gdanmitchell
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tsaphoto wrote:
is certainly late September through late November. It's still warm (OK, it's always warm enough here), the tourists have mostly left, the summer fog is gone and winter fog hasn't hit yet...
Every year at about this time, as a California photographer I feel like I'm "coming back to life" after the less compelling summer season. (To be fair, there are subjects to photograph in the summer here, too.) For example, in my view, the September through October season is the most beautiful of the year in the Sierra - lovely golden light, moderate temperatures, no crowds (aside from certain aspen lakes), an occasional early season storm to make things interesting, and no mosquitos!
But this is just the start of the best time of year - the nine months from September through May or so. The coast is much more interesting in the winter, when giant Pacific storms alternate with periods of beautiful clear weather and occasional fog and when giant surf is always a possibility. The winter storms can produce wonderful atmospheric effects, and winter's tule fogs are quiet and mysterious. Migratory birds appear up and down the state. And more, much more...
I hate the glowing edges that come from slightly mismatched HDR exposures. Photoshop's autoalign tool is terrible and the HDR tool does them intentionally! I hand-matched these and cloned out the edges in the JPG after processing, but there's gotta be a better way. I understand if that better way is "lug a tripod out there and the shots will line up."
I'll probably step on someone's toes by saying this, but if you are serious about landscape photography you really need to use a tripod. This is even more true if you are doing HDR or stitching. Yes, I know that you can come acceptably close in some cases by bursting three bracketed shots, but "acceptably close" really isn't. And there are all kinds of other advantages to using a tripod - the ability to use a much wider range of shutter speeds while keeping the ISO low, and the tremendous compositional advantages come to mind immediately. (The latter is what Jim is referring to - you will have a much better ability to both see and control composition with the camera fixed to the top of a tripod.*)
If you haven't used a tripod much, I understand how this may seem like a burdensome and geeky thing. You'll get over it, and you'll learn to use the tripod without much thought at all.
About HDR... I have nothing against it as a technique when used sparingly and subtly. (I'm very much not a fan of the obvious "Look At Me! I"m HDR!" sort of shots.) It is simply one more tool in the toolbox of photographers, to be called upon when it is necessary or useful with certain complex and challenging shots. You and others might be surprised to find out that some landscape photographers whose work might be regarded as very natural and free of apparent Photoshop "trickery" actually make subtle use of the technique as a way of recovering shadow detail or of dealing with extremely large dynamic range scenes. The key though is that you wouldn't even notice it in the photograph.
In my view HDR as a "solution" has been over-rated and over-promoted, to the point that some folks think they need it for almost every shot. While I'm not an HDR shooter, I do exposure blending when huge dynamic ranges require it. Yet, even though I often shoot subjects with challenging dynamic ranges, I probably don't even have to resort to blending in more than perhaps one in one hundred images. So, rather than immediately resorting to HDR or similar techniques, reserve them for the very few shots in which they might actually be necessary.
Do lower light and longer shutter exposures lend pictures that ethereal painting quality I often see in some of the really great landscapes here? Are there filters that are must-haves? What makes landscape light nicer?
There are a tremendous number of variables that you can work with when doing landscape photography, and among them are the things you mention here.
A chief "advantage" (effect?") of shooting in low light can be that this light is "softer" than that during brighter times of the day. This softens the shadows and tends to fill them with a bit more light, lending a sort of "fuller" and less harsh quality to the scene. It is somewhat like using a soft light box instead of a single electronic flash for portrait shooting. Instead of highly directional light that produces bright highlights and starkly contrasting shadows, the light comes from all directions and softly washes over the subject, filling in the shadows and creating fewer stark highlights.
This soft light can come very early or very late in the day. It can come from shooting in shade and shadow instead of full light. It can be found when shooting in cloudy conditions. (A friend who is very successful as a landscape photographer loves conditions with "high, thin clouds" and suggests that this can produce the most beautiful landscape light in many circumstances.)
Whether or not long exposures themselves help produce this "soft light" effect or are simply a side effect of shooting in low and soft light is perhaps open to debate.
In addition to the quality of the light itself, a few other factors (among many!) can make a difference. The quality of the atmosphere makes a huge difference - crystal clear, slightly hazy, nearly opaque, thick fog. It also matters whether the quality is continuous or variable - slight low fog obscuring the ground with crystal clear sky above, ocean spray and mist thickening the atmosphere and catching light. And related to this is the direction of the light - is it coming from behind the subject, the side, high or low, etc.
I think that the key is perhaps not so much trying to enumerate all of these things - ultimately, the world is so varied that this becomes an unmanageable task - but to work on developing a sensitivity to them and perhaps even an obsession with seeing and observing them.
Good luck!
Dan
* A note about tripods. While I'm pretty convinced of their value for landscape photography, I also happen to believe that doing some rapid, handheld photography can be a powerful way to help develop your ability to see quickly and instinctively - a skill that virtually all photographers hone to a fine edge. When you are not doing landscape, take a camera out for a walk and just look for interesting compositions and subjects and shoot - street photography is a good exercise in this regard. You'll be surprised by how much more you start to see.
Edited on Sep 25, 2013 at 02:15 PM · View previous versions
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Now some people are processing their shots and adding a very slight Orton Effect (a glowing blur) to their shots to create a painterly feeling. You might have seen that. That is a current fad going on for the last year or two.