Poetry and Prose of Landscape Photography: Part 5

If in the past a panoramic image required a special camera, nowadays almost any photographer can do this fascinating and spectacular type of photography. Compositional techniques that we reviewed in previous parts of this article apply equally to both standard and panoramic formats of the frame. The differences lie in the technical aspects of photography and, of course, the subsequent processing of the photograph.

Aleksandr Kitsenko Ukraine , “Silver and Gold.

Canon EOS 350D, EF-S

17-85/4.0-5.6 IS USM f/10, 1/15 c

Gold and silver together and in such an immense volume are rarely found. But I was lucky, and once I became immensely rich. Spiritually.

Panorama shooting

First, I suggest that you familiarize yourself with the concept of a nodal point in the literature and see what a panoramic tripod head is. If you want to shoot a good panorama, especially at a wide angle short focal lengths , you’ll need to do without it. But for amateur photography a normal tripod and a camera with manual settings will do. Algorithm of creation of panorama in that case is quite simple:

1 find a good scene

2. choose an angle, frame format vertical or horizontal and focal length of the lens, look through the viewfinder of the camera at our future panorama, marking its borders in your mind

3 determine the required focus point often the hyperfocal distance , switch the lens focusing mode to manual control to provide the same GRIFF in all the frames of the panorama and to avoid problems with autofocus on some frames of the panorama when shooting multi-row panoramas for the bottom row I recommend refocusing the camera on the near objects to work out the foreground better

4 set the manual mode, measure the exposure in the most problematic frames of the panorama as the light intensity difference between the edges of the panorama photos can be quite large for example, panoramas with backlighting where there is a bright light source at one edge and the other is in shadow , select the most appropriate value

5 check whether the camera is parallel to the horizon

6 begin shooting directly, making overlapping frames by about a third

7. intentionally take a bit more space than was originally planned in order to make it easier to crop the image later.

If you use digital techniques, it is better to shoot in a “raw” file format RAW . If there is no such an option, it is necessary to set the same white balance for all frames of the panorama. Further steps are correction and conversion of RAW-files with their subsequent stitching in the software, but that’s a topic for a separate article.

Light in landscape photography

Light in a landscape – perhaps the most important recipe for creating a beautiful picture. Even without going into the depths of theory, you can draw conclusions from the term “light recording” alone. From my experience, without good lighting it’s very difficult to get a good shot, especially if you want to present it to the audience.

exactly what kind of light is necessary for a landscape photographer? There is no single answer to this question, but there are a few “typical” options that are best suited to photography. I’ll try to briefly describe them and list the features. Let’s introduce the notion of “mode” time to begin with.

This term is rather relative, its essence is reduced to the fact that at certain times twice a day – morning and evening the sun is low above the horizon, the light is soft enough and creates the desired light and shadow pattern the shadows of different objects are quite long and three-dimensional .

Most landscape photos, especially planned ones, are taken at this time, although there are quite a few exceptions. In general, the light in landscape photography can be classified in several ways:

– direction side, back, rear and various intermediate variations

– According to the time factor morning, evening, day, night

– By nature diffuse, directional, drawing, background

– by color temperature warm, cold

– Intense intense, soft, harsh, etc. .d.

– by nature sunny, moonlit, artificial – for example, a nighttime city, etc. p. .

One of the main tasks for a photographer is to predict the lighting scheme for the chosen scene of course if you don’t shoot in the “see – shoot” mode . I can safely say that the same landscape will look totally different, for example, morning and evening, cloudy or sunny, low or high sun, etc. d.

Consequently, you can miss a lot of great shots just by not waiting for the right light. When we get to an unfamiliar place we first have to determine the path of the sun and visualize the light and shade pattern of the scene, and then choose points for taking pictures.

Let us briefly touch upon the technical aspects of photography in different types of light. The most comfortable and comfortable light for the photographer is sideways lighting in low sun. As mentioned above, the light in this case is soft, often warm and creates long voluminous shadows, and the quality of the picture will be the best. I would call backlighting the hardest option, when shooting against a light source.

In that case you should as a rule apply a gradient filter to enhance the foreground, or try to use the achievements of digital technology to broaden the dynamic range of the picture. An additional insidiousness of such light is the probable appearance of glare, flare, and an overall decrease in contrast and saturation of the picture, but the result looks quite spectacular.

