Outdoor Photography Passions

From Behind The Camera

The world of a photographer can be an interesting one. The world of an outdoor and nature photographer can be a dangerous and thrilling one as well. Take all of the "stuff" that makes a photographer do what they do and add in mountain climbing, rock hopping and river rafting and you have only scratched the surface.

There is something about nature that reaches out to these people in a way even the most avid "tree hugger" might not understand. Photographers tend to be more intimate with their passion and craft. There are very few obstacles that would deter a truly dedicated and not very medicated outdoor photographer from stretching the fear envelope just to get a shot of a simple flower.

One of the things most outdoor photographers hear when they finally display their images with price tags is, "Oh that's a fine image, but I would not pay that much for it when I can go out and photograph that myself." Inside, the photographer may want to choke the person to death, but on the other hand there's the satisfaction of knowing that the person who just made that statement has no idea of the efforts that go into taking these photographs and will most likely never be able to come close to what they are wanting.

The outdoor photographer is part artist, part mad scientist and part mountain man. They need to have the artist's eye for seeing beyond the apparent, the scientists knowledge of wavelength mechanics and the mountain man's ability to surpass almost everything nature throws at them. One almost over looked facet of the photographer is their dedication to their equipment. A photographer will protect their equipment as if it were their first born. They even are very steadfast in brands and equipment formats.

So what makes these people the breed that they are? Like any other person who is passionate about something, there is something within them that is uniquely bent towards totally immersing themselves into whatever it is that they do. These people are not in it for the money or fame. They do this because of some inner force that drives them to excel on a more personal level of satisfaction. If it were not for the pressure from friends and family, they would probably never show their work to others outside their little circles. They tend to reveal little parts of themselves through their work like most artists do, thus making their work a bit too personal for others to really get it.

As a group, outdoor and nature photographers tend to share the basic insights, but each has their own style of presentation. Each can identify what another did on the technical front, but rarely ever see exactly what the other was really after. Once a photographer goes commercial or professional, their work will tend to reflect less of their inner self and more of the purist view of the subject. Their images will maintain the punch and technical perfection, but a personal preference will often be put aside to appeal to publication editors and the masses. The artist is thus caged deeply within the rules of composition. On their own they may bend or twist a rule here and there just so they can push the limitations of their talents and expression.
So the question is," Where do the rules take over the passion and artistic freedom of expression?" or "What makes a great photograph?" The answer is simply this, " Beauty is in the eye of the beholder . . . " Each editor or viewer of an image will interpret what is right and wrong about an image. They will see things the photographer may have dismissed. They will reject things the photographer found important to the shot. Each photograph is a canvass of many levels. Remember the next time you view any photographer's work that you are viewing a piece of them as well. You don't have to understand it to appreciate it, just understand that the photographer went to great lengths to capture this scene and bring to you a moment in time and places you were not able to witness first hand.

From Beside The Camera

From Colorado's mountain country to the South's Bayou regions, or the forests of Maine, whatever you love, whatever you fancy, nature photography can be a unique way to enjoy the great outdoors at a different level. A level that includes the photographer surely, but others as well. Though at times an artistic loner, the nature photographer is often accompanied by one or more companions drawn by the same appreciation of the natural world and a desire to experience it more deeply than before. This is when nature photography becomes a hobby that envelopes everyone along for the ride, whether they are behind the camera or not. In fact, it could be compared to a team sport in many ways, with the photographer and his companions collaborating towards the end result of a perfect shot and a perfect day out on the trail, with great memories of laughter and trials shared in the years to come.

Most often, the photographers' companions are family members or friends, though they are often students as well. Whoever they are, they are as passionate as the photographer about getting outside, whether it is a love of hiking and camping, or birding and wildflower identification. Often they carry the poet's soul within them, feeling a deep connection with the wilderness. Regardless of the draw for this diverse group of people, they share a true sense and spirit of adventure with the photographer. They have discovered that looking through the viewfinder at what the photographer sees before he takes the shot adds a dimension to their experience they could not have gotten otherwise. Just as the lens brings the scenic beauty before them into focus, so it brings into focus their emotional response to all they are immersed in. The sharing of adventure and perceptions can be a real bonding force between photographer and companion as they interact with the wild and with each other. The nature photographer's desire to have impact on others through his work is first felt at the response of his companions as they are the first to see his work, and to truly appreciate all that was required to produce those incredible shots. There is a love affair with the subject being shot that both have at different, but complementary levels.

