Tales of a stressy landscaper

Tribley Farm in Grange Villa, County Durham is fast becoming one of my favourite spots of the year to shoot landscapes. What I like about it is the wide open views to the east and the west, making it ideal for shooting both sunrises and sunsets. In the morning you can turn you camera to the west and shoot the dawn light hitting the landscape as the sun appears above the horizon and for evening shoots, it’s great to swing 180 degrees and capture the last light of the day illuminating the fields to the east.

            On this morning I chose to shoot towards the coast and get the ball of the sun as it appeared, with the landscape below it. Quite a simple task usually- all you have to do is set-up and wait, shooting the pre-dawn light whist you do so. Dawn is absolutely my favourite time to shoot- it’s quiet, calm and I love the sense of solitude you get from being one of the few people crazy enough to be out of bed at such a ridiculous hour! However, at the same time I tend to find it stressful. I do it every time; get up with loads of time to spare (like- up to 2 hours before dawn, depending on where I’m traveling to) get out on location (which I’ve usually scouted out in the daytime to plan my shots) set-up my gear and then start the wait. Yet every time the sun starts to show up I start panicking! I know it makes no sense, but I always find something wrong with my equipment at that key moment, or I decide I don’t like my shooting angle after all- or in the case of this morning, I’m suddenly bugged by flare.

You are always going to get some flare when shooting into the sun like this, even with a lens hood and UV/Skylight filter, but this time it was rendering many of my shots unusable and I couldn’t find the cause. I Ended up running up and down the length of the field I was in, trying to get a different angle, but nothing was helping. Being of a nervous disposition, this wasn’t making the experience all that enjoyable- they probably heard me swearing in Penshaw (about 10 miles away or something!) Eventually I concluded that it was something to do with my ND Grad Filter and upon inspecting it I found a small scratch that was showing up like hell with the lens stopped down. It wasn’t a problem at other times of day, but with the sun this low and shining straight down the lens… I removed the filter, concluding that I will need to invest in a new one and shot the rest of my images bracketed, so as to merge them later in Photoshop. See some of the morning's shots below.

It was around about now that my blood pressure started to rocket

I loved the mist that started to roll in- there was literally that one patch infront of the sun

Shot wide open at f/2.8 to trow the background out of focus

Also shot with a 70-200mm lens

Cropped to 5 x 4 - I figured if I could pretend I was shooting larger format film it would make me feel like a better photographer. Eat  your heart out Joe Cornish!

 It would seem fitting that for future dawn shoots such as this I should take the advice of some of my friends (yes I have some…) and “Chillax.” The term, whist not sounding wholly dissimilar to something you’d use to treat an ice burn (or constipation), seems to have a lot of meaning these day, especially to a stressed-out landscape photographer. After all a dawn shooter is probably that above all else- chilly.

A slightly tricky sunset shoot

The other day I finally found time to head out at dusk for a landscape shoot. This time I headed to a place called Waldridge, County Durham and back to a location I’d been a few days before during the day. I’d thought then that it would be a good spot to shoot in the Golden Hours (dusk or dawn) due to its open views looking both east and west. Plus there was a lovely big cornfield which looked great in bad light; I knew it would look stunning in more directional lighting.

I arrived about half an hour before the sun was due to set (I would have liked to have been there earlier but it wasn’t possible that day) and got set up. I was using my Manfrotto 190XPROB tripod with ball head in case I wanted to take a panorama; this set-up is just that bit easier to use for panos compared to my Camlink system.

It was around about now that I could see my problem. The light wasn’t doing quite what I wanted it to this evening; instead of a nice bright sun on the horizon, sending long beams of golden light onto the corn in my foreground the clouds that had now turned up from nowhere were diffusing the light to such an extent that much of the landscape looked very flat. There just wasn’t any contrast to speak of. I walked up and down the width of the field and changed lenses/focal lengths numerous times, but I couldn’t seem to get a composition that worked.  What made matters worse was the fact I was distracted by a bold looking deer who was peering at me over the next hill with an expression that could only be described as amusement! Would I be paranoid to assume it was laughing at me? Probably.

