Minimalist Photography | In the Field w/ Fuji X-T3

a blue sky day in the middle of summer there's not much worse for the landscape photographer today's video is sponsored by Squarespace so if you need a website good squarespace.com forward slash heater so here I am in a location I've never been to walk in towards the subject I had no interest in from a photographic standpoint but the blue skies and harsh light were backing me into a corner just around that corner and out of sight was a waterfall I couldn't see it so had to cross the river to get a better look [Music] I've never had a loved for photographing waterfalls I don't know why that is I'd rather swim in one than photograph one [Music] there it was luring me down the deep gorge the light was too harsh and as I mentioned before I don't have the greatest love of waterfalls the main reason I came down to this river was to escape the blazing Summer Sun in the harsh light but nothing in this gorge was excited me and it was starting to get late in the day I did have a plan B you can see me in the bottom left of screen debating it I was really hoping that I wouldn't have to execute Plan B Plan B stands for plan brutal okay Plan B is on I don't have much time [Music] Plan B would involve a five mile bike ride to get to the spot I'd hope to photograph okay so not so brutal but in my defense I had a heavy camera bag the five miles was mainly uphill that I had already ridden 12 miles that day and broken the derailleur on my bike which when I was stuck in a hard gear [Music] [Music] [Music] you might be asking yourself why don't I just drive well this road is private so you can't drive on it but it is open access land which means you can walk hike or bike I chose to do the latter there it is plan B an isolated characterful tree sitting on this remote hillside in the heart of Northumberland and yes I am aware I still have my helmet on this was not intentional the reason I chose this tree and what I'm observing now is the relationship between the subjects which is the tree the backdrop and the light see how the light is falling on the tree and the foreground but not the distant Hills in the background this interaction between subjects landscape and light is what turns a blue sky day from a photographer's adversary into a photographer's Ally [Music] [Music] I'm paying very close attention to the height of my tripod this is essential because the shot I'm currently thinking about is an incredibly minimalist one with only a single subject supported by the contours of the land and the play of the light on the hillsides the positioning of every single elements within my frame has to be perfect in order for the photo to feel orderly and balanced once I frame my shot I make a minor adjustment to get rid of the pesky sky in the top right hand corner I focus on the tree this is the only thing that needs to be sharp I simplify things further by cropping to a square which eliminates many unwanted distractions and boils the composition down even further making it all about shapes lights and shadow I'm not a fan of the green and the harsh sunlight makes the image feel washed out so I use the across film simulation which gives a much more pleasing look in this harsh light notice how I have placed the tree well clear of the diagonal Ridge if this Ridge were to be cutting through the tree it'd be game over F five point six to soften the harsh background - second timer to avoid camera shake take the shot oh hang on let me do that again the Sun is falling directly onto my lens I need to shield it that's better in case you're wondering I'm not taking another photo I'm checking my image through the EVF this is the best way on such a bright sunny day [Music] [Music] so this is a beautiful scene it's a Miss so simplistic but I'm really drawn towards the simple compositions recently because I don't know it's just well summertime is always a time of struggle for me anyway so I find it really helps if I tried to really simplify things dump things down almost to just strong bold shapes and patterns and their stuff like that not not over complicating my images and you know a simple tree against a dark hillside in the background backlit by the Sun it is it's quite a simple composition I've really cycled this valley once today without the camera gear which is how I broke my bike and how I found this this little number here this little subject I tried to get the tree so that it was set entirely against the black background but the geography of this hill doesn't allow it to come I can't get low enough I might try getting a bit closer with a wider focal length that might work but yeah we'll see maybe I'll give that a go actually let's say stick on a wide lens and see what happens if we get closer we just can't get the sky in if we get the sky in it's it's game over so I'm putting on a 10 to 24 lens on the Fuji that's the equivalent of I don't know about a 16 to 35 give or take well go handheld get a bit closer and just see if the composition works might make her for a nice second second take on this scene nope that doesn't work your fleet waste the time so this is a another tree the second tree that's just behind the one I shot and if you look closely you can just see the one I photographed there and the