6 Things to Photograph Before You Die

okay hello everybody and welcome to another video welcome to the office i can't get out with my camera at the moment because i'm in quarantine um you know even though there's a nice travel corridor between the canaries and the uk you still have to quarantine when you get back so i am in the middle of that but it's okay because it means i get to produce top quality content like this and today we are going to be discussing six things to do before you die and speaking of dying at the end of the video i'll also talk about why i had to report uh a viewer subscriber to the police because there's you know as usual as a debate boiled up on the you know my channel about that incident uh so we'll discuss that at the end of the video and as an extra treat um i'll give you an updated van tour which is pretty cool i don't know if you know but a few weeks ago i bought a 4x4 van and i'm going to convert it into a little mini camper well during quarantine i've been working on it because well there's not much else to do so i'll give you an update how does that sound good i hope so like better add this it's all you're getting right here we go six things to photograph before you die and a big thank you to squarespace for sponsoring this video if you need a website squarespace.com forward slash heaton right number one on the list is a cloud inversion now if you've never photographed the cloud inversion before you are missing out it's definitely up there it's it's on the list of things to shoot before you die now what i would say is i'm not a meteorologist so don't take this as fact everything i'm about to say don't take us fact it's just imagine we're in the pub right yeah imagine that um imagine we're in the pope having a conversation about photography that's all this is and actually if you've got anything uh better on your list than what's on my list let me know because um always looking for new ideas of things to shoot so yeah a cloud inversion wow if you've never shot one you're missing out they they tend to happen in springtime and in autumn they almost exclusively happen when there's an area of high pressure over a big piece of land if you see that there's hot temperatures during the day cold temperatures at night time clear skies high pressure there's a good chance that in the valleys you're gonna get a cloud inversion best cloud inversion i ever got was in death valley woke up out of my tent to thick mist and fog and couldn't believe my look if i was with ben horn i think we we drove up to um ah we drove up to i think dante's view in death valley which overlooks the bad water basin i believe you know the salt flats and man we were just above the biggest and best cloud inversion you've ever seen now generally speaking to see a cloud inversion especially in this country more often than not you need to do a little bit hiking and it's always difficult because you've always got this kind of you know you're hiking in the dark through you know clag mist fog rain drizzle and you have to have faith that you're going to push through it so it's always difficult but always worth it because when it does happen the reward is phenomenal so guys if you've never photographed a cloud inversion keep an eye out on the weather get up high and give it a go at sunrise ah man it's an experience like no other so this list is in no particular order um but number two on my list is the most elusive of all things to photograph if you're a landscape photographer at least for me and where i live and that is a frost man horfrost basically is when you get freezing fog so very similar conditions to a cloud inversion but the temperatures are sub-zero and what happens is everything gets caked in like icing sugar or frost and for me in all of the years that i've been a photographer all the years i've been shooting i've only ever managed to get out and shoot one frost one and i got probably my favorite image of all time from that day and i wish it was more of a regular occurrence here in the uk i'll tell you what if you ever have the opportunity or it looks like there might be a horfrost or freezing frost or freezing fog sorry freezing fog as they tend to call it on the weather forecasts get out to a wooded area or an open meadow with long grass and scattered trees and it will look like a fairy tale land i promise you number three on the list of things to photograph before you die lenticular clouds now lenticular clouds in my opinion are the most fascinating of all cloud structures and they tend to form above mountainous areas and they what's great about them is not only do they have incredible structure and shapes to them but they are very slow moving which means if you see them starting to form above a mountain or around the mountainous area you generally speak and you don't have to panic too much because they're not going anywhere they're gonna sit there and they catch the light beautifully and man half of them just looked like massive imagine a massive alien spaceship came down and just sat above the earth that's to me what lenticular clouds look like yeah again if you ever see conditions that may result in lenticular clouds get out there get your wide-angle lens and get those bad boys shot it's it's phenomenal next on my