Composed of 3 images manually merged in Photoshop using layers

I liked the geometric patterns the wires created and the gradation of colour from firy red to purple-blue in the sky

Not sure if there's too much empty space on the left side. What do people think?

Anyway, I eventually decided that the best option was to cut out most of the foreground and make the illuminated clouds my main subject. I chose a longer set of focal lengths between 100 and 200mm and focussed of the coloured sky with the line of pylons leading into the distance. I actually found that the masts made quite good subjects in their own right, silhouetted against the fiery colours of the sunset; my shots ended up with quite a Texan feel to them, except these were power lines rather than oil wells! They’re quite industrial-looking images which I think actually have a fair bit of impact. Pylons aren’t beautiful but they are intriguing. Compositionally these photos aren’t perfect, but all can say is at least I came away with something to talk about!      

Equipment

I was shooting with my Canon EOS 7D and because I wanted to isolate the horizon detail I shot the whole time with a 70-200mm lens set at f/5.6 (this lens’ sharpest aperture) As usual I used a cable release and hotshoe spirit level. Since the light levels were low I stuck to manual focus for most of the time and used the magnified view in live view to confirm focus.

Comments are welcome.

See ya…!

A really stressful coast shoot

Yesterday I spent the afternoon shooting at the coast at South Shields, Tyne and Wear. My location for the shoot was a small, isolated cove called (rather unimaginatively) ‘The Cove’ in rock climbing circles. I like this setting because it seems surprisingly little known and it’s rare that you see anyone in there (apart from the odd climber.) Great! A good location, a private setting where it’s unlikely to have people wandering through my shots, a nice overcast day with soft, wrapping light, what could go wrong? Well I’m a complete fool. That’s what! To my surprise and immediate frustration, when I got out my camera I found a glaring lack of quick release plate. Like a pillock I’d left it at home and what was more irritating was the fact it usually stays on my camera 100% of the time- I’d only removed it this time to make it easier to apply a screen protector to my LCD. I had the tripod, but no way of attaching my camera to it! Many expletives ensued since my main purpose for traveling to the coast was to capture the sea using slow shutter speeds during the day through via an ND filter. There was no possibility of getting the shots I was after shooting handheld because the shutter was going to be open for several seconds per exposure. I therefore had to improvise- I may not have a useable tripod but I still had my camera bag, a worthy camera support substitute. I climbed down into the cove and want straight to the water’s edge to see how I could position my gear safely, without everything I owned getting a bath! The main problem I had was the angle of the pebble beach- in this particular bay the beach is greatly undulated, with pebbles and shingle piled up in waves; getting the camera to lie straight wasn’t easy and I didn’t want the camera to flop forwards into a rock pool. I had my spirit level with me which helped and the 7D has a built-in virtual horizon, so combined they gave me a better idea of how well I was coping ‘tripodless.’

4 secs, f/32, ISO100 @ 73mm, Polarizer, ND8

For the first shot here the ground I had my bag rested on was particularly uneven and getting the horizon level was proving to be a bit of a nightmare:- I therefore opted to just take the picture and crop it later, which is what I did; on this occasion I thought a square crop worked well (6in x 6in.)



2 secs, f/22, ISO 100 @ 17mm, Polarizer, ND8



For this second image I was right down at the waterline, squatting amongst some rock pools. I was quite nervous as I didn’t know how fast I could react to the incoming tide (usually I could confidently grab the tripod legs and go.) I quickly managed to get a level shot this time, but I now couldn’t get the lens to stay level; it kept flopping forward. Inspiration! I pushed a pebble under the lens hood to hold it up for the duration of the exposure. I then cropped to 16:9 format and converted the image to mono. Both photos were edited entirely in Canon’s DPP software.

In the end I was quite pleased with the results of the shoot, although the imaging process was far from stress-free- I’ve never sworn as much in a long time! It just goes to prove however that with a little improvisation (and a little luck) you can make the most of a potentially lousy situation. Actually the lower-than-usual shooting height from the bag gave my shots an unusual perspective that I really like. I might even try it again sometime- fancy that…!

