Landscape Photography - 7 Most Important Things I've Learned

[Music] in all the years that I've been doing photography I realized that the more I learn the more there is for me yet still to learn and that's actually one of the joys of photography it's a journey that will stay with us for the rest of our lives whatever the kind of photography it is that we're doing there's always new things to learn new techniques or new technology develops which opens new doors and new things to learn however over the years that I've been teaching photography and workshops there are a handful of things that I find myself repeating more often than anything else so this video is about the six most useful things that I've learned while doing landscape photography by the best tripod that you can afford photography can be a really expensive hobby and it can be really tempting when you're starting out to try to save a little bit of money on something like the tripod because a good tripod is incredibly expensive it can cost you anything from $600 upwards but to do that is always going to be a false economy because you'll buy the cheaper tripod and then maybe you'll buy a slightly better tripod but at some point sooner or later as you continue with the photography you're going to realize is that you need a really good carbon fiber tripod so you're going to invest in one sooner or later it's just cheaper and you save a lot more money to invest in it as soon as possible this is a get so series to Mountaineer you know I bought this 11 years ago I bought it when I was using a Nikon d3 and after that I used it with a Nikon d800 and then it was I switched to Fuji which uses the next t1 and after that it's been used of my xt - along with the get so traveler which is what is holding up the camera for this video now the thing is is that tripod has lasted me four cameras and what you realize is that the tripod is going to be the piece of equipment that you will own for the longest period of time it's the best value thing that you can ever buy so buy a really good one and it will last you forever don't be put off by a failure in fact I know it's a cliche but failure is the best way to learn in fact it's probably the only way to learn we learn by making mistakes with make mistakes and then we get better and do it better next time but beyond that we need to embrace the fact or at least live with the fact that most of the shots that we do and most of the time to regard shooting we're not going to come back with a mind-blowing image or something that's incredible or that we're going to remember forever unfortunately with landscape photography that's just the way that it is most of the shots that we take I'm not going to be anything special and that applies to anyone from a beginner all the way up to a professional you know I really wouldn't like to try to estimate the fraction of the images that I keep against the images that I've taken in my career but it's certainly going to be something like zero point zero zero zero zero something and maybe more zeros because the reality is is the vast majority of images that I take I don't keep I'm not gonna keep because they're just not good enough one reason or another they don't have that factor that makes me go wow they're not something that a year later or two years later I look back on things that really really captured the scene their failure is a norm in landscape photography and that's a good thing because if we got it right most of the time there wouldn't be anything else to learn there'd be no challenge it would be too easy so when I see images taken from other photographers particularly from plate locations that I've been to and they managed to see something that I didn't see or they capture the place in a in a way that I wasn't capable of doing that's actually a positive thing it's an inspiring thing and it's an encouraging thing because it makes you realize that there is room to grow there's more to learn and as I said at the beginning of this video photography is a journey that lasts us forever we're always going to be learning and it would be a terrible thing if there were nothing left to learn and it would be a terrible thing if we weren't inspired by other images that have got something that I was currently haven't because it gives us something to strive for and something to aim for and in doing that we need to embrace the fact that we're going to fail sometimes so this is a practical tip shooting in the field and one that we always try to incorporate into workshops and that is to get to the location where you're going to be shooting as early as possible but not only that do as much research beforehand as you can so look at things like Google Earth to try to find the location it's certainly if it's a location that you've never been before to get an idea of what it is that you're going to find there use apps like the photographer's ephemeris to try to find out what the lights going to be doing check what the tides are going to be doing if you're shooting on the coast or the typhoon be coming in whether it's going to be going out where it's going to be at the time you're going to be shooting and then get to the location as early as possible so you have time to explore it to walk around to try a few frames to try to different compositions and find a spot to when the light is absolute peak you've had the opportunity to find the composition that you're really satisfied with to make the most out of the scene I can't tell you how many times I've been frustrated and for one reason or another I've not been able to get to a location particularly early so I've not really had a lot of time to explore the scene so you do some shots and they're okay you know you get back home but then a few weeks later or a few months later you see some other shots from the same location and you realize that if you just walked a little bit further if you just gone around that pile of rocks there was a much better composition waiting for you so always give yourself the time to explore a location as much as possible before you start shooting seriously now why should invest in the best tripod that you can afford conversely with the camera you shouldn't worry too much about the specs or buying the very best camera that you can get or the very best camera that's on the market because you don't need the very best camera to take good images now there is a myth that professional photographers will always use the best quality equipment available at the time but it's actually not true now let me give you a few examples back in the film days the very best quality that you could find would be in large format or medium format but some of the most famous and best-known landscape photographers of the time we're shooting on 35 millimeter film for example a wolf this is a book beautiful book images printed incredibly large all shot on 35 millimeter film Fran's Lanting is another one and Galen Rowell who is perhaps one of the Godfather of modern adventure photography now if you really need Gielinor articles he was a huge advocate in traveling as light as possible so he would quite often not take the very best quality lenses they have 2.8 the super shot lenses would carry something lighter and smaller because he felt that it helped him to create better images now if I look at my own work from a purely commercial point of view if I the images that have sold the most in terms of licensing and things like that or images they've sold the most in terms of print none of them are taken with the best technology that was currently available at the time this image is taken within Nikon d90 and the 18 to 211 which is a consumer camera and it consumer lens and I used that camera quite simply because my main camera that the Nikon was actually being used for another shot at the time I only had a few seconds to grab the shot so I picked up the spare camera with the lens that it had on it and use this shot and as it turned out it was probably the best image that I got on that trip and it's certainly been one of my most popular images ever since then this image was taken with a Nikon d3 now that is a pro body full-frame camera however it's only 12 megapixel as any certainly wasn't the best image quality available at the time this image was taken with a Fuji XT 10 a 16 