Tips and Techniques for Creating Memorable Landscape Photographs with Michael Melford

[Music] so let's start with tips composition and I'm going to read you a quote I I was just uh next door in uh Ian PL who was doing a talk on composition which was great and the rules of composition and how he uses them and I think it's really good to study the rules before you go out but Edward Weston feels this way now to consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like Consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk and I sub cribe to that so I don't think about composition when I'm shooting and the best way to learn composition is absorb yourself immerse yourself in art okay it becomes second nature to you you know there is no rule going on there this is a Monae you guys live in New York you live in the metropolitan area you have the opportunity to go to the Metropolitan and sit in front of some of the most amazing art in the world and I every time I come to New York I'll be there tomorrow sitting in front of the impressionist and post-impressionists and just soaking it in there's a van go now I'm going to share with you the masters of Photography that have influenced me in my career starting with the man himself anel Adams uh born in 1902 he is the master the original in the beginning God created anel and it was good but look at his hat right if you ever seen Nat Geo photographers they all have great hats Ralph you here he's not here oh he's going to get hell later he's got a great hat do you guys see him this morning yeah he's got a great hat so let's look at anel's pictures this is his most famous image moonrise over Hernandez and he says here sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter right he came around the corner he saw this he had time enough to set up his 8x10 view camera and shoot one frame he didn't have a light meter he knew the luminance of the Moon and went from there there uh this is like I said his most famous photograph and when I was in college I brought my father to New York he brought me dragging kicking and dragging to the museums when I was a kid we grew up in Hastings on Hudson and so I brought him to the Witkin gallery and pointed to this picture and said $350 dad you got to buy this he didn't buy it it sold in 2006 for 69 $9,000 that's almost as good as owning Apple stock so you know where's the tips composition on this you know your subject is in the center your horizon line is almost in the center but it works great doesn't it I don't think he was thinking you know when I'm out there I'm never thinking composition I'm just okay it's here it looks great here oh looks a little better here and I'm going to take you through what I have gone through to get pictures the process of it um here's another answer quot quote a good photograph is knowing where to stand and that the truth and does this guy understand light a great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels in the deepest sense about what is being photographed and for me that sums up everything about where I try and go to with my photography and and this this is amazing now I I know he didn't I mean I don't know the story behind this but I bet you he waited there for hours while the clouds were moving and the light of shaft to go in the foreground and that middle ground to be in dark and of course I think he helped it when he printed it too we know he did that anel had a uh exhibit in an American place which was Saget's uh Alfred Saget's Gallery in 1936 and that kind of launched anel um tunnel view in yemane how many people have been here and photographed here oh you guys you know this is what you have to do if you want to be landscape photographer you have to go here and it's really wonderful because there's a parking lot right there the same view is there in fact yane Valley when you drive around yane Valley whereever there's a parking lot you look up and you go wow that's an Ansel photograph there so I always wondered what came first you know the Ansel photograph or the parking lot uh anyway so see that tree wait I got it here somewhere check out this tree right there I went there a couple of years ago and look is that the same tree I don't know I it looks pretty similar doesn't it anyways my picture is not as good as his but I couldn't stand right where he stood it's a little crowded there at Sunrise it's a little bit different but you know it's kind of fun to go out and meet other people and uh compare tripods f- stops stuff my tripod's better than yours and this is uh the Snake River Overlook there's a parking lot here and uh I was I mean this is in Jackson Hole there are the Tetons if you go there now it looks like this they haven't cut the trees down but in these days of drones or before drones I put my camera attached my camera to a weather balloon and tethered the weather balloon and set it up 100 feet and I got this shot and then I went back in the morning and I got this shot it's pretty sweet but it's no anel Adams okay then for me personally as I you know and I encourage you to find out everything about the history of photography because that will enrich your life so much for me the next step was this