L A N D S C A P E
In the hands of a creative photographer, an artful landscape can be made of
any subject from a New England farm to an Inca ruin in Peru. Landscapes are
simply photographs that describe an outdoor place--any place at all.
The natural inclination--especially in scenic areas--is to put on a
wide-angle lens and randomly take in as much of a vista as possible, assuming
that the beauty or intrigue of a place will carry the photograph. Usually it
won't. While a wide-angle lens's ability to include a broad view can be a real
blessing, often it is better to use a telephoto lens to isolate a particularly
interesting portion of a scene. In either case, you must find a way to organize
and present your landscapes with as little excess baggage as possible.
Try to think of a landscape photo as being like a short story that has a
beginning (the foreground), a middle (the middle ground), and an ending (the
background). In a farm scene, for example, you could use an old wagon as the
foreground, a winding dirt road as the middle ground, and a bright red barn as
the background. A farmer leading a horse up the road can stand in as your main
character. (Scatter a few chickens around if you need some minor characters.)
Very few landscapes will be so neatly arranged at first glance, so your main
chore is finding a vantage point that translates to the viewer what it was that
attracted your eye to the scene.
A landscape should also capture the spirit and mood of a place. Before you even
raise a lens to the scene, pause to ask yourself what it is about it that
appeals to you emotionally. Is it the yellow morning light glowing
through the fields of hay? The color, direction, quality, and intensity of
light all have a profound effect on landscapes. Or is it the evening mist
rising off the river? Weather in all its forms can work wonders with even the
most common of scenes.
T R O P I C A L
B E A C H E S
The glistening white sands, turquoise waters, and vibrant blue skies of
tropical beaches are the stuff of which wall calendars (and daydreams) are
made. Capturing the simple beauty of such scenes is relatively easy if you keep
a few basic concepts in mind.
Because tropical beaches have such inherent prettiness, finding attractive
compositions isn't hard. For broad views, use a wide-angle lens and look for
vantage points where the curving line of the sea lures the eye into the
scene--perhaps leading to a particularly attractive palm grove or a row of
beached sailboats. In places like the Caribbean or the South Pacific, where the
sea and hillsides are close neighbors, climbing to a clearing and shooting down
at the beach below may reveal vistas unseen from sea level. Be sure to use a
small aperture (or your Landscape exposure mode), so everything is in focus
from near to far. Don't be afraid to let your designs border on abstraction;
sometimes simple arrangements of sand, sea, and sky are the most effective.
Including people (see the photograph) provides a good center of interest and
also helps establish scale, but take care with exposure. Tropical beaches are
very bright and contrasty, and the intense light reflecting off the sand will
fool your camera into turning the sugar-white sands gray and casting your human
subjects into silhouette (see Exposing for Dark and
Light Subjects). One compromise if you have an SLR or a sophisticated
point-and-shoot is to use your camera's exposure-compensation feature to add a
full stop of exposure to the suggested settings.
Better still, try working early and late in the day, when the light is less
harsh and contrast isn't such a problem. The low angle of the sun at these
times also casts long shadows that give scenes a sense of depth and
three-dimensional relief. If you are forced to work at midday, be sure to use
film with a speed of ISO 100 or slower, so you are not working beyond your
camera's available range of shutter speed and aperture combinations
M O U N T A I N
S C E N E R Y :
S C A L E
There is an important point about photographing mountains: You must include
some visual clue to indicate the true magnitude of the scene around you. Scale
(see Establishing
Size) is probably more important in shooting mountain peaks and ranges than
with any other subject.
One way to establish a sense of scale is to use a wide-angle lens (24 mm to
35 mm) or wide-zoom setting and include an immediate foreground subject--a
clump of wildflowers or a travel companion, for example. Putting close
foreground subjects into the scene helps heighten the feeling of
"presence" in mountain landscapes, but the downside is that
wide-angle shots often make the mountains appear to diminish rather than
increase in size.
To make the mountains look more imposing, use a moderate telephoto and include a middle-ground subject for scale, such as a single pine tree or a barn. A telephoto lens will compress the space between foreground or middle ground and background and enhance the apparent size of the mountains. Using a telephoto lens also exaggerates the effects of a naturally occurring phenomenon known as aerial perspective. This effect occurs when atmospheric haze makes each layer of progressively distant peaks appear lighter in tone and color. The diminishing density is perceived by the eye as distance--thus further exaggerating the scale of the scene.
A U T U M N
C O L O R S
Autumn foliage is like a long, slow-burning fireworks display. It begins by
sparking a few leaves or a branch, ignites entire trees into brilliant red-orange
embers, and then finally explodes the entire countryside into a flaming finale
of color.
To enjoy photographing the colors, just show up on time.In Connecticut, the
whole spectacle, start to finish, lasts about three or four weeks, but the peak
lasts only a few days. Vermonters will tell you that they can spot the peak hour
of color! If you're traveling to New England or any other region specifically
to shoot the autumn colors, it's a good idea to give yourself a spread of
several days. Be sure to call tourist offices or the local chamber of commerce
in advance--many have recorded leaf-peepers' updates.
