Photographing Zion, Fall 2023: Episode 6 (Large Format Landscape Photography)

e for [Applause] good morning everyone I have returned to an area where I was yesterday where I shot the photo of that Cactus and on my hike out yesterday I noticed another couple scenes there's this Fallen pine tree and also a a very much living pine tree that I think could make for interesting subjects uh the Fallen pine tree I think has the most Potential from a a storytelling standpoint but composition is tricky uh because there's this rout that kind of sticks off to the side which is a bit distracting so I'm going to see if I can find a composition for that I've got I don't know an hour or so until the light's pretty good after that there's another scene I scattered this morning with some fallen leaves among some roots and I think that'll get some good light at midday so we'll see what happens well this is a a tricky one to compose um we got this Fallen Ponderosa I love how it's kind of Twisted has these like tears in it and so you can see as it's actively decaying uh there's some Manzanita in the foreground which is nice you get the color contrast between the greens and the pinks and the tricky thing from a compositional standpoint is you have this huge root that Trails off to the right and so I'm going to chop that off within the composition so that you see a bit of it but it's not going to be hopefully too much of a distraction but you can't eliminate it alog together uh off to the left there is a uh Utah service berry bush with the little yellow leaves there that will creep into the composition a bit um and then up top there's a um a juniper and you get a little bit of that green creeping in the corner as well but I really can't avoid that um I'm trying to avoid having the tree aim directly diagonally from one corner to the next because to me that usually looks rather contrived and so in this case what I'm doing is the bottom is naturally going to point towards the lower right corner but I'm keeping the top of the tree where it's exiting a little bit more toward the top of the frame as opposed to angling right towards that corner so it I think it just looks a little bit more natural that way uh but right now there is some direct sunlight hitting the slope back behind the video camera and I think in another maybe 40 minutes or so I'll have some nice reflected light cuz all that direct sunlight is going to bounce off off that slope into the shadows in the scene and then it'll have this warm yet cool sort of Light which is really fun to work with I'm going to keep toying the composition just to see if I like what I have um but I think it's got potential it's a very imperfect subject and I'm not going to have a perfect composition I think the imperfection of the composition might be a good match for the imperfection of the subject if that makes sense but we'll see you here and uh hopefully this will be pretty cool so you may have noticed that I have a gray card in the foreground about outside the composition when I'm taking photos and I use that as a spot metering Target They Se like this with pretty even light often times I can just spot meter off that and my exposure is pretty good but what I'll do is I'll log that setting into memory I'll hit the average button and I'll look through the spot meter it'll tell me how bright and how dark all the various subjects are in this case it gave me 2.5 seconds f45 and I look at the bright areas up top the dark areas down below and it's looking pretty good basically I don't want anything that should have detail on the highlights to be brighter than positive2 and an area that I hope to have detail in in the shadows shouldn't be any darker than -2 um this is not the strongest glow but I'm going to shoot a photo now um and then I'll shoot another one when the Glow's a little stronger because I don't know if a little bit more somber light is good or if the peak glow will be better it's probably going to be the peak glow but this way at least I have a choice uh but this is going to be 2.5 seconds at f45 I gave it a little extra I went actually for 3 seconds um not that it matters now I'll wait uh for the light to develop a little more probably another I don't know 20 minutes or so and then expose another sheet but perfectly calm and not a cloud in the sky for [Applause] so this scene I'm going to meter it a little bit differently um I put my gr card down there I metered that I average that but the reading really wasn't looking too good uh because a lot of the tones are just too dark and so for this one I'm doing an average where I'll meter the brightest area the darkest area put into my meter average coverage it and uh the leaves are the brightest areas there's some dark Moss there which is the darkest area and at 8 seconds f45 it puts the darkest Moss at about 1.8 1.9 so detail there and the leaves are at about positive 1.8 1.9 so um this should be pretty good it should allow me to have good tones in the bright areas and the dark areas there's a little bit of reflected light right now um I'll get a little bit more later on but not much but I'm going to go ahead and expose this for eight seconds F 45 test my shutter all as well I always do a little test fire of the shutter because it allows me to confirm that the uh shutter is closed otherwise it won't click otherwise I pulled the dark slide and it would just fry my film so we want to avoid that all right 8 seconds there we go so it's a little after 3:30 and after were taking the uh second photo this morning went back to my truck had lunch uh drove back to camp and then popped on my bike and came here to the main Canyon and I got to say this place has changed a lot since I was here in January this broad area here that has been just wiped clean by the river during the uh Summer monsoon months it actually completely uh just removed this Fallen dead cottonwood tree that I photographed a few years back and it's was nowhere to be found it's been completely reworked and there's another one a little further up the canyon that I had photographed and it looks like it's leaning a lot more than it was in the past so this area's changed a lot but just going to keep wandering here and uh see if anything catches my eye so I've got to say that of all the years I've been coming to Zion the man of change I've witnessed in this area is beyond anything I've seen before it's a little shocking to see that you know some of these trees I photographed in the past are just gone and some of them changed and I love being able to revisit past subjects and I can't do that anymore for some of them and even though it is a little shocking to see you know from change comes Beauty there's going to be any more opportunities in the years to come as things continue to evolve so in that sense it's all very [Music] [Music] beautiful [Music] [Music] [Music] 3 [Music] so this morning I spent some time wandering through the washes and mostly Scouting For future visits and then I visited this other area and there's this dead Ponderosa that's still standing that I've had my eye on for many many years now but I could never find a way to compose it and in front of it there's a living Ponderosa with another dead Ponderosa and what was different this time is that the the dead Ponderosa next to the living one well that dead one fell over and leaving just the living one and then the Dead one in the background and the Fallen dead Ponderosa and it became a very poetic subject and I very well could have gone back to my truck uh grabb my camera set up a composition but I just didn't feel the need to now I know that by leaving that subject on the table for perhaps next fall maybe swinging through in the spring um maybe the winter time if there's no snow but I feel like I'm definitely taking a chance because that tree in the background could very well fall over and that scene could be lost but I think it's also important to leave a little something on the table for next time and it gives me something to strive for in the early days of the trip and uh that's one of the nice things about spending the last couple days or so of the trip just wandering scouting observing and I found some other scenes as well where I could very well have taken photos but it's just not that phase of the trip anymore but this has been great I mean this conditions have been fantastic uh basically blue skies the entire trip um very calm wind and fall color has been fantastic I've had some wonderful opportunities and you guys know how the photos turned out I'm still I don't know it's just kind of a a blur to me as far as everything that's happened over the past week or so and I look forward to the drive home tomorrow and getting the film developed and seeing how it all turned out but this has been wonderful and I'm just going to take a moment to enjoy the shade here and then continue on and uh do a little more Scouting For when I come back here next time but such an absolutely beautiful [Music] place returning to the same location for 15 years may sound like a lot but the truth is I'm only scratching the surface here's the 15 more years of following my curiosity discovering new subjects and revisiting those I've photographed in the past of the three subjects I photographed that day I'm not especially attached to any of them perhaps my perception will change with time but sometimes the mere Act of taking a photo is more important than the end result thanks as always for watching and we'll see you around next time you may have noticed this video has no ads and no sponsors and I think it's nicer that way if you enjoy this adree and clickbait free content and want to help me live my dream a voluntary contribution through PayPal or by joining my patreon helps keep my gas tank full and my film Freez are stocked you can find more information by visiting my website at benh horn.com /d donate I also have prints ebooks and my annual portfolios available on my website thanks so much for watching we'll see you around next [Music] time

Channel: Ben Horne

Views: 10,411

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Id: topqbLQ3K1M

Length: 19min 21sec (1161 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 27 2024