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Montana!
So many landscape photographers spend thousands on an expensive camera and
lens and never go further than their local park. You'll get better pictures by
grabbing any cheap camera and spending the savings on a plane ticket someplace
gorgeous.
Chelsea, Madelyn and I grabbed our cameras and travelled 2,400 miles to
Glacier National Park in Montana. We recorded some landscape tips for you
along the way.
That's a wet shoe and a very cold foot because that's what happens when you
wade out into a beaver damn to try to get the best angle.
This is what I had to wade across to get to this other spot but this angle is
just very slightly better because you can see those sharp points at the top there.
-This spot is beautiful and I want some of the foreground
as well as a background in focus.
I'm going to put my aperture as high as it'll go, which is 22.
I have a slower shutter speed so I have
more light, and I'm also shooting in HDR because i don't have a perfect sky today,
but i think if i do some HDR work I'll be able to bring out detail on these
these cloudy skies.
I'm going to go off and try to find a spot with some moving water or some things a little
bit more interesting
flowers maybe.
Oh, one more thing. I also put my
shutter button on a two second delay
because I noticed that just
pressing the shutter was making
my pictures a little bit
blurry from camera shake.
-If you have a camera with an electronic level, turn it on before you take a panorama
and try to keep your camera level through the whole thing.
That means less wasted pixels. I take a picture, then I move a few degrees to one side, take
another picture, a few degrees.
Be sure to stop moving between each picture. You don't want to just move in
one smooth motion or you'll get blurry pictures.
The way I see it, you have two choices when shooting waterfalls. Either use a fast shutter
speed of, say, 1/1000ths and
freeze the action of the water to
really show how vicious the waterfall is. Or do a shutter speed of a second or more
and get that nice soft feathery look.
So first i'll do a really fast shutter speed on this.
putting it into shutter priority mode and setting it to 1/1000ths of a
second, makes me raise my ISO up, I'll put it on auto ISO so I don't have to worry about it.
Make sure you have a nice and steady tripod.
And it helps if you set a delay
on the shutter.
A two-second delay is good and that'll just stop you from shaking it.
I like the whites of the waterfall to be nice and bright
but not blown out completely, so I always check the histogram.
And I can see that they're getting blown out a little bit so I'm gonna lower the
exposure just a little. Here i'm tracing the line
of the waterfall down into the corner so it
makes a nice pretty look. I'll drop the exposure compensation down so the
highlights aren't blown out.
Ok, so there's my shot at 1/3000ths of a second.
Now I'll go really low on
the shutter speed, just as low as I can go.
Ok, I got one and a half seconds there, it's dark in here so I don't need a
neutral density filter today. Hands off it while
it shoots.
Yeah, now just look how different these two pictures look. One captures the
action, the other makes it seem nice and smooth.
Shutter speed matters in video too. Compare this clip of the waterfall at
1/30th to this clip at 1/2000ths
Avalanches Lake is so gorgeous. These trees form these lines that draw your
attention right to the middle of the frame and while you can shoot at wide
angle and get those compositional elements, you can also zoom in tight and
you'll see these just amazing waterfalls, just countless gorgeous waterfalls on
top of this gorgeous composition. And they're just absolutely everywhere.
This is one of the most gorgeous places I've ever been in the world.
One of the hardest things about landscapes is showing scale because the
mountains here are so vast.
Unfortunately a couple of people stepped in the scene right in front of
me and I could wait for them to leave, but I actually prefer them in the shot.
-In case it rains like it is now, bring a lens hood to keep your lens dry.
A little dry.
-It's raining just a bit on the way back. Another rain tip: bring a plastic trash
bag.
Landscape photographers often get stuck in unexpected weather without shelter, as
we did on this day.
Put your entire backpack into a trash bag or even your weatherproof gear could
get ruined.
One last tip, and I know it's not for everyone, but you can often find
affordable helicopter tours that give you a bird's eye view. If the helicopter
has a window you can poke your lens through, you'll get much better results than
if you have to shoot through glass.
If you travel to a spot for a week, don't expect to get Ansel Adams quality
landscapes. Great landscape photographers spend years finding the best locations
and angles and then waiting for the perfect weather and light. That makes
landscape photography one of the most challenging types of photography to be
great at. But I hope with these tips and the rest of chapter 9,
you'll be able to capture the beauty that you do find.
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