list of things to shoot before you die is well it's quite a simple one and probably not that uncommon and that is a snowstorm a proper snowstorm a blizzard if you've ever had the opportunity to get out and it's really coming down with your camera you'll know that you can create images that look incredibly painterly and falling snow will transform any mundane landscape into a beautiful piece of art and also it's it's invigorating you know you really feel alive when the snow is coming down it's blowing in your face and the beauty of it is generally with snow you don't tend to get too wet so you don't have to worry about your camera gear so long as you've got good warm clothes and maybe a waterproof layer you can be fairly comfortable the worst thing is when it's blowing in your face so try and have your back to the wind and you know find a subject shoot through the snow you can even try and focus on the falling snow shallow depth of field will soften everything make it make it look like a painting but yeah i tell you what if we get any snow this year i can't wait again here in the uk it's pretty uncommon to get a decent snowfall so you generally get a few days per year so i'm hoping that this year is going to be the one okay next on the list of things to photograph that is high altitude mountains big mountains above two and a half thousand meters snow-capped alpine mountains my god there is no landscape on earth that makes you feel as small and as vulnerable as mountains being in the big mountains it's incredible it's an incredible experience and from a photographic standpoint the opportunities are endless you can get your long lens out and pick out a dozen compositions from one spot you can get your wide lens out and get the vastness of the landscape the way that high altitude mountains catch the light at sunset and sunrise is incredible they get what's known as alpen glow which is the very very last of the sun's light hitting the peaks of the mountains you get beautiful magenta and red and orange colors and man it's fantastic and the beauty of it is you don't need to be an alpinist you don't need to be a rock climber to get into the mountains and shoot them there are so many locations where you can shoot the high mountains from the safety of your own vehicle you could go to chamonix and you could drive down that valley and there are many viewpoints where you're just surrounded by mountains you know you go in america you could go to the grand tetons also alabama hills in california has a great view of mount whitney and the eastern sierras which are high altitude mountains so you don't actually need to be up in the mountains but just to have a view of them unfortunately here in the uk we don't have any high mountains um so it's not something that i can shoot regularly but every time we get the opportunity to go somewhere with those beasts you know those monsters i always get very excited and i do recommend if you ever get the opportunity to be in a mountainous area um just get it done get up there at sunrise or sunset and see if you can catch that beautiful alpine glow so last last on the list um and this is one that i always winged about always moan about it's one that my weather app always promises and very rarely delivers and that is to shoot woodland photography in the fog now i've been lucky this year this autumn i've had about five or six proper foggy days and it's been fantastic but usually i get maybe one per year um so where i live again quite elusive it may not be for other photographers or you guys where you live but for me totally elusive the beauty of being lucky enough to be you know in a beautiful woodland in the fog is that the fog disguises everything you know it's it's kind of like uh rose tinted glasses you know you can shoot the most mundane boring woodland and if it's foggy it looks like an enchanted wonderland i promise you you could even go to a generic pine forest that is only used for felling wood and in fog it looks incredible you know just uniformity straight trees you can go to messy woodlands full of fences bins dog poo in a bit of thick fog and it's transformed into the most beautiful environment you've ever seen in your life because the fog hides everything and you can create compositions so many compositions whereas normally if it wasn't foggy you would struggle to perhaps find one or two obviously depends on the woodland depends on the photographer but you get what i'm saying right when it's foggy in a wood man it's like a kid in a sweet shop you can just shoot everything so if you ever see foggy conditions again generally speaking i reckon you need high pressure calm winds warm days cool nights and autumn and springtime will hopefully create the magic but i always look out for high pressure in fact i pretty much live my life by areas of high pressure so there you go six things to photograph before you die hopefully most of you have already had the joy of experiencing some of those conditions and those of you who haven't well you're also very lucky because you've got all that hopefully to come especially if you're just starting out in landscape photography man those special conditions there's nothing quite like shooting or experiencing those for the first time so moving on um and speaking