Calling all Photography nerds!

I'm a noob

 

I appreciate it! Always learning something new every time I go out.

Helps that the Tacoma is a photogenic truck!

 

Nikon D7200 w/ 35mm f1.8 Taken after 1200 miles through 5 states and the mgm still looks clean!

 

Some really good stuff in here! Might as well throw some other stuff in. Also a mini plug, instagram @joseisthenewblack

 

Nikon D750 & Nikon D810...Moab..Fremont Solstice Parade...Ocean Shores...Cannon Beach...Cascade Mountains...

 

Here are a couple of mine. I have an old camera but awesome "L" lenses, Canon.




I hate the compression of jps, they look blurry when the original is tack sharp.

 

Last 2, I promise.

 

Love it - best $160 I ever spent on camera equipment lol. Here's some different things that can be done with one:

 

Vancouver

 

@DVexile I found your post quite condescending. While good planning can indeed help one to have a better opportunity to take a good shot the conditions of said photo are beyond your control. For example, having planned a trip to the Isle of Skye for more than 2 years, knowing when usual weather windows occurred and comparing them for the past 50 years. I went to Skye... and enjoyed the worst storm in 15 years for the entire week I was there. No hiking as conditions were well too muddy, very few opportunities for photos, and all around dismal conditions. Now am I a bad photographer because I got rained out, no, I got unlucky with the weather conditions.

If you are looking to only photograph things in your area then by all means you can learn patterns and hop in your car when things are going right. But for most landscape photographers, who do photography as something other than a full time job, jumping in the car whenever the conditions are right is impractical. As someone who has been doing this for the better part of two decades out of the passion of capturing that one spectacular moment. You can know everything in the world, have things planned out perfectly, and have mother nature not show up.

People want to make better images and that takes time and knowledge, but for those that are looking for the iconic shot that lasts the test of time. That takes luck.

 

Not sure of all the details - all I can say, I've had some of the best photos come out by luck. On the flip side I've had ones I spent lots of time and effort for come out plain and uninteresting. Of course sometimes shots I take accidentally aren't always good and sometimes I like a photo I worked hard for.

Accident (hadn't set ISO, Shutter Speed, or Aperture lol):



Planned (marched a good half mile down the beach after I saw the possible outcome lol):



As long as you're having a good time that's all that matters!

 

Haven't really had the opportunity to get the new truck out yet but shoot a ton and was on the road all last year doing so. Check out my Instagram feed for more.

https://www.instagram.com/nickocean.photo/

Sony A7 II
Leica M7
Leica Glass w/ adapter
Rokinon 14mm
Rhino Slider for timelapse

Thanks

 

Yeah for trips like that you're basically at nature's discretion and it's up to the photographer to make the best of it.

For me, landscape is my main hobby, I work the job I do because I end up with 5ish days off in a row every month, which is perfect for car camping trips in the desert. I keep tabs on the weather before those long weekends and base where I go on the best chance to get photogenic weather or scattered clouds. I have been to places multiple times until I get a shot I'm happy with. I'd say for some determination/planning plays a large roll.

 

I see where you are coming from with it being condemsending in a way, but he does have a point, you can make a lot of your luck by proper planning, exploring, etc. I mean I have a schedule I made up on PhotoPills of places and compositions I've found with sunrise, sunset, and milky way photos and what time of year everything would line up "perfect" for the shot I had in mind.
But then I also see your side where it does come right down to luck, over half of those things got hindered by weather, etc. But that's what makes landscape photography one of the most enjoyable I think. I mean last year I had planned to be at a certain point in Yosemite and the perfect day and time of the year to get the milky way shooting over it and found the right trail, place to camp, etc etc. Even applying for the permit to get on the trail. Only to get there and it being socked in by clouds. But I believe good luck was on my side because I got one of my favorite landscape shots that I have taken out of it, and got to experience a avalanche off of half dome.

Me and my buddy recently went on a road trip to all the national parks in southern Utah and only had a week, so it was almost 90% luck on photos there, can't just go back to Zion tomorrow morning if I see it might be a good sunrise..

Just a few, I'm slowly editing all of them from the trip but here's a few, more on my insta @austinrauh
Horseshoe bend

Delicate Arch, Arches National Park

 

I apologize, re-reading my post I can see where you get that. But please keep in mind the post I was responding to:

I'm sorry, but that is extremely condescending itself as I read it. I doubt you meant it to be condescending though. Still saying landscapes are 99% luck and 1% photographer is to me like saying if you drop a most photographers into a photogenic location and good weather then most will take a great landscape photo because they were lucky enough to be there at that time. That is simply not true in my own personal, painful experience.

