ADVENTURE PHOTOGRAPHY

with Cathy & Gordon ILLG

PHOTO TIPS

 

CLOSING DOORS & OPENING WINDOWS
Almost every nature photographer begins a trip picturing the ideal conditions--the perfect light, the flora and/or fauna in just the right places.  The trip may have even been scheduled to coincide with certain conditions to give the photographer the best chances of getting those special images.  What do you do though, when fortune doesn’t favor the photographer, when the weather patterns are not normal, when conditions are just the opposite of what you were hoping for?
One possibility is to keep attempting the shot you had in mind, fighting the conditions even though it’s too windy, calm, cloudy, sunny, dry or wet.  A photographer can still go home with good results using this method, but it can also be very frustrating.  We prefer to adapt to the situation, using subjects and methods that work with the conditions.  Nature is very generous.  If She closes a door, She always opens a window, somewhere.  It’s just up to the photographer to find it.
This message was brought home on our recent instructional photo tour in Southwest Colorado.  Normal July weather means cumulus clouds building up almost every afternoon, adding interest to the sky, lovely even light for flowers and scenery, and a threat of rain.  These cloudy afternoons are perfect for capturing columbines and Indian paintbrush against the surrounding snow-dappled peaks.  This year was different.  We didn’t even see a cloud for the first two days.  On the third day, we saw one, but it was just a little one that quickly floated away.  We still photographed the flowers in front of the mountains, but there was too much contrast for great images.  Polarizers helped somewhat, but we really needed some clouds.
Then it occurred to us to start playing with the sun.  It had never been present in these situations before.  Why not try to do something different with it, make it work for us?  We turned around and began shooting into the sun.  We would find something to block out part of the sun--a tree (when we were below timberline), ridge, boulder, whatever--close our aperture down to at least f16, and we have a brilliant sunstar over the mountains.	Lupine Backlit With Sunstar
Flashed Columbine Backlit With Sunstar	Getting down close to the flowers with a wide angle lens, we could have backlit lupine, columbines or Indian paintbrush in the foreground with a jagged ridge in the background, topped with a Christmas star.  Most importantly, it was fun because we were playing with something a little new.  Nothing was safe.  Even waterfalls were adorned with shining stars.  Granted, we had lots of failures, but there were also some images that we were very happy with, images that we could never have taken under cloudy conditions.  We experimented with fill flash on the foreground, finding that sometimes a little flash helped, sometimes it did not.
Digital was both a help and a hindrance in this situation.  It was great to look at the LCD monitor on the camera after taking each shot, checking to see if we had captured the scene without a flare.  However, the extra magnification that most digital SLRs deliver cuts down on the effectiveness of a wide angle lens, and we were in BIG scenery.  There are now ultra-ultra wide angles made for digitals, but we don’t have one yet.
Waterfall With Sunstar At Yankee Boy Basin Next time the conditions are working against the images you had envisioned, start looking for that open window.  By the way, two days after we left the mountains, there was so much rain the entire area was under a flood watch.