gentleman Elliot Porter who did bio uh research at Harvard he had a show at the American play stetes Gallery in 1938 he was born a year before anel and he was the first guy shooting color with a view camera and to me he was the first guy who could really see in color um of course this is you know just when color coming in and he used a process called the die transfer process which you can't do anymore because Kodak does well kodak's not here anymore but um the only control that he had with color was by making in the die process you made three different negatives and you could process and expose them differently to bring out the orange or the blue like now today in digital we just go and we've just saturated the blue right so easy he did a book called the place no one knew which was uh he heard that Glen Canyon which is above the Grand Canyon was going to be damned up to become Lake Powell and he went in there and photographed Glenn Canyon and did a book called the place no one knew I got to go back there a few years ago when there was a another severe drought going on and did a story for the National Geographic Magazine on Glen Canyon so it was a real honor for me to do that but look at how he saw I mean you know the the thing about photography is seen it's not about the f- stops you know you can go put your camera on the little green square and walk out and just see or use my favorite camera the iPhone takes great pictures doesn't it the subtleties of spring time and then for me the next master was Ernest hos he's not uh chimping he's shooting film he was born in 1936 no 1921 he also he was a medical student but because he was Jewish and it was during the war he was from Austria he ended up uh having to give up his medical career he came to the United States and became a photographer and I'm very happy he did because he I think wanted to make pictures not of what was there but of how he felt here's a couple of quotes from him but for but all of my inspirational influences came much more from the Arts than from photo magazines and I love this one the most important lens you have is your legs and with this particular picture I like this quote a picture is the expression of an impression if the beautiful were not in us how would we ever recognize it I mean these pictures were taken you know in the 40s and 50s he could see I have this Photograph hanging in my house and I always really loved it to me it was like a Zen photograph he found this pop TR popler Leaf somewhere out on some Granite maybe in the adex and someone was looking at my print the other day and they said you know what I think that's asphalt he lived in New York right beauty is everywhere oh but he saw light look at this one shaft of light here oh used to word my pointer how about this one no but you can see the shaft of light there there it is anyways and the last gentleman who influenced me and is actually one of a few is David Munch David Munch is still alive and still offering workshops his father was a photographer ysep uh Munch then there's David and he has a son named Mark so three generations of photographers I emailed mark asked him for if he could send me some pictures of his dad that were shot with the 4x5 I love the fact that he's got a digital camera around his neck here but he's got his 4x5 View Camera on his back um and David for me when I was in college and just out of college wanting to be a photographer a landscape photographer I found his stuff so inspirational because he used The View Camera and that front tilt lens to bring everything in Focus you know those were the days you have to really be a Craftsman a technician as well as a have a a a vision and he did very well at that this is in Glacier National Park I know exactly where that was taken and I'll show you a picture that I took here at St Mary's Lake later on but I think this picture this picture when I first saw it just blew me away it's pretty similar to anel's composition right of the in the foreground and the mountain in the background and I I don't know if he lit that or if the sun probably the sun had was just a shaft of light there and oh wait how did who put that Ralph no wonder Ralph's not here yeah that's me so I know you it's hard to recog I still have that hat kind it funny isn't it yeah so I mean that was my dream you know I just wanted to be the landscape guy shooting 8 by10 45 810 out in nature and I was actually lucky enough to uh get in with Life magazine and I shot 8 by10 for Life Magazine out in the field in a number of different situations there's a 4 five and an 810 I'm shooting the Rockets lined up in front of Radio City Music Hall we stopped the traffic on 6th Avenue and uh that was quite a shot and then I started working you know and working for life was great and you know I L the 8x10 and I never figured out if John lengard the picture editor liked me to shoot 8 by10 because the quality in the magazine was so good or if he only had to edit 10 pictures instead of 3,000 but then I started working for uh Nat Geo and the first shoot I did which was a books division shoot I shot 45 810 35 and they said no we're just set up for 35 so don't shoot anywhere large format and