Feb 19, 2015 | Landscape Photography
I love clouds! When we were in Costa Rica, we had some killer mornings when we hit the beach. We would often see the lightning from the Lodge before heading down (ya, it was dark when we started our day) so knew there were thunderstorms out over the Pacific. We had already been treated to some great skies earlier in the week so was anxious to get down to the sand. While our goal was to work the lagoon, you just can’t pass up a magical sunrise!
I hit the beach with the walkin around bird rig, D4s / 800AFS but had along with me of course my faithful friend, Nikon 1 V3. This amazing little camera just does a killer job with subjects like this. As you can see, as the storm broke up, it created amazing shapes tapping into the rising sun. So, shooting in Cloudy WB, I worked the columns of color. I shot it many ways but it’s these two images that have caught me imagination. Now if all the clouds were the color of the color columns, the photo simply wouldn’t work. But since they rose higher in the sky and caught the sun before the base, we lucked out. Oh, what a gorgeous way to start the day!
Feb 17, 2015 | Landscape Photography
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“Moose, you use to do so many panos. Don’t do them anymore?” This question comes in, alot! The short answer is, ya, I do lots of panos still, never stopped. But with the ease of assembling them now, I simply don’t talk about it much. Back in the day, assembling a pano especially a Ultra Wide Pano was hours and hours of work. Now, it can be done in a matter of seconds and look one helluva a lot better. Like this one above shot on the Costa Rican coast, all it took were two clicks of a Nikon 1 V3 / 10-30 and two clicks in post and you have a pano. If you have an iPhone, you don’t even have to do that much work to capture the splendor our world offers. Now with that all said, the number of panos I’m asked to look at that should never been taken has vastly increased as well. So while it is easier the photographic technique remains the same. So for me personally, if more than half of the pano can’t stand by themselves as individual photos, together they don’t make a pano.
Feb 12, 2015 | Landscape Photography
Part of telling a story in landscape photography at times requires knowing the size of the landscape. In macro photography, we can for example place a dime by something and we all would know instantly the approximate size of the subject. Put a dime in a landscape though and you’ll need a metal detector to find it. So a common object we use as a scale reference are people. We can get a general idea from them the grandeur of the scene, we can understand distance and a feel for size. But even with this simple element, we can take it even further by manipulating scale.
Are two images taken really just minutes apart to illustrate my point. Taken with Df / 80-400 at 400mm, can you tell what is different between the two changing the sense of overall size? Really, can you tell because I’m not going to say. You’re going to have to look at these images to figure it out. Then, if you like it, you need to go out and do it for yourself so then when you need the technique, you have it in your bag of tricks. Moving our feet can really change a photograph, especially when manipulating scale.
Feb 3, 2015 | Landscape Photography
While many parts of the country are receiving snow, some much more than the rest, here in the Sierras we are in a desperate state! We’ve had no snow of any measure this year and at the moment, we have dirt where there should be 15′ of snow. So anytime, anytime any cloud comes over the hill, I’m out doing a dance and taking photos hoping, just hoping this will be the one. And while we have no snow, we’ve had some gorgeous clouds like these shot from our deck. Shot with the D4s / 58f1.4AFS, it’s a pretty good example of what we’re experiencing without the white stuff.
Another adverse outcome of our drought it the nearly total lack of birds in our feeders. Normally in the winter, the shutter in my cameras are smoking because there is so much to photograph. Right now, luckily I have two Flickers and a Hairy Woodpecker, and that’s it! Because there is no snow cover, there is plenty of food and free water so the birds are scattered and don’t need to come to our offerings. That sucks!
And just so you know, Perfect Suite 9 had an update. This photo was simply processed in ACR and then in Perfect 9 B&W and took only a couple of clicks to finish. Now, if it would just snow!
Jan 26, 2015 | Landscape Photography
The sunrises in Costa Rica this last week were spectacular! From up at the lodge, we could look down the canyon and see in the darkness breaking over the Pacific. The heat and humidity combine to produce big, gorgeous puffies. While our goal was the wildlife, there is no way one could ignore these pillars to the heavens. So we hit the beach with gear for the sunrise and the birds. In my case, that was the 800mm and 18-35AFS on the D4s. Knowing how quickly the sunrises at the equator, the decision needs to be made just as quickly how to go. It comes down to color, depth and of course, light.
Both of these photos were taken prior to the sun coming up over the horizon. The D4s was set to minus 1 stop and WB set to Cloudy. Both photos taken east by south east with the 18mm shot at the top, the 800mm shot at the bottom. The 800mm is the lower left corner of the 18mm photo. The color and light are the key elements of both photos moving the eye around the frame. The gesture though is supplied by different elements. In one, it’s the clouds and the other, the waves. And the one very special element of this morning was, there was no wrong way, bad way, only great ways every which way you turned to shoot! It’s just another of the special aspects of the Osa Peninsula and the Costa Rican rainforest.
Dec 23, 2014 | Landscape Photography
Might seem like a really silly question, is it a landscape or wildlife photograph? But asking that and answering it for your photography just might make the final photograph more powerful. How? The answer to the question can effect everything deciding what is the subject to placement of the subject in the frame to exposure. For example, if the towering thunderhead in the New Mexico sunset is the subject, then you frame it in your viewfinder and let the Gtr Sandhill Crane fly into the frame and into place. If the Sandhill Crane is the subject, you might just pan with it and click when you see in the background the form of the thunderhead you like. And while the final photo might look exactly the same, how you came about it is different and that difference will effect the story you tell.
The funny thing to me is, most of the time when I show these types of images to folks, they think of them as a landscape photograph. While in my mind they are pure wildlife. I’m shooting of course with the D4s / 800mm, panning with the cranes putting them in the frame based on what I’m seeing in the background. Now you might be wondering why I’m shooting such big glass when the subject size is so small? Well with the cranes being nice and black (under exposure), their iconic shape says who they are so they visually pop without being huge in the frame. So the long glass permits me to select the more spectacular portion of the thunderhead for the background (and its red because when I see red in the sky, I go to Cloudy WB). Now we’ll all answer this question differently and that’s how it should be. What is important is that you find the answer for YOUR photography. What’s important is, that you ask the question.