about i think speaking about dying uh i made a community post here on youtube about having to report a viewer or a subscriber or probably just a viewer to the police and that community post has started a bit of a debate you know some people calling me a snowflake and saying it's just the internet get over yourself stuff like that and lots of people supporting me saying yeah you've done the right thing so i thought i'd just um share a bit on that because you know i'll give you a bit more information but obviously no personal information that's not going to happen but i'll let you know why i reported this person because it's the first time i've ever had to well it's the first time i've ever been worried by a comment let's put it that way but basically um a guy left a comment that was very macabre very sinister um very angry and it was a bit like whoa you know whoa you know i can't believe it um and usually you think nothing of it and you delete it um and i wasn't offended by it that's the thing as well it wasn't an offensive comment it wasn't like oh you big ginger-bearded photography freak shoot some good images why don't you it wasn't that um i wasn't offended i was i was worried i was genuinely worried by it so i did a little google on the guy a bit of a bit of sort of uh search on him and it turns out it's a local chap there's a local guy um and that just made that just elevated my concern because he implied that he knew where i lived and knew where i hung out and he was gonna you know do these horrible things um and that you know when you think okay now he could actually do it he doesn't live that far down the road and by googling him i also managed to find out quite a lot of information about who he is which meant i could submit a report to the police and that's what i did i didn't dial 999 and call the police you know it wasn't that i wasn't telling on him um i simply filed a report the reason for that is his comment made me feel really uneasy and the police can actually go in and do background checks on this person and ascertain whether or not they are actually a genuine threat or they're just angry and just spare at the moment left comment so that's why i did it i don't think you should be able to leave comments like that um no matter how angry you are i think it's uh completely out of order um but also you know i'm not a snowflake you know i'm not an idiot i'm not stupid i get it people write stupid things on my comments all the time i just delete them or sometimes i'll do a witty reply or most of the time i just ban the user from the channel but this one this one this one time it just had something about it that just didn't feel right and then that was then you know multiplied ten times when i realized he lives down the road so what are you gonna do right file a report that's what i did and i'd encourage anyone else to do the same okay so if you're still with me you are about to be rewarded sort of can you tell i'm in quarantine my god right my van i'm in the middle of a build so what i'll do is i'll go and show you the van show you what i've done to it so far and i'll talk to you in a bit more detail about what i'm going to do to it because you know it doesn't look like a lot to be like whatever i'm going to stop talking we'll go down to the van and we'll have a quick look so at first glance it doesn't look like i've done a great deal so i've put in a subfloor which is just basically plywood and underneath the subfloor as we go down here you can see i've uh insulated underneath the subfloor initially i was going to have a sliding drawer here for all my camera gear but in order to put sliding drawer in i'd need to lose about an inch which would mean because of the height of the seats that i'll be sitting on in the bed there would be no room to insert my camera bag into the van so it's this kind of compromise between the height of the seating which needs to be low enough to be comfortable but also high enough to allow under storage under furniture storage so and so unfortunately i'm gutted to say there's not going to be a sliding draw because as cool as they are completely it's just not worth it too much of a compromise it would be it would be about this deep so i won't be able to fit anything in it basically but what i am going to have is like a drop down tailgate that you can sit on and will act as extra surface area also check this out yeah we still kept the f11 plates but look at that made in japan so that's gonna look really good on the vehicle that would be some time before i can transfer those over so essentially what i've done is remove the uh the floor the original floor in the seats and put in my own subfloor which is filthy but don't worry what i'm going to do is cover this with a nice black rubber so anywhere that's underneath furniture will be a black rubberized mat and then this area here is going to be the kind of open floor that is going to be a nice cork laminate so cork is very insulating so it's going to be lovely and warm wherever there is cork but that takes up about 10 millimeters so again i didn't want to do the whole flooring cork because it would compromise too much on storage with this vehicle basically i wanted to do as little as possible with regards to touching the interior trim i