The capes are good landscape photography probably more than the other form of nature photography, it’s all about relaxed and making sure that you’re in position well before sunrise or sunset, now the golden hour is really perhaps an hour after sunrise and again an hour before sunset.
We’ve arrived nice and early this morning in anticipation of some lovely golden lights that’s spilling over the (--), after the sun’s rising from the east, these rocks in front of me are just sloping away towards the sun, as far as the sun comes through, they’re going to catch the first rays of light, if the rocks are going the other way, of course, then the rock coming into the camera would be in shade and that props wouldn’t work quite as well, so it’s always important to pick a spot very carefully, very often with these types of shots you don’t get a second chance, a critical period as the sun’s coming out will maybe it will last a few minutes, and maybe less. I’m just going to get myself set-up with wide angle lens, the lens I’m using here is a 17-40mm lens, to start with I’m going to drop the camera down and take a meter reading from the foreground and that’s giving me an exposure off the head of the rocks here of 1 second. So now I’m going to just re-compose the shots as I had it, and the one problem with this particular type of shot is that the sky is much brighter than the foreground, so to bring extra exposures into line you need to use a neutral density graduated filter. These filters that come in different strengths, you have 1 stop, 2 stop and 3 stop and for this particular type of shot where the sky is much brighter than the foreground, I’m going to put on a 3 stop alternative code of 0.9, and this filter is a hot filter so it’s got a fairly hot edge to it and because the rising here is fairly straight, it allows me to drop the use of density part of filter over the sky and the foreground will be coming through the fair part of the filter; and then re-check the exposure once again, once that sun is starting to come through and answer the exposures getting light at the whole time, so it’s easy to make a mistake there. I’m just taking the shot there with the 3 stop neutral density filter over the sky and checking the histogram on the back of the camera here, I’ve got the highlight alert activated on the camera and as you can see it’s flashing over the skylight to show me that the sky is burnt at unfortunately.
What I’m going to have to do here is to add filtration to the sky so I’m putting on our 2 stop filter, as you’re going to take me to 5 stops between the sky and the foreground, so massive difference in exposure; and then re-take the shot and we got knock it the histogram and now we’re okay, we’ve got nicely exposed foreground, quietly exposed sky with no burnout whatsoever. So we got the hot sheet bubble on the top as well which is an essential element really for landscape photography, particularly for people out in search for a ruby sheet here in horizon strait, so that spot on there. Now the other thing really that I tend to do is, a rule of thumb is to always set mirror lock up on the camera just to avoid any camera shake, so I’m just going to do that, and that can bind up with 2 second delay on the top of the camera, alternatively you could use a cable release which would do the job just as well.
The light’s looking really nice now and just starting to take some shots because the lights coming across form the side, it’s almost coming in through the lens so we could be very careful with flare particularly when using filters. That can be a big problem, so let’s use on a hand here to cast the shadow with the front element of the lens, let’s prevent any problems with flare. And the nice thing about using the 2 second delay is that the shot is going to give you the time to get hand in position. One thing that you do need to make sure of or be careful of at least, and where you’re using a filter holder is Vignetting and I know from past experience of a shoot at 17mm and the filter holder here will, as you shot in the corners of the picture, so you always have to make sure that I zoom back a little bit to at least 20mm or greater, and that all will alleviate any problems with Vignetting.
Okay we just got back and have the chance to evaluate the landscape shots that we took the other morning, and quite pleased that at first glance on the results, the lighting on that particular morning was really nice and have some lovely low light with we’ve had just after dawn and it’s got a nice side of effect on the rocks which is ideal and it’s a bit of interest in the sky, some low clouds getting over just picking up the early morning light. You tend to think quite often with landscape photography that you probably need to go out on a bright sunny day, but very often that can lead to fairly bland images with a plain blue sky, it’s always not interesting; so it’s nice always to get some interest in the clouds.
Just came back and having a look in that, a shot that I did at three months prior to the first shot, this one here was taken in mid-December virtually on the shortest day of the year, and that time of the year that the sun is rising also in a different place, and virtually straight in front of the camera there so the light is actually shining right down the barrel of the lens which can lead to some major problems with the flare in particular and you can see in the shot there’s a little bit of flare creeping into the cold in it.
The bio large is the shot which I find more attractive than the previous one, just because of the inclusion of the sun and it was taken just after sunrise so the sun is very, very low in the sky, you’ve got shots of light coming across beautiful warm light and also you can see on this particular shot added interest in the foreground is the cold morning, overnight frost on the rocks, so that gives added interest in the foreground that just makes the shot generally a little bit more appealing. And they’re quite a lot of my photography in Auckland and a mountain environment so one thing I found from this experience is that it always pays to be well-prepared for the weather and you can set-off in beautiful sunshine but before you know it you can be lashing in diamond rains so it’s always a good idea to go prepared with plenty of water proofs, worth prepared is always a good idea, particularly if you’re grabbling around in the mud, and a good pair of boots of course, is invaluable as well if you’re walking on distance and the rock that warm, have some gloves even in mid-summer on high tops, quite often required.
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