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Breakfast of champions.
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It's a little dry, actually.
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There's the sunrise! And, do you know what landscape photographers always say about sunrise?
Is... you get one.
You get one of them per day, so you don't want to let it go to waste.
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Now, there aren't a lot of clouds today,
so I'm photographing some patterns in the sand, and I think they look pretty cool.
Here's the photo.
I took it at a wide angle, and I like how that kind of exaggerates the lines in the front.
Let me show you something interesting. It's about the height of your tripod.
So let's see if this works.
Kinda?
So, right now I'm taking a picture from *this* tripod height, and it looks like this.
But, if I lower down the tripod, then you end up with a photo that has a lot more foreground in it.
And... if you have a cool foreground, that's a great way to emphasize it!
So, here is that.
And you can see both photos side by side. I have a lot more foreground in the second photo.
So, just because it's easier to set your tripod
up at eye level doesn't mean that that's what you should always do.
If the photo demands a different tripod height, use a different tripod height.
When there's no clouds in the sky, something that I like to do is shoot with a telephoto lens,
because then you can just pick out any little details in the
landscape that you like. You don't need to have any sky in the photo.
I don't have a telephoto with my normal camera, but I do have one for my video camera,
so I'm stealing that one, and I am taking pictures at 200mm.
Now, there weren't any clouds this morning,
but that's perfectly fine. You just make do, and find something else to photograph.
There definitely was a lot to photograph this morning. I had a great time.
Now, next up is that I'm going to check out Badwater Basin. Badwater Basin is
the lowest point in North America, and normally, it's this large area of salt
flats. Very beautiful—you might have seen some photos of it. But right now,
there's actually a temporary lake that has formed in Badwater Basin, and I really want
to see if it's going to be possible to get some good photos of that lake. So let's go there next.
I know this might seem expensive, but on the other side of Death Valley over
at Furnace Creek, it's more than $8 a gallon. So, this is nothing.
Death Valley is, uh... Death Valley is cheap.
Glad I stopped earlier!
There is a lake here. I can confirm. It's still a little far away, but I'll get there.
All right, this is super cool. For photography, I think that I'm going to go to a distant hill,
and I'm going to shoot it kind of from further away. But just seeing this is wild. I've been
here so many times, and there's only salt normally. And now there's a lake.
I found a great spot where you can see the lake from the distance. And I'm a little bit higher up,
so I end up with this really cool, compressed look when I zoom in with a telephoto. One of the
only things that I don't really like about this scene is that there's a lot of haze off in the
distance. So, I have a polarizing filter, because that can cut down on the haze, and it can also
make the blue sky a lot darker when I rotate it. And then the other filter that I have, actually,
is a red filter. A red filter cuts down on the amount of blue light that reaches your camera
sensor, which also means that it's gonna darken that sky even more. And you might be wondering,
doesn't that make the photo red? Well, it does if you're shooting in color.
But I'm not shooting in color.
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I started getting into 8x10 film photography a few years ago—not necessarily because of any
image quality reasons, although you do actually get pretty good image quality with a camera like
this. But mainly for me, it's about the process. I like how deliberate and how methodical the whole
thing is, and how you have a lot of control over every factor that goes into the photo. Of course,
that means there's a lot that can go wrong, and if you mess something up,
the photo is probably not gonna turn out. But when you do get an 8x10 photo that works,
it's pretty awesome. So I like to use it for these special occasions.
All right, I've packed up the 8x10, and I'm starting to get kind of hungry for lunch.
Somehow it's only noon. It feels like I've already had a really full day. But I'm going to head over
to the nearby General Store and see if I can find some fresh fruit and veggies. After that,
I'm going to go scouting. So, I'll show you what that entails in just a minute.
Delicious.
You know, in a place that's this remote, you really don't need your food to be the
best of the best. Sometimes, all that you really need are some calories. I end up
eating really random stuff when I'm on the road, and I save the gourmet stuff for home.
But speaking of being on the road, that's really what scouting is,
at the end of the day. Scouting is pretty much just the idea of going to a bunch of different
locations and seeing how they might look for a photo. A lot of times, I won't bring my heavy
equipment with me when I'm scouting. Right now, I've only got the camera and the lens—no tripod,
definitely no 8x10 equipment. And my whole goal is just to drive some roads that I've
never driven before and walk on some paths that I've never seen. Hopefully,
something that I see sparks an interest in a photo that I might want to take later.
It doesn't mean that I'll take that photo today. Sometimes, it doesn't mean that I'll ever come back
to that spot. It's just about getting a good sense of however the landscape looks where you're at.
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I found a spot that I absolutely love. The foreground looks amazing. The background
is this nice, hazy, pastel tone. And I definitely think that I can get a good
photo here—including with my film camera. As you can see, it is simply beautiful.
Look at that.
All that I'm trying to do at this point is find a composition that I like,
mainly that involves the foreground. Because right here, these cracks in the mud are so cool.
And they add some good contrast in the foreground, too.
So, I want to make sure that whatever photo I have includes those as a nice primary element.
I'm probably going to be keeping my tripod really low because of that. It usually helps.
All right, ready to take the film photo.The exposure is 30 seconds at f/64.
And, three... two... one...
There we go.
Now we've just got to wait.
And I did shoot this in color. I actually have a few sheets of 8x10 color film. I shot this
one on Velvia 50, which is a classic landscape film. And, if we're lucky,
the colors in the final photo should be really nice.
Of course, one of the benefits of digital is that you can try out a
lot more different compositions without as much of a penalty. And that's what
I'm doing right now. I really like the background here with the same foreground.
And then on the same topic of scouting, now that I know that that's a really good shot, too,
there's a very good chance that I'll just come back to this exact same spot with my film camera
again—maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day—and shoot a vertical photo that direction instead.
So, the more that you scout, the more ideas that you get,
and hopefully the better photos that you get, too.
I mean, it's getting dark now. I hope you can still kind of see me...
I had a great time. I know there weren't any clouds, but I still think that I got some good
photos. Most of all, I scouted some places that I'm absolutely going to come back to.
And that kind of does it for the day. I'm going to go and grab some dinner,
and then probably just head to bed real early.
So, yeah. There you go. That is a *long* day in the life of a
landscape photographer. I hope that you found it kind of interesting.
As you might expect, I'm going to be doing pretty much exactly the same thing tomorrow.
So, if you've made it this far, let me tell you something interesting. In my last video,
I said that I would do something special for reaching so many subscribers,
and now, we're almost at 100,000, which is absolutely crazy. Once we hit that number,
I'm going to be giving away 100 handmade darkroom prints from my 8x10 camera to
celebrate. I'll post a video once we hit 100,000. It's going to be first come, first served. So,
you'll want to make sure that you're subscribed and that you have notifications turned on. I'm
also going to post an alert to go out to all of our Patreon members. So, if you want one of
these prints, make sure that you're subscribed to Photography Life on YouTube and on Patreon.
And that does it! I hope that you enjoyed this video. Thank you,
as always—especially to our subscribers and our Patreon members. You guys are the whole reason why
we can keep the website and the YouTube channel running smoothly, and I really appreciate it.
I'm Spencer Cox. This is Photography Life. And I'll see you next time.