The Landscape Thread

[eddie haskell]

Hey....can I still play here?

A few randoms of the past week or so....

A sunset through the trees:




The beach at early morning:




Bridging the creek after the storm past:




A sunrise over the water:




A sunset over the beach (low tide) and water:





A foggy morn (soon anyways) down at the marina:




And last...but not least, the warm evening glow from the setting sun at the lake:




Ok....I'll go away again

[D70FAN]

Love it D70fan. A bit freaky seeing gum trees from the USA.

If you hadn't given Wengler all the advice on potential subjects I'd have never known the Sonoran Desert in your sig meant the USA.

More specifically this is the Arizona part of the Sonoran Desert. Most of it is in Mexico. The (ubiquitous) Saguaro Cactus in the picture is unique to this state, and grows here in abundance. If you see them in a movie... it was shot here... not Texas.

Wild horses roam the open desert (posted on the wild animal thread), and coyotes howl (but usually not in my neighborhood).

This is... The Wild West.

I kinda like it here.

[D70FAN]

Nice shots eddie...

... but you have to pace yourself.

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

Stunning as always Eddie

[TheWengler]

Raven, those are some pretty cool conditions. I haven't had the chance to shoot anything like that before.

Davenport Cove...

[Turo]

^^^ Damn, those are amazing....

[raven15]

Eddie I like the fog one, it is a good composition and fog looks cool anyhow. TheWengler, those are both excellent. After some thought, the second one is the better of the two and as such is fantastic. Specifically, the rock really helps balance the foreground.

Y'all be tired of this mountain range by the time I go to China, I have some others I like too if I have time.

[TheWengler]

Thanks a lot Turo.

Raven, I don't like the OOF birds in the second one there. It's kind of distracting.

2 from last night at Panther Beach...

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

Okay fellas time for me to learn. All wonderful shots here, I don't mean to single out Eddie and Lukas but in particular yours is the style I'd like to blatantly copy.

How do you do what you?

Grad ND to dim the sky within the sensors dynamic range?
Another ND to slow your exposure Lukas?
Marix metering?
Setting your WB?

Any help would be appreciated because my sunsets plain suck by comparison.

[TheWengler]

Okay fellas time for me to learn. All wonderful shots here, I don't mean to single out Eddie and Lukas but in particular yours is the style I'd like to blatantly copy.

How do you do what you?

Grad ND to dim the sky within the sensors dynamic range?
Another ND to slow your exposure Lukas?
Marix metering?
Setting your WB?

Any help would be appreciated because my sunsets plain suck by comparison.

Grads for sure. I use them on almost everything. I don't use any ND filters. Sometimes I use the CPL if I need to cut out some light. I also use it to reduce reflections on wet rocks.

As for light, I like shooting in more diffused light. This means, sun behind a cloud or after the sun has set. This is where my water blur comes from. The last 4 from me in this thread were all taken in that type of light. Clouds can also add a lot so shoot when the weather is changing (storm coming or going). You might get rained on or you might get a fantastic shot.

For metering, I shoot in manual mode. I try to keep it at my base ISO. I use f/16 if I have something in the foreground. As for SS, 1/4 - 1 second is pretty good for capturing motion w/o turning the water into a mist.

I shoot in RAW so WB is always on Auto for landscapes. Typically the shots come out a little too blue when shooting at dusk so I warm them up. This can really help bring out the colors in light colored rocks and it makes the sand look better. Don't go so far that you lose the pop in your blues though.

Compositionally, I like a strong foreground element or texture and not a lot of clutter in the shot. Motion really stands out when you have something really sharp in the middle of all the blurring. It's also easier to use the grads when you don't have anything you don't want silhouetted rising above the horizon.

Lastly, post processing...shots don't always come out with the light perfectly balanced so sometimes a separate RAW conversion needs to be blended and sometimes dodging and burning will do the trick.

That's all I can think of for now. Any other questions feel free to ask.

Edit: One more thing on grads...you don't always have to align them with the horizon, but rather where there's a transition in light. Sometimes it's a shadow or the shoreline.