Nature photography can be physically demanding and risky at times, but no one knows this better than his companions. Hiking at high elevation for hours to find the ultimate wildflower shot or watching the photographer perch precariously on slick boulders near a sheer drop off to capture that waterfall, can also be emotionally taxing. But this intensity is part of the attraction for those who choose to go out with him in the field. The photographer also can end up in some often humorous circumstances and reveal his whimsical side unexpectedly, as he goes with the flow downstream or runs uninhibited through fields of flowers on the other side of the hill, making him as interesting a study as the subjects he is shooting for his companions, often devoted people watchers. And what better place to do that than by observing HIM out in the field while he is completely preoccupied? The mixture of challenge and entertainment are another part of the draw for companions to be there in the first place.

Companions also typically are the photographer's cheerleaders, offering up encouragement and support for his desire to pursue this art. Their enthusiasm to him and his work can be contagious and give fuel to the photographer, as they climb that extra mile or two to see that hidden lake or to just check out what is around the next bend in the trail. That desire to explore the unknown can go hand in hand with the photographer's desire to document it on film, and they play off of each other creating a whole new set of possibilities. Family and friends tend to be honest as opposed to flattering when asked about a composition and as iron sharpens iron, these conversations offer at least the potential for better shots, and relationships.

Beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder, but beauty shared is beauty possessed forever. That is the joy and reward of the bond between the photographer and his companions and the whole point.

Photo Art vs Photography and Filters

With the world of digital photography and the ever growing capabilities of cameras and computer software tricks one can employ to make better or unique images comes the point of more is less and less is more. When I first jumped into the digital fray I thought I could just do everything like I did when I shot film. Needless to say my journey into digital photography was met with many setbacks in one way or another.

While the basic concepts stayed pretty much the same, techniques had to change and the mental process of how I expose an image drastically changed. Over time cameras have advanced leaps and bounds and alongside that, imaging software has grown in size and wizardry. In fact, I think that instead of making things easier, the technology has in some ways compounded the process of creating great images.

Being a outdoor landscape and nature photographer I strive to make my images appear as they did the moment I saw them as natural as possible. I did this with film and I continue to do this digitally. I want the process of making an image to be 80% done in the camera if possible maybe a little more, but I know I will have to do some post processing of my images in software to make them as perfect as the real scene I photographed. I feel this is the point where a photographer can change their focus from being as pure a photographer as possible or become a photo-artist.

To define the difference between the two would be to enter a fuzzy grey zone, but for myself I define it as follows; A photographer is one who relies mostly upon their ability to compose and expose an image as expertly as possible using only the basic rules of composition and techniques of photography in the camera, only using post production to size, clean and proof images for the resulting photograph. A Photo-Artist captures one image with their camera utilizing many if not all of the same techniques of the photographer but when they enter post production the image can and often will change into an image the artist had in their imagination and taking on characteristics that are too good to be true.

I am in no way saying that the Photo-Artist is in any way the lesser of the two, rather I am just defining the differences of how the two work. I appreciate Photo-Art and often try to do it myself, but know that at this point my expertise with imaging software beyond fixing dust spots and correcting tone or cropping is vastly limited.

In an earlier article I talked about what HDR is and how I understand it is accomplished with imaging software but it was only my understanding from my limited experience with it. I am asked by friends who are starting out in photography or expanding their knowledge how I accomplish the same results without utilizing HDR software or techniques in imaging software.

I often surprise them with the simplistic approach I take to photographing nature in that I utilize the basic concepts of exposure and composition, just as I did when I shot film. When I shot film I made a promise to myself not to use anything that would result in an image that had unreal or un-natural effects. I wanted to be able to capture the scenery I saw the way it was and to leave the image unaltered as much as possible.

End of lens filters were and still are a large part of photography. The great pioneer Ansel Adams didn’t shy away from using filters in his work, nor did he shy away from applying some magic in the darkroom. One of the techniques he pioneered was the “Zone System” which allowed photographers to more accurately create images that emulated what our eyes could see when we composed our images in natural lighting.