In my experience you can turn a lot of photographers loose in an iconic location with excellent gear and great weather but get a whole lot of blah photos back in return. I don't even have to leave my house to find evidence of that. I've got drawers full of a couple of thousand exposures of slide film taken over decade from which I can find only a handful of photos I might consider worth sharing with anyone today. I'd say in a single one week trip almost anywhere slightly photogenic I now return with almost as many decent photos from just that one week than I accumulated in that whole first decade. I'm pretty sure I didn't just have an unlucky first decade.

Thing is during that first decade I did think I must be unlucky. I knew which gear to carry, which film to use and where the pretty places were. I was quite proud of my ability to properly expose slide film in tricky lighting conditions almost every time. I had a polarizer, a tripod and a wide angle lens. Sometimes I shot B&W and could process my own film and prints in a student run darkroom. I read "The Negative" and understood the Zone System. I even learned exotic darkroom techniques like poly-contrast burning/dodging to alter the contrast curve of the paper in just certain regions of the print. I didn't have a lot of time or money for my photography hobby but I was able to get to pretty places like the Sierras and the Mojave maybe three or four times a year since I lived in CA then. Processed color slide film was about $0.50 per exposure and darkroom materials for B&W weren't that cheap either so I certainly didn't shoot willy-nilly and put a lot of effort into each exposure. I drove to remote places hoping to find something amazing no one else had photographed before. I backpacked deep into the Sierras because I thought difficult to get to might be the secret to finding those amazing shots others were getting that eluded me.

And what I got from all of that honest effort hauling gear and getting up on frosty mornings and crawling out of my tent before sunrise was a whole lot of blah. Yeah, put well a exposed slide of Velvia on a light table and view it with a loupe and the eye bleeding saturation curve of that film paired with good light would give me a brief sense of satisfaction. Unfortunately that feeling would quickly fade since in reality there was nothing in the photo worth holding ones attention beyond a second or two.

So what was the problem? To me, at the time, the problem was that I didn't have full time to dedicate to photography like Galen Rowell did. I mean sure, live in the Owens Valley like he did then and you'll eventually get an amazing shot of stacked lenticulars over the Owens River at sunset. Honestly, how could you not? If only I was standing pretty places often enough then I'd be around for that amazing sky, dramatic storm or perfect lighting. Deck was stacked against me, I had school and then a job to occupy my time so I simply wasn't going to get to stand in pretty places long enough to eventually get lucky.

Well, then the internet and digital photography came along. That was an eye opener as now I could see what a large set of other amateur photographers were doing. Here were "kids" with just a few years using a camera - a woefully out of date camera at that since they couldn't afford anything else - who didn't even live anywhere particularly pretty turning out amazing photos that outclassed anything I'd shot with years of effort. Sure some of those photos might have been heavily "shopped". Thing was I actually knew every esoteric photoshop technique of the day and was happy to use them but it really didn't help my photos.

About the same time I finally lived right next to pretty places and could get out every weekend to the Sierras or Death Valley. If "magic was happening" I could actually leave work early and drive some place in less than an hour to try and take advantage of the luck finally bestowed upon me. As you can probably guess the end result was still blah.

So that was it. Over a decade of honest effort to my chosen hobby. Living right next to my favorite places to photograph. Master of both the physical and the virtual darkroom. For all of that I had graduated from crap to blah. I was really good at blah by then. Could reliably get blah wherever I put myself. Couldn't really get past blah though. But I did have DSL so I could download an endless stream of vastly better photos taken by other amateurs who had lesser gear, lived ugly places and had been doing photography for a fraction of the years I had.

That was discouraging. Enough so I stopped doing any dedicated photography trips for a few years. I'm an engineer and used to analyzing evidence and seemingly random acting systems. Clearly I wasn't just unlucky, rather I just wasn't good enough at photography to get past blah. And I really didn't know why.

The real problem I had was that all I knew about composition was the rule of thirds and all I knew about light was to shoot around sunrise and sunset. My only real trip and shot planning was to go stand pretty places at the "right" times and hope nature would deliver for me. With enough internet reading it slowly started to make it into my thick head that I had to take a more active creative role in landscape photography rather that just hoping to be in the right spot to record a scene. The young whipper snappers turning out great photos all the time had somehow figured that out way faster than I ever did and spent their time learning the actually important parts of photography - composition, light and pre-visualization - not technique, equipment and standing in a pretty spot long enough.

And so realizing I had been focusing on the wrong things for so long I picked up the camera again. But I also picked up a lot of books on composition and lighting. Then I forced myself to try out what I learned around boring old Maryland where I am now cursed to live.