megapixel crop sensor consumer camera which again it was my backup and I used it because my main camera which were the next tool at the time was being used to shoot something else it was a grub shot it was shot handheld and again I only had a few seconds to get the image and this final image was shot with an XT one again 16 megapixels it's a very good camera but certainly when I shot this I'd recently changed to the Fuji system from using a 36 megapixels on nikon d800 and this images been more commercially successful than any any image I have a shot with that 36 megapixel full-frame sensor no I'm not trying to say that high-end cameras aren't fantastic because obviously they are fantastic and if you can afford a Fuji GFX our Nikon d80 50 by all means get one of those cameras and you will take fantastic images with it and I also understand that different people take different things out of photography we all appreciate photography and images in a different way and many people take a lot of pleasure and get a lot of satisfaction from being able to zoom into their images at 100% and see the quality there to see the definition to see the resolution and that's a really valid reason to get into photography but other people take different things out of photography now personally for me them like the best camera is the one that helps me realize my creative vision the best so it's the camera that's an extension of my arm and of my hand it's a camera that's an extension of my eye and it's a camera that's an extension of my mind and in a way that I see a scene so a camera has to be incredibly intuitive and it has to help me capture the scene in a way that I want to see it and that isn't necessarily going to be done by the camera with the most resolution backup your images in fact back them off multiple times in multiple different places because you can hope that it never happens to you and it may never happen to you but if you ever do have a drive fail those images are gone and they're gone for good it's kind of like having a seat belt in a car you hope that you're never going to use it but you're always going to put it on it's just good to know that it's there no different photographers have different ways of backing up their images but a basic rule is you should have at least one or more copies on external hard drives eyesight away from your computer and other copies off-site or in the cloud now because most of my work is done on a laptop I actually didn't keep any images on the laptop the only images that are there ones that are just after I've imported from a card or from my camera and those are backed up in multiple drives using Time Machine backup on my computer but as soon as I finished editing those images there then moved on to a mirror hard drive which is on the Wi-Fi network in my apartment so the driver is married and I can access them from within Lightroom so I can still make small edits and I can easily pull them off to export them for print or to sent to the web and that's my first line of backup and there's a slight redundancy there because the drive is mirrored but that's not enough those drives are then mirrored with two external hard drives which I keep in the flat and I also use Backblaze as my cloud storage which again is constantly backing up those mirrored hard drives so that's stored apart from when there's those drives which is repeated in two places inside my flat and then in the cloud which gives me a fair degree of security when it comes to to backing up my images now how often you should back them up it's really hard to say there's not really a hard and fast rule but if I've just come back from a trip and I'm working through the images and they'll be back to pretty much day if I'm not doing lots of work if I'm not making lots of changes to my library or not importing the images then I'll back them up a little bit less than that but never really anything less than every week because I don't want to lose the work that I've been doing now moving back into the field this is something that I always try to stress what I'm giving workshops when you're standing in a scene when you're framing an image what are you actually shooting why are you taking the image now it sounds like a ridiculous question but it's not because it's not just about the focal point it's not just about what it is that you're framing what's the actual object that you've got in your image it's also about the mood of the image what the place is telling you and how you're going to try to capture that because when you ask that question and when you try to answer the question the answers are going to help inform how you shoot that scene what the lens choice are you going to use do you need to isolate the scene do you need to isolate the an element and use a telephoto lens or do you need to really capture the entire breadth of the scene to use leading lines to move you towards some kind of focal point in which case you need to choose a wide-angle lens what about using a long exposures a long exposure going to work what will that do towards the mood of the scene now these are all decisions that you need to make when you're standing behind your camera and in front of the scene because quite often when you have really momentary flashing a good light you really aren't going to get that many opportunities to get it right so when you're standing behind the camera when you're standing there with this Vista or whatever in front of you ask yourself what is it that I'm shooting here and what is it that I'm trying to tell people what do I want people to feel and what do I want them to see when they look at the image that I take what do I need to put in and just as importantly what do I need to leave out now these are the kind of decisions that you can only really make at the scene no matter how much research do before you get there you can only really understand it when you're actually standing there so it's another reason why you should get to the location as early as possible and spend as much time as you can just trying to soak in the mood try to soak in the feeling because that will make it clear to you is that you're trying to communicate and sometimes you need to be aware that you may have brought a vision a preconceived idea with you before you visited the scene and while sometimes that can work sometimes it just won't and you have to be able to understand what it is you're trying to force that preconceived idea of what you're going to shoot onto the scene in front of you and understand when it's not working and when it's not working just walk away change lenses and try something else okay so the final tip is perhaps the most important and that is always shoot for yourself and take the images that you want to take and that you enjoy taking because at the end of the day photography should give you pleasure both the act of taking the images of being out there in nature and operating the camera trying to capture what it is that you're seeing in front of you to the final product to the final edited image that you've got all of this is a process that should be fun and should be enjoyable and that's the most important thing no criticism is important and it can be a valid way to learn but understand that a lot of the criticism that you get is from people telling you about how they would take the image and what they would like to see and that isn't necessarily the same as what you want it doesn't necessarily match with your vision so while criticism can benefit you and it can help you learn it's not always something that you need to listen to photography it is a process and we do expect to progress and we do expect to improve but you need to consider what improvement actually means because improvement should be that you are much more capable of taking the images that you like that communicate the scene in the way that you want to communicate it and that's something that mostly will come from inside of you and that will come from practice so I hope that's been useful I hope there's at least one thing there that you could take away and incorporate into your own photography if there's anything that you'd like to say if you've got any questions as I just drop a comment in the box below and I'll get back to you and as ever thanks for watching and take [Music] you