Autumn foliage is one of the few subjects that can make even the most casual
snapshot attractive. To extract its essence, though, takes some thought. Most
important, try not to be so overwhelmed by the glory of it all that you miss
the leaves for the trees or the trees for the forest. In his handsome book The
View from the Kingdom, which documents life in the northeast corner of
Vermont, photographer Richard Brown illustrates autumn with eloquent pictures
that range from rambling, mist-filled vistas to giant maples aglow in a sheep
meadow to close-ups of fallen leaves beaded with rain.
Whatever the specific subject, pay particular attention to lighting. Because
the colors are so brilliant themselves, they photograph well in a variety of
lighting conditions. On sunny days work early and late, when the sun,
backlighting the leaves, creates a translucent glow. Cloudy days can be good,
too, because they tend to create a muted but very earthy spectrum of colors.
Avoid including too much gray sky, which will just appear as blank space in a
print. After a gentle rain, when the colors are intensely saturated, you can
use a polarizing filter (see Polarizing Filters)
to remove surface reflections for even richer color, as well as to deepen the
blue of a clearing sky.
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M O U N T A I N
S C E N E R Y :
L I G H T I N G The best mountain photos are made by photographers who rise before the sun
and rest only after it has. In his book Mountain Light, celebrated mountaineer
and outdoor photographer Galen Rowell writes that "light during the
magic hours [dusk and dawn] mixes in endless combinations, as if someone in
the sky were shaking a kaleidoscope." The pinks, yellows, golds, and
reds of dusk and dawn are hallmarks of his work and make Rowell's shots
instantly recognizable. At very high altitudes, just before sunrise or after sunset, nature may
also reward your dedication with a very special phenomenon called alpenglow.
This brilliant crimson glow emerges when blue light is scattered by the
atmosphere and a predominance of red light briefly ignites peaks in warm,
radiant hues. Alpenglow often illuminates the clouds around mountain peaks as
well. In addition to the continuous color changes, the raking light of dusk and
dawn imparts texture, depth, and three-dimensional form to photos of
mountains. Immediately before or after a storm are also great times to go
picture-hunting. Many of Ansel Adams's most famous portraits of Yosemite's
peaks were made in the gathering or departing turmoil of a storm. Try to
anticipate scenes where peaks disappear in descending gloom or shafts of
sunlight burst through dissipating cloud banks. One problem you will encounter at high altitudes is an excess of
ultraviolet light, which results in atmospheric haze. You can use this haze
to advantage, but if it is obscuring your subject, you may need to place a
filter over your SLR lens. A UV or strong skylight filter (81B or 81C) will
absorb some of this excess, but a polarizing filter (see Polarizing Filters)
is perhaps the most effective tool. Exposure in mountain regions can be tricky because excessive light
reflecting from haze, mist, or snowfields can trick the meter into
underexposure. When you suspect conditions may be fooling your meter, set
your exposure-compensation dial to overexpose the scene by a full stop or
bracket in full stops. |
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R I V E R S
A N D
W A T E R F A L L S Whether you're trekking through wilderness or simply strolling in the
countryside, an especially pretty river or waterfall is a visual treat. There
is something appealing and refreshing about the perpetual motion of water
that translates readily to film. One way to capture the rush and tumble of moving water is by using a slow
shutter speed and letting the water blur into shiny white, streaming ribbons.
You often see the technique used in advertising and greeting-card shots, and
it's easy to duplicate if you own an SLR that lets you choose your own
shutter speed. Start by loading your camera with a slow-speed (ISO 64 or 25) film and
setting it on a sturdy tripod. The trick is to set a shutter speed slow
enough that the water moves through the frame while the shutter is open. The
exact shutter speed will depend on the speed of the water and the degree of
blur you're after. With a fast-moving stream or waterfall or where you just
want a hint of a blur, you can use speeds as fast as 1/15 second; with
slower-moving streams or to let the ribbons of water appear to be passing
entirely through the frame, use a shutter speed of a full second or longer.
If the light is bright, you may have to put a neutral-density filter (see Creative Filters)
over the lens to cut down on the light so you can use such long exposures. And if you don't own an adjustable camera? You can sometimes trick the
camera into selecting a slow shutter speed by simply loading it with very
slow (ISO 25) film and working when the light is relatively dim. You'll still
need use a tripod, though, to keep everything other than the water steady. Of course, you can also use fast shutter speeds to halt the motion of
water. This method can be very effective with particularly tumultuous falls
or rivers. You can add power to compositions like these by finding low vantage points
so the water looks like it's going to gush right out of the print. Don't
ignore rivers and falls in winter, when freezing temperatures turn swirling
flows into fantastic frozen shapes. |