I bought two cheap off camera strobes and made some homemade reflectors so I could practice and understand lighting in the basement. Counter-intuitive for a landscape photographer to practice shooting in a basement with strobes. After all landscape photographers have no control over the light, or so the old me would have thought. I do, however, have control over where I stand relative to the scene and the sun. I can look at the sky or a weather forecast and know not with certainty but with good odds what kind of light I'll have to work with this afternoon and tomorrow morning. And I can know how all those elements can be arranged well in advance. I can't stand at an arbitrary place pointed in a particular direction and order up low direct side-lighting or diffuse quarter lighting. But I can know if and when direct or diffuse lighting will be available and using a map I can tell how that lighting will be oriented to the terrain and then chose when and where I should be to be able to use it.

Sure, things might not go as planned and a given shot might get skunked by unexpected weather. Thing is before I was skunking my own shots by not even planning for where and what quality of light I'd have relative to the scene. I mean honestly I was almost comically bad at this in hindsight. I sort of knew it when I'd end up kicking myself for bad planning but failed to take the hint. One time I laboriously hiked up a ridge in the Panamint Mountains in Death Valley for sunset. I setup my tripod and dutifully metered everything just right. Then watched the sun go down and took a few exposures (facing west, there were some nice cirrus that way) at peak color. It was a going to be a pretty good shot I thought at the time. Packed everything up and began picking my way back down the ridge. I had never in all this time looked southeast. I was standing there for like half an hour. Never turned around. Halfway down the ridge I looked up for a moment saw what I now know was predictably obvious - diffuse quartering light across snow covered peaks with a brilliant pink/blue terminator in the sky right above. Too low down the ridge I ran like mad back up but didn't win the race with the light. I still have a few hasty motion blurred exposures of what could have been - first of good light with the wrong composition down the ridge and then the right composition after the light was gone from higher on the ridge.

Same story on composition. Never took the time to understand it in depth. I can go back through that drawer or look at my early days of digital shots and find so many shots that I just smack my forehead looking at them these days. Then it was nebulous to me what was wrong with the photo. I knew it wasn't that good but was pretty clueless as to what was making it not feel right. I just didn't have the knowledge about composition to analyze what was wrong with a photo after the fact much less have the ability to create a better composition in the field.

So in the end I spent a whole summer reading about where I thought my weaknesses were (composition and lighting) and then carefully planned a ten day trip out to Death Valley. I'd shot there and other pretty places many times before and gotten not much. Occasionally I'd actually planned one or two things right and then through luck or slowly earned intuition actually get something nice to come together - but it was all unpredictable and seemed like magic and luck when it happened. Many trips I came back with nothing or just a single photo I considered "worthy" in some way.

This time I had a number of locations I wanted to be in certain lighting - I checked where the sun or band of twilight would be relative to the terrain. In many cases I hadn't been to the location before or had little recollection of it but from a map I could tell orientation of terrain and relief so that I knew where I should drive or hike to be in relation to the scene and the light source. I had a few pre-visualized compositions I was going to try and execute if the conditions were right. So instead of wandering around hoping to find a composition spring up at me I already had a composition in my head and went looking for the elements to make the shot.

This was a total revelation of a trip. Suddenly everything was almost too easy. Sure not everything went perfect, somethings I thought would be great spots I couldn't find anything to work with there or the weather failed to give me the light I had expected. But the return rate on photos was through the roof for me. Here are some picks from that first trip where I actually as an active landscape photographer controlling the situation and not just hoping for nature to deliver for me:

​

Maybe not the best photos in the world, but for me it was unlike anything I was ever able to do before. I hadn't collected that many photos that good in my previous almost two decades of photograph up to that point. If I came back from a week long trip in the past with even a single one of those shots I would have considered the trip a raging success.

Of course a trip can get stormed out, equipment can break or whatever. I've had more than one trip go sour do to things beyond my control. The question is what about the majority of the time when the weather is passable.

Not what I was trying to say, but if my poor writing made you think that then I understand why you'd be offended. Turn it the other way around is what I meant. Give many photographers perfect conditions and they still won't come up with much worth sharing with anyone. I spent more than a decade in perfect weather turning out blah after blah photograph.

I live on the east coast. I get out to photograph where I like to in the west usually two weeks at most a year. I've learned it is even more important for me to plan ahead and be thinking in the field how to make the most out of my very limited time. I lived in the middle of all that beauty for a bit over three years and I have essentially nothing photographically to show for it despite my best efforts of the time because I was always thinking about needing nature to be lucky for me. Turns out I had it all backwards and as far as photographic opportunity goes wasted that entire three years of near perfect living location.