Why I like 16:9 - Going Panoramic

If you've looked at my Photostream on Flickr recently (here's the link- www.flickr.com/eosKid) you might have noticed that many of my newest images are cropped slightly differently. For these images I changed the crop dimensions to 16:9 inches so they appear longer and thinner- a little like fake panoramas. I've adopted this approach for a couple of reasons, namely because when cropped like this images perfectly match the dimensions of my computer monitor, which is of a widescreen format and this allows me and (since the majority of laptop screens and external monitors have gone wide these days) many others to view my images full screen. This automatically lends them more impact and really can make the viewer feel like they were there, in that scene at the time of shooting.

Cropping to a widescreen format really puts the viewer in the photo 

The technique works especially well for landscape shots, because of that panoramic feel (and it’s a landscape you’d usually make a pano of) but I’ve found myself using it in all sorts of situations, including close-up and macro photography. This brings us to the second reason I’ve found for cropping like this- it is an easy way of getting rid of any ‘junk’ in your shots- meaning any distractions in the shots you forgot to compose out when you fired the shutter- since the 16:9 format by nature reduces the amounts of foreground and sky visible and focusses the viewer’s attention on the middle ground of the photo.

 Try it and see what you think- it’s helped me bring new life to some photos I’d previously thought weren’t that great. 

The big question- Should I upgrade?



Peter Fenech

Is upgrading to an enthusiast camera worth it?

'Should I upgrade my camera' is the question most enthusiast photographers ask themselves often, probably because many assume 'stepping up' is the best option for improving their images. Now anyone who has gone ahead and bought something they deemed better than their budget camera will know that, for the most part, this isn't true; in fact since great photography relies on the photographer's in-depth understanding of their camera, getting a new, unfamiliar one could have the opposite effect. 
       I recently took the plunge and bought a new camera- a Canon EOS 7D, to work alongside my EOS 450D, but the whole process of doing so got me thinking about why exactly I wanted a new model- after all my old one still works fine, it takes pictures which is all you can wish for from a camera! I thought long and hard about whether it was worth the expense (the 7D is after all a fairly pricy object) and whether, by investing in it I was likely to increase the quality of my images. The answer obviously was yes, but I’ll tell you something; I bought it because I felt it was going to make my life as a photographer easier. I simply saw it as a new tool that would enable me to use skills I knew I possessed, but wasn’t able to get the best of with my lower-range camera. I didn’t think, as I get the impression many do, “oh great a new camera- I’ll let it do the work.” As fantastic as cameras are these days, they still aren’t able to read the photographer’s mind- they don’t know exactly what you want to get from a scene, they can only take a guess, which means no matter how advanced and modern yours is, you have to be the main input of the picture-making process. We should never rely on the camera to make the picture for us, because that’s just asking too much!
       Here’s a bit of insight: when a pro photographer (and I mean a true professional) buys a new camera, it’s not because they just want it as a new toy, it’s because they’re under the impression that the new features it has over their old models will actually help them in their day-to-day imaging- they’ll find photography easier with that camera. I recently read an article in Amateur Photographer Magazine which said that (and I paraphrase) for the amateur it’s all about the camera, but for the professional it’s the image that matters which once again made me question why I had bought my 7D. I remember wanting the camera for quite a long time, since it was released in-fact, so did I shell out all that money because I wanted something new to play with? After analysis (I tend to do a lot of self-analysing) I pleasantly concluded that, as above, I was mostly concerned about the image and getting as all the camera adverts tell you you’ll get, the ‘perfect picture.’ The 7D has a wider ISO range and much better noise performance than my 450D and has 19 cross-type AF points, both allowing me to capture better action images such as sports and wildlife, whereas the magnesium-alloy, weather-sealed body helps me shoot with more confidence in more extreme environments. The increase in resolution wasn’t what I bought it for but since it doesn’t equal more noise, I’m not complaining.  

I’m happy to say I’ve reached a point in my photographic career, where I have a greater understanding of the relationship between photographic skill and gear. I’d be lying if I said I haven’t enjoyed showing off my new camera, but what matters more to me now is results, regardless of what I’ve used to get them. To conclude, it’s my opinion that in any profession, not just photography, you should only consider upgrading your hardware when you feel your present equipment is holding you back to an extent that you can’t adjust your technique to compensate; if you still find yourself looking at the LCD and saying to yourself ‘that isn’t half bad’ it isn’t time to upgrade.