The type of filtering Adams used were corrective filters that filtered out wavelengths of light that the camera and film could not do as naturally as our eyes and minds could. I try and do much the same with my own photography. Instead of using filters that may add rainbows, stars and other effects that do not or did not appear naturally in the scene or add colors other effects that changed the image to appear somewhat naturally as different in time of day, season or effected by weather.

When I use filters, I use them to correct for the limitations all cameras posses with accurately balancing different types of light in different types of conditions. Our eyes can adjust to register millions if not more differences in light so that we see things clearly with natural colors and tones. The camera can only balance a small fraction of the light our eyes can see.

To help my camera correct for its limitations I use filters more commonly called corrective filters. Polarizing, Neutral Density Filters, Color Intensifiers, or enhancing filters do exactly that. They correct how the camera and sensor see light and render images closer to how we would with our naked eye. Just as our eyes often are over loaded with light forcing us to wear shaded or sunglasses our cameras are even more sensitive.

When choosing glasses for your eyes you try to pick out the best optical quality and therefore you would obviously want the same for your camera. When I buy filters and use them on my camera I want the best optical quality to have the most natural results. I use Singh Ray filters on all of my lenses for two reasons. Because I own lenses with varying diameters and sometimes use more than one filter at a time, I want to only buy each filter once due to the expense of each filter. Now to simplify that even more I use two particular filters only. I use the Singh Ray Color Intensifying Polarizer and the Singh Ray 3 Stop Soft Step Gradual Neutral Density filter.

The Polarizer does exactly what it sounds like it does, but the Neutral Density filter is the real magic maker. It allows me to shoot balanced exposures in High Contrast Lighting or High Dynamic Range while balancing the exposures.

This is a point that computer software and HDR techniques come in. While there are programs that do the job, I have found in many cases the results don’t come out as natural as I would want and I end up spending even more time in front of a computer working on images I could have balanced just as effectively in a fraction of the time using corrective filters on the lens. Note, you can achieve the same natural results, but the technique while touted as simple often take far more time to master consistently and you end up using up more memory space on your digital cards that could be holding more images of different compositions.

Neutral density graduated filters are given numbers which tell you exactly how many stops of light they're going to reduce the brightness by. The filters come in three strengths, although there are two ways used by different manufacturers of indicating those strengths:

The whole reason for using a neutral density graduated filter is to control the exposure difference between the sky and the ground, so we need to take control of the light metering to make full use of the effect. Ideally, we set our cameras to full manual so that the settings don't change when we start using the filter.

The first step is to determine the strength of filter we need. The simplest method is to take a meter reading with the ground filling the whole of the frame without the filter in place. Now repeat this step but this time with the sky filling the frame. The difference between these two readings will indicate the strength of graduated filter that you need. A 1-stop difference in the readings will need a 0.3 ND graduated filter, a 2-stop difference a 0.6 ND grad, while a 3-stop difference will require a 0.9 ND grad. The most often used filter for me is the 3-stop (0.9 ND one), with the 2-stop (0.6 ND) being used only occasionally. I rarely ever use my ND Grad filter in conjunction with a Polarizing filter.

So, if you're only going to buy one graduated neutral density filter, the 0.9 ND ( 3 Stop SS ND Grad ) is the one to buy. The soft step makes the graduation of the filter more natural and easier over all to work with so that we do not need to hide the point where the lens gets darker or lighter as much or at all.

Once we have decided on the filter we need, use the meter reading we took from the foreground to take our shot. All graduated filters need careful positioning to get the best effect.

To make the most of this our camera, affix the camera securely to a tripod. This is always a good idea for landscape shots anyway. This allows us to slide the filter accurately into position, so the transition from clear to dark falls on the horizon. If our camera has a depth-of-field preview facility that stops the lens down while we are looking through the viewfinder then use it. The darker viewfinder image will make it easier to see the position of the filter.

Important note! If we are using a Polarizing filter with the ND Grad, we need to consider the dramatic drop in light so consider using a ND Grad filter that is not as strong such as the 0.06 ND or 2 Stop SS ND Grad.

It is my opinion that using corrective filters over post production renders more natural images. For one, you can compare the resulting image with the real scene with our own eyes while still at the location where once we leave the location and get in front of a computer screen, we’re left to our memory or imagination which is not always correct.