Again, I mostly disagree. Yes, bad luck can ruin an opportunity. Good conditions are often a necessary condition but they are not a sufficient condition. Certainly that once in a lifetime parting storm clouds with shaft of light on just the right part of the scene has a large amount of luck to it. But go look at the masters' works - most of their iconic shots were taken in very routine conditions in which they used their knowledge and experience to make the most of it.

I hope I haven't been putting words into your mouth! But I reacted to your post because it perfectly described (in my interpretation of what you said) the perspective I long held that trapped me in failure after failure as an amateur photographer. Landscape photographers actually have enormous control over their situation. I didn't think that way for a long time and because of where I live now compared to where I lived then I probably lost more photographic opportunities than I'll ever have again in my life. But the upside is now I'm so vastly more productive that in one week I can produce more than I would in years of effort in the past. And what shocked me was how little effort it actually took to make that huge improvement. I was just thinking the wrong way for a large portion of the life of my hobby.

 

I find it amusing how a one line response about being lucky is more condescending than the books you are writing. The difference between you and me is that when asked for help or to evaluate someone's photography I would go into explanations as to how they could improve. In a friendly and informative way, I wouldn't blurt out about knowing all of these things in order to show I'm better than someone else.

In response to your summation landscape photographers have immense control of the location and when they put themselves in that location as well as how to properly use their camera, lenses, filters, etc. They do not have any control over what happens. Cloud inversions in the Grand Canyon, luck. Animal interactions in photos, luck. Being an educated and prepared photographer can take you a good way, but the difference between good and incredible is out of your control.

 

Well, I'm sorry you feel that way. I agree some things are out of your control. Having read and talked to a number of landscape photographers who are at least a lot better than me they have typically said the difference between good and incredible is very much in the photographer's control. Not in every instance, but over the long haul for sure. Again, look at the landscape masters of the past and note a large fraction of their "incredible" shots were taken in mundane conditions available almost the year round. Yep, there are a lot of impressive shots taken in transient weather but there are plenty more taken in average climate conditions.

If my writing style came off as "know it all" then I'm sorry, to me the best teaching is by example and the only examples I have that I know how they came together are my own. I can recommend books with better examples taken by better photographers if anyone is interested. It was very helpful for me to read how photographers planned a composition or location in advance and how they used their planning to execute a shot with what nature delivered in the field. What wasn't helpful to me were dramatic stories of photographers rushing against the once in a decade weather event to capture a suddenly "new" view of El Capitan draped in breaking clouds but taken from the same heavily trodden meadow as a few million other El Cap shots. Yep, the weather made that photo. Reality is you can go make amazing photos in otherwise "boring" weather day in and day out.

I don't consider "get lucky" to be particularly informative advice, in fact I find it caustic to budding photographers. I was simply trying to give examples of how a person can take control of the situation to reduce the amount of frustration in getting good or possibly incredible landscape shots. I did so precisely because I wasted a lot of time myself thinking I just needed the weather to cooperate with me to get better photos. It was incredibly helpful to me to realize that wasn't the case at all. Certainly no one can be very successful taking photos in white-out conditions in the mountains or in 70 mph winds in the desert, but most of the time results come from taking what is available and working with it rather than pining for glorious rare weather events. You really don't need a cloud inversion to take an incredible photo in the Grand Canyon - the weather that is there 90% of the days will do just fine.

EDIT: I'll add this is probably one of those things where we agree 95% and the rest is down to semantics and interpretation. So I'll shut up and stop arguing now. But nice photos BTW.

 

Your setup for birding is great.

My dad had a 7DMK1 and uses the 70-200 2.8L and 400mm 5.6 for birding. Both great lenses for the purpose. He shoots a 1dMk4 now but complains about the 1.3x crop vs the 1.6x of the 7d. The 400mm 5.6 is one of the sharpest lenses I've ever used. Absolutely stunning if you can keep the shutter speed up or have a steady hand.

I shoot a 6DMk1 and 90% of the time use a 70-200 F/4L and a 35MM 2.0 IS USM (non-L) for landscaping. I keep the kit 24-105L around for walkarounds, but find with the full frame the 70-200 and the 35mm are really the only lenses I keep putting on.

 

For being new to the sport you got some seriously good gear, very much similar to what I shoot with. You have a great setup for some excellent portraits, landscapes, and just "touristy" shots too. Master that equipment and it will treat you very well.

 

I am of the thought that I don't take pictures, I make pictures...most of my photos are serendipitous but one does need to know their equipment and adjust for the conditions...and know some adjustments in post...the most important thing for me is that my camera is always in the back seat...and just be there...the rest is fun...