didn't want to start drilling holes putting in my own lights etc so i'm just going to use the ceiling lights as the main lighting for the van that runs off the van battery but i'm also going to build lighting into my furniture which will mean i won't have to drill into the van essentially so you can see here i've marked out the furniture now this might not make any sense now but let me show you my 3d design so this software is called tinkercad it's designed for like five-year-old school kids which is great because it meant that i could use it it's very basic 3d software it's free it's online it's microsoft and i basically just measured out all of the framing for the furniture and here we're going to have a nice side storage unit which is going to house my battery it's also going to have a work top for maybe a stove and a small sink and making cups of tea and that kind of thing but here it's going to be a big else i say big small l-shaped seating area and that is where i'm going to sit it's where i'm going to sleep and here this is going to be like the really comfortable area because you can see it's quite deep and it's quite big so it's essentially just going to be this is probably going to be the best seating area right here whereas over there is going to be more of like just a you know i might sit with a laptop or something so i'm not going to put a backrest against the side because i think it's going to look ugly i'll probably just stick a few cushions so you can see from the 3d software my plan it's all going to be very straightforward all of the wiring is just going to be behind this cupboard possibly inside of here which is a nice little area just to put a fuse box and tidy up my cabling the only wire that is going to come through the van is going to be a solar panel now i haven't done anything to the outside of the van yet that is going to come when i've done the inside but essentially it's quite easy for me to access the roof to drill a hole to feed solar wires down here i've already got a wire in place so i can pull the cable through and that no well i did have a wire in place that i can pull the cable through so this is where the solar wire is going to come in and i'll feed my battery which is going to be sitting here on top of the wheel well which i will fabricate a small shelf for inside of this unit so essentially the furniture is going to be built off aluminium extruded aluminium and when it comes it's like lego you just you just clip it together with little corner l brackets so although the van at the minute looks like it's had hardly any work done to it at all like as soon as the aluminium arrives which will be the first week in january it will literally just bolt together and the entire framework will be in the van so yeah there we go that is the van update so far i've been messing around and tinkering on during my quarantine period and i'm excited for it to all come together and i do think it's going to come together very quickly once all of the bits and pieces arrive you know i'm talking a few days floor's insulated subfloor is down and i have no major wiring or anything to do really it's just run a few 12-volt accessories off my battery which is going here um dead simple so there you go the update of my van so far right so i hope you enjoyed that little vanto i'm super excited about the whole thing and i reckon by raw mid to late january it should be finished maybe probably not but yeah thank you guys so much for watching massive thank you to squarespace as well for their continued support of this channel they are awesome they really are very very good company so if you're a photographer you want a website but you don't really know how to get a website or where to start or you don't have much of a budget to employ a web code or a web designer and you just build your own website on squarespace intuitive drag and drop system customer support it's easy you go from like the whole thing you can register your domain so you could have you know whatever awesomephotographer.com and then drag and drop and it's after about an hour just watch a couple of youtube videos and you can knock out a very good website um i have a couple of websites that are squarespace websites and it's beautiful because you can just make them in like bosh an hour if that if that half an hour i reckon if you're really good on computers so there you go squarespace if you want one go to squarespace.com forward slash heaton and you'll get ten percent off your first purchase um and also you can go to squarespace now the offer code gives you ten percent that's right offer gold heater for ten percent and go to squarespace.com forward slash heating and you'll get a free trial so there you go thank you so much for watching merry christmas only two days to go till the big day um and yeah just uh thanks for sticking with me i suppose and hopefully more adventures to come in the new year [Music] you

Channel: Thomas Heaton

Views: 83,764

Keywords: landscape photography, outdoor photography, landscape photography tutorial, landscape photography in the field, photography tips, best photo locations, how to landscape photography, hiking, outdoors

Id: jyUtaERbKg0

Length: 22min 2sec (1322 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 23 2020