Better Mountain Photography (2) Wednesday July 23, 2008
In my last article I described a typical photographic day in the Lake District, what to expect and how to deal with unpredictable if not poor weather in a typical British summer.
This time I’ll describe the small series of shots I got in one small area, and how I evaluated them.
When I arrived unexpectedly at this small waterfall location I noticed immediately that it had photographic potential, and as the sun was shining at that moment quickly surveyed the scene and fired off several shots before the sun disappeared. Two points here: first, that days such as this are very common when sunlight is very limited, and you have to react very quickly. Not as fast as sports photography with moving objects, but when your goal is a beautiful or interesting scene and it’s only available for a few minutes or less you need reflex decisions about composition and rapid camera use making use of automated functions.
Second, I often find my initial instinct about composition works quite well, and the key here is I haven’t yet thought about it too much. With this situation my first shots were not actually the ones I liked best, but they were certainly some to consider. The only problem here is the dark area at the lower left that attracts attention, and the strong diagonal that’s not quite balanced with the rest of the details:
The answer here is to crop off some of the left side or, in the field, move towards the right and in this case slightly backward. Note how, especially with a wide angle lens which is what I used here, it makes a dramatic difference to the overall perspective, shapes, and balance:
While you make these complicated decisions the light will typically be changing rapidly, which you also have to assess. The shadowy hills in the distance work quite well when they are slightly darker, but not when they were in compete darkness or with dark cloud patches that blacken all the detail.
After five minutes or so I started to relax because I knew I had some good shots, and could afford to wait for decent light as I scrutinised the terrain more closely. One common characteristic of mountain photography is simple is often better, which has two ramifications. First, it means you edit out large amounts of information you are typically confronted with. Second, if you have a good situation in front of you it won’t need much information to convey it which merely distracts, like eating a side dish of chips with a beautiful rich curry.
Seeking to get it more simple then, I decided to remove some of the stream from the composition; nice as it is, it doesn’t have to fill a large part of the picture and I liked the shapes I noticed slightly downstream: this looks ten or twenty feet away but in fact was only a few paces, exagerrated with the wide angle lens:
Using that small area of rock has a simpler and more concentrated effect, and it opens up the views onto the distant hills which I hadn’t initially perceived when I first got here and fired off rapid shots. The shadows, fringing the hillside disagonal, were quite problematic by blackening all the details of colour and texture. I stood here for about ten minutes gazing backwards and forwards between the skies behind me for hints of blue, and the hills for necessary illumination. On days such as this it’s entirely possible you will get just a few minutes of light and the rest of the day will then be gloomy and depressing. Fortunately on this occasion it was just a waiting game. I like the ripples in the river here, that needed a reasonably fast shutter speed to capture them:
I did like the stream and the boulders, and then explored some low level shots making use of maximum depth of field: small aperture, relatively slow shutter and the use of a tripod. I prefer the simplicity of the latter shot, but thought at the time the boulder detail could perhaps be a better image for certain kinds of use. Not perhaps the pristine composition, but as a geological study for example. Note the darkened hillsides and how they are correspondingly less effective; I’d been here for nearly thirty minutes and while there were still moments of light the afternoon was overall getting darker:
The one area that bothered me more than any other was the dark patch on the lower left. While I don’t want bleached, uniform and featureless light, strong blocks of shadow can be a major drawback to an overall composition. Ideally you arrive at a location where this isn’t occuring, or plan to return when it won’t be, though there are some areas in almost perpetual shadow and there’s not much to do about it except, perhaps, consider a black and white shot where black areas work more acceptably as part of the overall black and white aesthetic. Here’s the area in question, which is improved as much as I could with the dodge tool in Photoshop to reveal a small amount of detail and enhance the silvery band, but it’s not enough:
Here’s how it looks with a black and white conversion; note how the shadow area blends in and is thus much less obtrusive. However, the colours here are a substantial part of the interest and I feel the black and white version is less effective:
The final shot here makes use of the vertical or portrait format, used less often in mountain photography but which is sometimes clearly the best choice. This is my favourite, together with the 4th shot on this page that captures a pleasing ripple effect of the stream.
I find the following the most effective though, for these reasons:
1) It shows the curves of the stream
2) The distant hillside is light ie not in shadow
3) The mid ground hillside is in relatively strong light, enhancing the effect of depth across the near, middle and far bands of interest; this is the only shot that has that effect
4) It removes the shadow area referred to above
5) Graphically, this is an effective composition based on the vertical lead in line of the stream, balanced with the dynamic diagonals cutting across it; I illustrate this below.
Ideally I would have preferred the rock on the lower left corner were not there, but this was unavoidable. The best I could do was crop it out as much as possible, without cropping into the lower right rock which, in the original high resolution image, reveals some pleasing detail in the submerged part of it. I did consider splashing the rocks with water to make them glisten a little, but decided I liked them dry and as light as possible and water would have darkened them quite considerably.
Finally, my last reservation with this shot is it does make use of the portrait format and I generally prefer landscape or horizontal format, but in this case it is quite effective:
Here are the overall graphics, which are simultanously strong but balanced:
Mountain photography is a multi skilled activity and a natural complement to the pleasure of walking the hills. The images you make are both souvenirs of happy moments, and a process of creative and artistic work in parts of this planet you have learned to love where harmonies of shape, colour and light nourish the soul.