DPC Mentorship - Landscape/Scenery

07/24/2005 02:03:13 PM · #126

Originally posted by nshapiro:

Not for an assignment, but on topic, here's a panorama I took on my ride yesterday. This is a really pretty area of the river, and just trying to capture it. Unfortunately, I usually only have my S1 on my bike, but at least it has a panorama mode to make up for the lack of wide angle.

I thought the clouds were pretty, even though a bad time of day!

It has a nice feel to it full size, but loses a bit in the reduction (it's a four image panorama)

Very pretty, and the light's not bad at all either. In extreme wide angle this is frequently true, see next post for why.

R.

07/24/2005 02:11:10 PM · #127

Here's an example of an extreme wide angle shot (10mm on my 20D) that illustrates how the very nature of the light changes as you sweep across a wide arc. There are strong elements of backlighting, and nearly as strong elements of raking light: on the right side of the image it's totally backlit, in the foreground backlighting dominates, but as we move left the lighting in the BG changes to a strong, raking light.

Remember the original exercise where we changed our orientation and used the same light in different ways? Imagine that in this shot I was using, say, a 100 nn lens. Bear in mind that the angular coverage of my 10mm is nearly 100 degrees (!). So if I used the 100mm to shoot the foliage in the left BG, the light would be right on my right shoulder at 90 degrees, and it would be true raking light on the foliage. Now I rotate over 90 degrees to shoot the inlet on the roght, and I'm shooting directly into the light, basically; same light, but in that shot it would be backlighting.

So here, in a single extreme wide angle shot, I have BOTH backlighting and raking light, changing as the eye moves throught he image. the light itself is a constant; no light "is" one thing or the other, it's just light. It's the relationship of a the light to your subjects/surfaces that provide the definition of the "nature" of that light.

This goes to show, btw, that you have to be VERY sensitive to the light when shooting extreme wide angle.

Robt.

07/24/2005 02:24:29 PM · #128

Duplicate Post from the Natural Light Thread

Originally posted by DustDevil:

On a sside note. I think I have learned alot about lighting. I am alot more concious of it before I shoot. But I am fidning even when I go out in the "golden hours". I either cannot move the subject or move to where I can get more dramatic ligthing. Do I just wait until I can and forget shooting?

Most of the stuff I shoot is pretty far from the beaten path..I am hanging on ledges and crawling with snakes and sliding down with rock / dirt slides.

On Saturday (23rd of july) me and singsunshine went on a 480 mile road trip for 12 hours into Colorado. The sun would peak out then go away...the mountains were 10,000-14,000 feet all around us and sometime were in 8,000 feet beneath them. So they often blocked out most of the early light and late light.

I guess I am just finding it hard to find available light...I mean I go and find something I like and if the lighting is good I shoot. If it is not I still shoot. I am just finding it frustrating because I have no control of the lighting.

That is the lament of the landscape photographer, yes. It can be incredibly frustrating. In one sense there's absolutely nothing you can do, assuming you are on a schedule and must move on. In the best of all possible worlds, you'd have time on your hands and set up camp for days on end while waiting for the light; some of my best pictures resulted from such an approach. On the other hand, some of my best shots were happy accidents, seeing the light and leaping out of the car to set up the view camera in a desperate rusha gainst time.

One of Ansel's most famous images, "Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico" was just such an accident. And Ansel was notorious for camping on a shot. The willingness to exhibit extreme patience is one of the defining characteristics of great landscape photographers, sensitivity to light being the other. They go hand-in-hand, of course. I can only advise that you learn the zen of shooting in a larger time-frame; fewer images, less movement, more waiting.

It's perfectly fine, of course, to rocket through the landscape snatiching whatever presents, but only by happy coincidence will you ever encounter the defining light if you do this. Still,t here's a vast middleground perfectly decent images that please tremendous numbers of people that are made with workmanlike, even pedestrian, light on the landscape. You just have to accept what you can get.

The preceding post (of the inlet at sunrise) is a fairly good example of defining light, and it was created "intentionally" yesterday morning; I knew the conditions I wanted, I knew where I wanted to be and what time I wanted to be there, and I drove 20 minutes at dawn to accomplish the shot... It's hard to imagine "better" light for that scene and that mood.

R.

07/24/2005 02:49:14 PM · #129

Backlighting Assignment

And just for fun (strong light):

Tamron SP AF 28-75mm f/2.8 XR Di for Canon

07/24/2005 09:06:33 PM · #130

Originally posted by cpanaioti:

Backlighting Assignment

And just for fun (strong light):

The "strong light" shot is actually FLAT light; the lights directly behind you, as evinced by your shadow within the image. The "backlight" shots are certainly that, LOL. They seem overprocessed though, unnaturaly edgy.

R.

rblanton

Canon EOS-10D

07/25/2005 02:03:15 AM · #131

Subject backlit this time, though light is dappled.

Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6

07/25/2005 02:12:56 AM · #132

yup, that's backlighting Blanton.