that was pretty much the end of it but I promised you successfully shooting Landscapes and challenging weather and here's my answer get the right clothing that's the whole secret to challenging weather you know umbrellas you know I got them on tripods I went by this place three or four times stopped and photographed it it uh this was on a story for life on the Appalachian Trail and uh it wasn't until I went by in the rain and photographed it in the rain that it really came together the tree trunks were dark uh the color was all saturated so what makes up a good photograph okay light content and composition okay content landscape photographers might call it moment but you know if you're if you're a journalist I think think content is the most important thing if you're an artist maybe composition but for us landscape photographers I think it's light wind bulock how many of you guys know wind bulock his work oh you got to check out wind Bullocks work amazing let's see where it is here oh here's another Edward West no forget that one the wind bull I love this wind Bullock one here my thinking has been my thinking has been deeply affected by the belief that all things are some form of radiant energy this guy's doing mushrooms I'm telling you light is perhaps the most profound truth in the universe wow there's a statement by a photographer check out his work so yeah for me it's all about light and Ralph who's probably at moose Peterson's talk uh likes to say find the light and shoot what's in it Bob are you here Bob Christ oh man my friends they were my friends so I stole this from one of them and both of them this morning at breakfast I said who did I steal this from maybe 10 years ago when I started teaching and and they both claimed it you know what kind of light do I work in or should we or we all work in okay there's four kinds diffuse Light Side light backl and Magic light and I'm not going to go through the usual talk that I give but I will tell you that of the pictures I'm showing you 44 of the images are diffused light half as many 22 are backlight 18 are side light and I got one picture with magic light in the show so the talk here I'm not really showing you my best work I can say that right oh my work is much better than what you're seeing but I'm just going to show you these because I want you to learn uh what I go through and so I'm going to take you on a different assignments I've done for the magazine the yellow magazine so aadia National Park was my first first assignment for National Geographic the yellow magazine this was after working at the Kids magazine uh then the books Division and then I worked for traveler for 15 years I had a love affair with traveler and then I got a phone call one day uh from the Director of Photography asking me if I wanted to go to aadia for the month of October I found out afterwards actually that at least two other photographers had turned down the assignment to go to Acadia and they were desperate and they ended up calling the Director of Photography a traveler Dan westren and asked him who would he recommend to do a landscape story and I still don't know if he was if he recommended me thank you Dan because he thought I was the right guy or if he was trying to get rid of me at Traveler number one number one oh thank you yeah so I went off to Acadia I spent the month of October there I got to fly in a helicopter one morning sidelight and oh it's cropped a little bit at the top so not only are they not not my best pictures but my pictures are actually better than what you're seeing um but they're cro it's cropped a little um but then I found this right just part of that big scene here just part of the this flying along I Saw The Light backlit it was magical so I went from wide angle I zoomed into to about the 8 85 mm lens so what's backlight that's when we aim the camera at the sun in some form and you know we get lens flare a lot if we do that so sometimes I'll hide the sun behind a tree or something however I like to work mostly in diff slight rainy days cloudy days why because I can work all day long I'm not restricted to the first hour in the morning in the last hour of the day I've got you know 18 hours that I can work which is great cameras on the tripod slow shutters beat I love fog diffuse light uh this spot I found it I had three storms come through when I was in the Cadia and I saw this off the side of the road went I like the composition the diagonal not that I was thinking about composition when I shot it uh but the leaves weren't quite peaking yet so I you know I kept going back and checking it and when the leaves were Peak the water was not so you know it was the first frame that worked but I'll work a thing and then after I shot the the previous one at my feet was this shot and I shot this and then I moved one of the leaves to improve the composition completely destroyed the whole thing some of us can do that artwolf and some of us cannot so he's very good at composing stuff and arranging stuff the second time I went there I found this so after I get a shot I don't just leave I hang out you know it's like oh wow I got this shot you know I can relax and then I look around go oh