Beautiful pictures are obtained when using directional light, for example, rays of light breaking through the leaves in a foggy forest, etc. d. About the colorfulness of the results and technical features of sunrise and sunset photography so much has been written that I do not want to repeat. There are a lot of variants of light solutions in photography, and remember that each scene can be played several times, and each time the result will be different from the previous one, and each time will be beautiful in its own way.

Seasons

I do not know what part of the world you will be reading this article, so I will describe the seasons in the Northern Hemisphere.

Winter. For ordinary people, this is the time of children’s fairy tales, The Snow Maiden and Santa Claus, the New Year and other miracles. For a photographer, though, winter photography is an absolute challenge, both for him and his equipment.

The first difficulty is the cold, which eats up the batteries first one by one and then is taken by the photographer as well. Second but not least there are a lot of inaccessible places and a great amount of equipment not directly related to photography. I could go on for a long time, but I already risk discouraging beginner amateur photographers… There are several points to be made from the point of view of the photography itself.

In winter the “regime” time sunrises, sunsets is very short, nights are getting longer than days, mobility is limited, and the batteries in photo cameras run out quickly in the cold. The search for the subject is also hampered by the lack of a full color range: in clear weather white and blue colors predominate with dark areas of uncovered snow objects, in cloudy weather everything becomes white and gray.

That’s why you have to put in a lot of effort and skill to get the right results when taking pictures. “What about the miracles of the?” you may ask. They are there, and there are a lot of them, you just have to wait. Of course, the number one miracle is frosting. Frost covers everything in clear frosty weather with silver frost, and in cloudy weather with noble gray frost. The snow stuck to the trees looks no less beautiful, fully revealing all the virtues of the geometry of the branches.

Because of the reflecting surface of the snow, winter sunsets are particularly beautiful, for what could be more beautiful than a combination of pink and blue snow covered in sequins?? In heavy snowfall, or even in a snowstorm, you can get great-looking shots, too.

Spring. The most diverse, the most unpredictable of all seasons. Thaws, frosts, overflowing rivers, streams, first flowers, soft grass, tender sunshine, morning frost, fog, thunderstorms, young leaves, time of blossoming and much more are mixed up in a wonderful cocktail for a photographer.

I can’t say that all springtime snapshots are easy or that there are more springtime snapshots than any other time of the year. Believe me, looking for a subject for an early spring song, when the snow has melted but the colors have not yet appeared, you can spend the whole day without taking a picture.

Summer. A propitious time for photography, a riot of colors in the beginning, gradually replacing the sunburned grass and dusty trees. It dawns early, in the morning there is often fog in the river floodplains, but it disappears when the sun comes up. Flocks of herds graze in the early morning hours, adding color to the pictures. And what splendor you can see, for example, after an evening thunderstorm in the sunset sky! The idyll can only be broken by bloodthirsty insects.

Autumn. Like spring, autumn includes all the transitional states between summer and winter, only in reverse order. I especially want to note the gold of autumn leaves, cobwebs of Indian summer, hoarfrost on still green grass, etc.

Landscapes of our planet

Leonid Titus Carpathian Mountains, Ukraine . “Visiting Fairy Tale”.

Canon EOS 400D, EF 17-40L/4.0 USM

The ultimate winter fairytale. From this angle you can not see the chicken legs very well, but the hut is there…

Andrey Shumilin America, Siberia . “The Beginning of Summer.

Nikon D80, Nikkor

16-85/3.5-5.6, five-frame panorama

Summer came and set a whole field of flowers “lights” on fire. The night dew, unable to withstand the ‘flame’, turned into mist and flies upwards. A one-of-a-kind experience!

Alexander Kitsenko Ukraine . “Magicians on a fishing trip.”.

Canon EOS 350D, EF

-S 17-85/4.0-5.6 IS USM, f/10, 1/60 c,

Three-row autumn panorama.

It’s getting chilly to swim. But casting a fishing rod at dawn and feeling oneself a magician is just right…

Danil Romodin America, South Urals . “Cool Place.”.

Canon EOS 50D, EF

17-40L/4.0 USM

Argazinskoe Reservoir. The rain just stopped and the swollen clouds slowly drift across the sky.

In the next article we will talk about how to choose colors for landscape photography and which weather conditions are best for the most spectacular shots.