two should work that's so close to working well together and in fact quite excited about framing the two trees up but the problem of this tree is compositionally it's a nightmare I just can't make it work and the big problem I have with this tree is the ridge line see the ridge line of the hill there see how it cuts right through the center of the tree I always find that you know it needs to be well above the ridge line or considerably considerably below the ridge line this is just slap dip dab in the middle and I can't change my position to get myself higher or lower because by doing that I lose the shape of the tree and they also lose the relationship between the NIA tree and the distant tree which I photographed just before so yeah I just thought I don't know I thought it's worth mentioning why you know why I didn't think this would work compositionally you may disagree I'm not sure but from where I'm stood walking around this tree back and forth long lens wide lens there ya can't make it work so a really important thing with photography is how light and shadow interact and the play on the landscape between light and shadow and that can change as the Sun changes now the composition that I just shot with a single tree has changed within the past 15 minutes and I only realized how much have changed when I was over there talking about the tree that didn't work so let me show you what we're dealing with now and it's all about the play between light and shadow and I'll tell you what looks like a vast improvement on the previous image it's fantastic alright let's have a quick look oh man so much more happy well at least the think I am on the back of this back of the camera I'm so much more happy with this image than the first version of this image which I took about 20-30 minutes ago that's because how the light changes and light is so important in landscape photography we all know that it's fairly obvious it's the light which illuminates your subject so on and so forth but when you start to look at light in a way you know in a way that's a bit more than just a sunrise or sunset or light on your subjects but the way the light plays off the land and interactive of the shadows I mean the way the light is hitting this hillside with the tree just in front of me you know creates those three separate layers we have almost like a black top third with a gray middle third and then quite a bright white lower third and it's all just the way the shadows playing off the land really and they have this tree in the middle which really holds the interest so it's ER this image is it's right up my street at the moment I go through phases I go through phases of I have different styles all my biggest problems is I have no style you look at my portfolio it's yeah a little bit of everything all landscapes but you know high saturation low saturation black and white color minimalist busy grand landscapes intimate landscapes and other things anything wrong with that other people may say different but I just I know wherever I love to shoot on the day's what I'll shooting today and certainly for the past six months or so I've been leaning towards the minimalist side this the the images that are more about shape and lines and patterns and color enlighten everything so this images is definitely that abstract one might say Oh be like a waffling on I'm exhausted now all day cycled this route twice when we've done about 20 miles on the bike today I know that's not very far with broken gears this it's a bit tough anyway right I think I'm gonna call it oh yeah yeah it's been fun today I came out not knowing what to expect I've never been to this location I was just looking for anything that caught my eye and mystery but you can't see cuz it's there yeah I caught my eye and then I got lucky you know but it's gonna be tough today middle of summer blue sky I thought I had no chance but the light and the landscape came together yeah stop talking that's what I need to do wait do I end the video now or or do I not that's it mm-hmm yeah okay I'm gonna end the video now but if my ending is quite far in on the timeline of YouTube then you know that I've seen another image on my way back to the van but honestly I don't think I will so thanks guys for watching thank you to Squarespace again for their continued support of this channel if you don't know whose where's base are they or the place to go if you need a website because you can use their online portal it's like a drag-and-drop system so you don't need to know anything technical which is genius because I don't know anything technical and I'm able to build I've built a couple of websites using that platform and it is as simple as drag and drop and you have yourself a nice photography website in no time with a portfolio gallery a shop if you want to sell prints and I don't know loads just basically it gets gets creative as you want you can do all sorts on there right I'm gonna go maybe will see an image maybe the skies will light up but pretty bluh-bluh-bluh-bluh-bluh all right bye-bye [Music] [Music] [Music] push push

Channel: Thomas Heaton

Views: 136,239

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

Id: TVifzYVFH0I

Length: 14min 31sec (871 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 10 2020