wow look at that that's kind of cool uh I found this this path when the leaves were green I came back this is the image that ran but I came back again later but even though the leaves the color is peaking I don't know maybe I should have done a longer exposure maybe the first time it was raining but anyways it wasn't happening sometimes I just see pictures as I'm driving or walking and I just stop and work it you know and think about depth of field okay I wanted to know that there were dark bark in the background uh trunks but not see too much of them so again the nice thing about digital you can see it so you can see what you're getting while you're shooting as opposed to the old days with film you just shot and shot and shot different filters I went over a bridge I saw this I made a mental note it could be a shot I came back another night and that looked a little more interesting but I'll work it I'll slow down the shutter speed get some moving clouds uh it was dark enough that I didn't need to use a neutral density filter or a polarizing filter I probably had a polarizing filter on because I usually do I found this spot the composition felt good to me with that leading line and I came back when there was a storm and that wave actually did get me or got my camera Canon loved it I was shooting Canon at the time is there anyone from Nikon here oh yeah so now I shoot with Nikon yeah definitely and I buy my equipment at B&H and no discounts and I and I do travel with lindblad National Geographic Expedition uh anyways enough of a commercial break okay so don't ever put yourself In Harm's Way you just want to make it look like what you're doing is dangerous right they we couple of people the summer after I shot this who were actually swept off the there's a road that goes along by The Cliffs there uh and I was very careful to stand in the right place so I could get this shot and not get swept in and my last day at aadia uh I went to this place otter Cliffs and I got down there and it was kind of overcast but I saw this all right doesn't work I saw it if you look in the in the right just above the horizon line there is a patch of blue sky right there's clouds there and then there's like an opening of blue sky so I knew the sun was going to go come up and go through that little blue section for about 5 minutes so I set up the tripod got my composition and then I waited till I had my five minutes of light I guess that would qualify as magic light that's way I Define magic light when God puts a spotlight on part of the landscape all right like we'll turn that one off and turn this one on maybe that you know if I was landscape that would be magic but it's me so it's not and then my last night there I went to Jordan Pond and the Northern Lights happened for me so that was a good first assignment for me my second assignment uh was the Great Smoky Mountains National Park another photographer went down there and after two weeks came back and said he didn't want to photograph it wouldn't that nice to be able to be like that your National Geographic gives you an assignment you go out and you come back say no it's not for me so I you know they asked me if I wanted to do it it's like yeah of course I do but can we shoot it over four seasons so I went down four times there uh Great Smokies is great so here we are in New York make your first trip up to a Katie if you haven't been there go down to Great Smoky Mountains any time of year is great down there the fall is great uh and I like to get up early diffused light fog and when I shoot you know when I shoot pictures when the Sun is up more than 10 degrees and it's hazy out I always wonder after I look at the picture why I even bothered you know maybe I was scouting you know it's sidelit but is it it's not even you know it's only a picture worthy worth throwing away um but maybe I was scouting you know I just had to put it in there to show you it's not my best so here was the situation another parking lot up on top of klingman's Dome and uh backlighting the sun's going down okay but it's early maybe 4:00 but I know it's going to get better as the sun goes goes down and gets warmer um now in digital you could take the first picture and make it look like the second picture and I just I attended John Paul caponegro talk and we could actually make it even better now uh but then I'll wait you know after the sun sets I never leave once the sun sets in fact a lot of times for me it happens starts happening when the sun sets you know you get just different colors and different feels and conversely in the morning the opposite is true maybe you know you get up in the morning you got some pink in the sky although you're not seeing it so much on the projector and then as the sun comes up it changes okay so the picture is over but you know where you don't have anywhere to run off to right so you might as well just hang out there and enjoy it and keep shooting and learn afterwards you know how light changes sometimes I'll shoot you know wide and then narrow and zoom in okay same setting same picture I haven't used my feed I've just used a zoom lens same thing here I saw this I thought it was would be interesting