O outdoor accessories 20 overexpose 50 P painting with light 128 panning 124 panoramas, creating 126 panorama software 126 patterns in nature 62 people in the landscape 162 photography forums 23 Photoshelter 182 Pixaria 182 plants 158 portable download drive 167 primary colors 108 printer inks 178 inkjet 178 resolution 179 speed 179 print on demand 180–181 R RAW 21, 50 reflections 149, 150 repetition of subject 70 researching locations 23 rivers and lakes 148 Rowell, Galen 80 Rule of Thirds 60 S sand exposure to 140 patterns 141 scale, sense of 153, 163 secondary colors 108 shapes and patterns 64, 68 sharpness, ultimate 34 shutter speed 28, 40, 46, 47 equation 42 fast 42 slow 44, 122
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social media 182–183 slideshows, making 184 SmugMug 183 spirit level, hotshoe 19 squares and rectangles 64 standard lens 16 Super Red Green Blue (sRGB) 22 star trails 104 sunny 16 rule 41 sunrise 90, 92 sunrise/sunset calculator 91 times 24 sunset 96, 98 T telephoto lens 16 extreme 16 temperatures, extreme 140 tertiary colors 108 third dimension 70, 72, 149 tide times 24, 136 tilt-shift lens 17 trees 160 triangles 64 tripod 132 ball head 17 carbon fiber 17 heads 17 leg lock mechanism 17 maximum working height 17 weight and rigidity 17 tripods 17 twilight 100, 102 Twitter 183
W Watkins, Carleton 8 water blurring 153 moving 137 photographing 148 reflections 149 shapes 152, 153 waterfall 42, 152 web site, creating 182 web sites 182–183 weather 24 forecasts 136 white balance 111 wide-angle lens 16 workflow at home 172 digital 164–175 in the field 166 Y Ying and Yang 41
U ultra-wide-angle lens 16 underexposure 146 V vertical lines 66 visual balance 117, 162
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