Robt.

tristalisk

Canon EOS-350D Rebel XT

07/25/2005 07:55:19 AM · #133

I had a decent shot with good backlighting. Unfortunately it was too good I had to use it as a challenge entry. I will shoot somthing else after work today.

tristalisk

Canon EOS-350D Rebel XT

Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6

07/27/2005 09:27:29 AM · #134

So is this forum dead?

Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED

07/27/2005 11:25:21 AM · #135

Maybe everyone's out shooting?

R.

Neil

Fujifilm X-T30

07/27/2005 11:37:08 AM · #136

Originally posted by bear_music:

Maybe everyone's out shooting?

R.

How about assignment 3?

07/27/2005 01:44:40 PM · #137

Originally posted by bear_music:

Originally posted by cpanaioti:
Backlighting Assignment

And just for fun (strong light):

The "strong light" shot is actually FLAT light; the lights directly behind you, as evinced by your shadow within the image. The "backlight" shots are certainly that, LOL. They seem overprocessed though, unnaturaly edgy.

R.

I should have been using a graduated ND filter instead of relying on the highlights/shadows adjustment in post processing. The two landscapes were metered off the sky and then adjusted in PS.

Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6

07/27/2005 03:37:01 PM · #138

ASSIGNMENT 3: ZOOMING IN ON THE LANDSCAPE

Many times we find ourselves getting stuck in a wide-angle rut where we feel that it's necessary to cram everything into our shots. The end result is an image that's full of detail and relatively devoid of interest. It's not just a matter of "composition", although often wide-angle shots suffer from lack of a dominant focal point or other compositional device to accomodate and guide the viewer. It's more often just that we can "tell the story" better by abstracting some portion of the landscape and zoom in in on it to examine it in great detail.

Take a landscape shot at extreme wide angle. Post the opriginal and an alktered version, side by side. In the altered version I want you to crop out somethign like half or 75% of the original, narrowing your focus down (as it were) to a component part of the whole that seems to convey the entire message of the scene in its detail.

You need not shoot specifically for this assignment; you are encouraged to look through older pictures and find one that illusrtates this point well.

Please note that I amNOT encouraging, as a general practice, the shooting of wide angle followed by extreme cropping in PP. Rather, I'm using this as an exercise in seeing after the fact, so that next time you go out into the landscape to shoot you will be conditioned to consider adding some telephoto details to your wide-angle masters.

Also note that when I say shoot the original at "extreme" wide angle, obviously I mean "as wide as your system will let you go. I assume everyone has some sort of wide angle capapbility since they are in a landscape class.

Robt.

[i]Edit to Add: Don't worry if the cropped view is not tecnically up to snuff as far as sharpness and noise. This is an exercise in seeing, not in post-production. Just isolate some small portion of the whole that is capable of conveying whatever you intended the whole to convey.

Message edited by author 2005-07-27 15:52:46.

tristalisk

Canon EOS-350D Rebel XT

07/27/2005 03:45:09 PM · #139

woo hoo I can handle this lesson. Thanks bear for keeping the mentorship rolling.

07/27/2005 03:45:53 PM · #140

Example using one of the previously posted images...

07/27/2005 03:50:03 PM · #141

Originally posted by cpanaioti:

Example using one of the previously posted images...

These are two separate shots, right? They show that you are already doing this int he field, wide and closer look both. But for this exercise, please find a shot (or shots) where you didn't cover yourself, one where you later looked at it and said "I wish I'd zoomed in on this or that when I took this."

Robt.

Message edited by author 2005-07-27 15:51:11.

07/27/2005 03:52:17 PM · #142

Two separate shots, two different days. I had the WA lens the first day and wished I had the zoom so took the zoom the second day.

Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED

07/27/2005 03:53:42 PM · #143

Originally posted by cpanaioti:

Two separate shots, two different days. I had the WA lens the first day and wished I had the zoom so took the zoom the second day.

Right. Exactly what the exercise is meant to encourage, minus the "extra day" aspect of it, LOL.

Robt.

Neil

Fujifilm X-T30

07/27/2005 11:54:18 PM · #144

I had to drive my son to Troy tonight, on the way home I stopped at my favorite spot on the bike path and river, but this time with my SLR and 10-22mm lens(since I was driving instead of biking). The cloud cover was interesting, and of course, 3-4 minutes after I started down the bike path to the spot, it started raining, but I hung around long enough to take 10 shots or so. Here was my favorite, and it's backlit, so meets the second assignment here.

This was shot in RAW, and I processed it to taste. And as soon as I start reducing it, I end up with more processing to get rid of artifacts I see when I reduce and then try to sharpen to compensate.

Please let me know what you think.

07/28/2005 12:20:03 AM · #145

Assignment #3:

Original shot -

Zooming in - (crop from the shot above) -

... and just for fun, a reflected rabbit -

Message edited by author 2005-07-28 00:20:31.

07/28/2005 01:00:33 AM · #146

Originally posted by nshapiro:

That's an exceptionally nice image, neil. It also foreshadows the next assignment :-) It's a really good example of a muted sort of backlighting, speaking of the assignment ot which it's directed.

Robt.