but unfortunately it wasn't you know this compositionally is not correct I mean it just it needed something this was broken off anyways I zoomed in thinking that it would be good but I'm using it as as a learning tool use your feet okay I saw this little waterfall you could go underneath I moved a little bit I'm getting there I'm using a long exposure tripod long exposure it's almost dark I don't need a a grad ND or an ND and then this is the picture that ran okay I found these gladiolas down there it's okay but if I had carried a spritzer with me spritzing water I don't I don't do that so I came back one day it was raining and I was like oh I wonder about those gladiolas so I came back here and then I got that shot which ran so you know it's a matter of just observing you know it's about light content composition but observing so I was here standing in the Stream and the oak leaf on top of the water caught my eye so I zoomed in on it I walked over to it and how can I make this interesting so I just hung out with it you know I just tried different stuff I hung out there for a couple hours I finally came up with this I slowed down the shutter speed and captured the shadow as the leaf is moving down the stream getting the shadow on the bottom of the stream and blurring everything else and then I just did some other motion stuff you know that's the beautiful thing about photography when we're in it and we're in the moment time stand still we're not thinking about other stuff right and that's why we do it it takes us out to Nature puts us out there and it's a lot of fun when I see some some subject that I like I always work it sometimes I'll shoot one frame and keep going in this case you know there was that leaf there to the right H to the right of the trunk there's that leaf out there in the middle of everything and then there's this plant here and so I it bothered me if I'd gone out to move the leaf be I would have left Footprints because it's all dewy uh if I had pulled the plants up no I wasn't going to pull the plants up uh anyways I shot one frame it it ended up running as a two-page spread so you just never know sometimes don't walk past a photograph you see something you like take at least one picture or maybe work it um and since I got to go down there for four four seasons I found one tree that was 12 footsteps 12 strides Beyond a dead pine tree and I thought I would shoot this over four seasons so I more or less put the camera in the Tripod in the same spot and shot it four different times and put them together like this and then Death Valley is the largest national park in the lower 48 yes because we have destinations well documents we're talking about National Parks so uh Death Valley is a great place to go okay it's not you know we don't hear about it that much as you know the top five places to go but as the largest national park it offers so much it is the lowest 282 ft below sea level at badwater and it goes up to telescope Peak which is 11,000 ft so I spent a month there I went a couple of times and uh I tell you I could spend another couple of months there so this early morning the sun hasn't hit it yet they have these incredible sand dunes the sun came up I was like really happy and I didn't even actually see it but once I put it on the computer I realized there were all these Footprints oh well you know on that Peak there's all the people have been running around there and there's a photographer over there in the shadows you know I went out there and don't these people know who I am so it was a little frustrating for me so what you really want to do is to go there and wait for the wind to blow like crazy there's two kinds of winds in Death Valley there's like no wind and it blows like hell you know that's it and so this is what you want you want it to blow like crazy and then you want to be the first person out there in the morning when it the sun comes up side side lit right and go out there and it's like not a foot print anywhere oh it was so lovely and it's just all composition it's all design and it is cropped a little quite a bit and even when the sun gets higher it's still photographic photographic photogenic whatever okay and so when I went there before I went there you know I like to see where the sun where the sun's going to rise where it's going to set where the moon when's the full moon uh and of course now we have an app for that and I saw that at sa brisky point where there's a parking lot the moon was going to set right behind Z brisky point so I went there and sure enough there was the moon and I photographed it in a number of different ways I'm working it I'm shooting it with a longer lens I'm going wider I'm going wider still until I see the picture I want I went back the next day now all of us know and if you don't you do now that the Moon Rises 40 minutes later approximately every day which is why the tides are 40 minutes later approximately every day and so when the full moon is coming you know when the Sun is setting and it's a full Moon the Moon Rises when the sun sets so a day or two before the full moon you go out and you can see where the Moon is lining up with your landscape in fact