Channel: Andy Mumford

Views: 429,174

Keywords: landscape photography, landscape tutorials, landscape photography tips, composition, tripods, digital photography

Id: iOSVLXRxW2A

Length: 15min 50sec (950 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 07 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/AllTheDistantShips]

1. Buy the best tripod you can get as it'll last.

2. Embrace failure. Accept that fact that most times you go out, you won't get a mind-blowing photo.

3. Research the location and arrive early. Use Google Earth if you've never been there before. Check out what light should look like when you're there. Get there early so you can lock in your composition before the lighting is at its prime.

4. It's not about the best specs. You don't need the very best tech to get the best shots. Use whichever camera acts as an extension of your hands.

5. Back up your images multiple times and in multiple places.

6. "Why" often informs "How." When you getting ready to take a shot, ask yourself why you're taking the photo. When you answer that, you'll often realize how you should take it. For example, should you isolate a certain element or use a specific lens like a wide angle or telephoto.

7. Shoot for yourself and take the images you want to take and enjoy taking. Do it for you, baby!

[u/MrAndre44]

He is also one of the few landscape photographers of YouTube whose images I really admire!

[u/mesopotamius]

His examples of shots he threw away for not being interesting enough are all better than any photo I've ever taken

[u/postvolta]

I just discovered him too. He's pretty good, no jump cuts or overly energetic editing just him with tips in front of the camera and some on location stuff. Pretty good.

[u/verymadMad]

Oh well, the next YouTube rabbit hole I'll go down.

[u/driftmark]

Thanks for sharing this! Well produced landscape photography YouTube channels are so relaxing and fun to watch. Haven't seen him before so I'm subscribing.

[u/hstabley]

Neat

[u/ManOfTheForest]

Regarding point #1 - cannot recommend Velbon tripods enough. I've had Velbon Ultra Rexi L with Giottos head for over 7 years now and it is absolutely brilliant.

[u/zsnajorrah]

Didn't know about Mumford yet. Now I do and I really like his style. Both photography-wise and video editing-wise. Thank you for sharing!