sometimes it is the day before is the shot so you can see the difference between one day and the next day okay it's 40 minutes later setting in this particular moment uh situation so I love Z brisky point the parking lot there you got this shot looking to the West you got this shot looking to the South and you got this shot looking to the east at sunrise uh cropped um and this backlit I also uh I worked with a writer there and I said so you know we met I said so what are you going to write about at Death Valley he goes oh it's all about Canyons I'm going Canyons I haven't seen any Canyons so I found this one spot I went there and I experimented with a flashlight I kind of lit it with the flashlight and then I waited for it to get dark and then I did a longer exposure with a flashlight so I'm lighting the Rocks I have determined the correct exposure beforehand with my flashlight and then another day when the wind is really blowing I get up high I see these beautiful sand dunes in the foreground with a nice light in the background side lit I work that then I go down on the dunes okay you can see the wind blowing there so I'm making sure the wind is at my back so it doesn't uh sand blast my lens and so I shot this but I the whole time I knew that I was going to end up on a hill looking into the sun because I like backlighting so much and so here we are again it's cropped at the top you can see the top and there's some lens flare you see in the lower right there's lens flare there so I put my hand over it and of course my hand is in the picture uh and it it works better in the uncropped version and then so what do I do I zoom in a little bit I'm still putting my hand in front to block the light such as like this oh there you guys are yeah uh and then I wait for the light to get the right color of course now with digital we can make it the right color well this was digital um and but then I still don't go home just in case okay that other picture was the one that ran but I still stay there cuz it's so nice and I'm going to end Death Valley here um down at badwater 282 feet below sea level uh Sid light I'm looking for the shot so I'm shooting at a right angle I turn I look towards the sun backlight and I'm liking what I see because a lot of times when you have high clouds there is a possibility the Sun is going to drop underneath the clouds and it'll be clear on the horizon line it'll light everything it'll light the clouds up so I'm hoping that is what's going to happen in the meantime I'm looking for the right composition in the foreground I'm walking around uh the light's getting better and better and better still you can't see at the top I'm sorry but the sky is lit pretty well but I'm I still haven't found the right foreground and so it's like peeking now and luckily it all came together at the last minute I still had good light in the sky and this foreground thing uh leading your eye into the composition worked for me I wasn't really I wasn't thinking about forr Middle Ground B I don't think about composition when I'm shooting okay and the more art you study or immerse yourself in the last less you're going to think about composition and maybe afterwards you can go over your images and think about it and so I stayed there once it got dark and I took my little headlamp and I wanted to do it you know a star Trail shot here so I was getting an exposure test on the foreground I put a little blue gel filter on the headlamp I moved over I tried different exposures 5 10 15 30 second exposures turns out 30 seconds exposure worked for the foreground so then I opened the shutter gave it 30 seconds in the foreground and gave it 40 minutes in the background okay so I turned off it was completely black out there so I turned off the light got the foreground lit and then my background had the star Trail going oh I guess I'm going to end here at Joshua Tree well I'll end when I end whatever uh so they have a Joshua Tree Forest there it's a really cool park for destinations well documents um and so I had a little wind storm going there and I Work It and the light gets a little better maybe I overexpose it a little bit it's cropped in at the top and that was the shot and so when you go there when you go to Death Valley in fact it's worth going to Death Valley just to go to the racetrack I mean isn't that crazy here are rocks and here's a trail that the rocks have left on this plia and up until recently they didn't know how it happened and so when it was dry when it's dry it's completely dry you can walk out there you don't leave a footprint and when it's wet out there it's so wet you can't walk out there because you know you sink into the mud and it sticks to your feet and so obviously I was there when it was dry and no one could figure out how what made the rocks move so I took a couple of rocks home I put them in the backyard and I watched them you you know I'm kidding but re they found out recently what happens you have to have rain and then then cold weather so you get a rhyme ice and then you have to have the wind blow like crazy and the the rocks are actually moving with the ice across the top and it creates these Trails so you need a four-wheel drive to get there but it's worth going to Death Valley just for this it's so surreal and you you're usually the only one out there when you get there and so I was there I found a pilot who was offered to fly me for for next to nothing and I encourage you to fly whenever you can to rent a cesna a high-wing cesna is not very much money uh this guy wanted to charge me $50 an hour and I insisted on a 100 cuz it's ridiculous $50 an hour but you know you can rent an airplane you only need an hour sunrise and sunset and certain places in fact in New York you there's a corridor you can go up and down the and you can look at New York you know from the air under 1,000 ft I think it is between 500 and 1,000 I used to own an airplane I used to live up in Westchester County so that was my favorite flight going down the Hudson around the Statue liberty and going back up again but here we are in Death Valley so I found this pilot we're flying you know all and and it used to be an inland sea so that's all sediment there in the foreground you can see bad water in the back the white and Telescope Peak if it wasn't cropped um but just flying around looking down before the Sun hits it or after the Sun hits it okay it's that diffuse light that shadow light because once the sun hit it it just wasn't happening for me okay um not to say that it couldn't happen uh in this particular area so I flew around I just had so much fun with the colors that were going on there um and the minerals down on the flats and then we flew again over uh by over the sand dunes same thing just flying around in a circle open up the window and fly around and shoot down you know back light side light n matter and then if you feel comfortable you tell the pilot to put it in a real tight turn and you can shoot straight down uh takes a little getting used to so look at that it's just a little tiny airplane you know a camera and a really good pilot and I am going to end with Glacier uh Waterton Glacier National Park this is another story that I proposed uh I'd say half the stories you see in the magazine are proposed by photographers and after I had done aadia National Park I called up one of the photographers who turned it down to thank him for turning it down and he told me so now what you have to do is propose stories and so I did and uh Death Valley was one of them uh and this was one as well I'm going to end here with this one Waterton Glacier it's the International Peace Park between Montana and Alberta just an amazing it's like Yellowstone with not many people comparatively but you don't want to go anywhere in July and August right don't go to Yellowstone in July August Yos oh my God but uh uh I went here six Mornings in a row to this parking lot uh before I got the light I wanted and it was worth it diffuse light long exposure just simple stuff all right now there's that David mshot almost the exact same place he shot that uh pictures of the Rocks when he shot it the wind was blowing when I shot it the wind had made this pattern but there was no wind I'm just shooting down you know on an area maybe no more than this I went back there a couple of days later the wind had blown there was no pattern at all there uh this is up on the Alberta side there was a lightning storm going on and it was moving towards me so I set up the tripod I'm trying to capture the lightning and there was you know it was middle of the day so the slowest shutter speed I had was a 15th of a second so every time the lightning went I took the press the shutter but I missed it you know so I kept shooting meanwhile the Lightning's getting closer and closer closer you know so it's like well I finally got one I said that's good enough and then when I got home I read an outdoor photographer they make a device that they sell at beautiful uh called a lightning trigger and you put it it's sensitive to the lightning you put it on your hot shoe you plug it into your shutter release and every time the Lightning goes it takes the picture I bought one I used it once works great not as thrilling though really is you know and you know middle of the day I don't really shoot middle of the day but the Sun the clouds were moving across the the glacier fed Lake which had that beautiful green color so I just stood there you know and watched the clouds and the light move across the glacier I mean across the lake diffuse light at right on the Edge of Darkness after a storm probably early early morning okay here's my one magic light shot well I guess maybe the other one at aadia was you know where God has for giv me a spotlight on the stage it's just one light on the stage lighting one thing um and so you know what else you going to do at Sunrise you get up you have your coffee you go out and you watch what's happening with the light and September 21st I went back there and uh it had snowed they closed the road going up to over the pass going to the sun highway I parked the car went up as high went up to Logan pass hiked around shot all day and it wasn't really happening for me I came back to the car and I hung out at the car and then I saw these guys coming by and it's like instantaneously what do I want to do I want to slow down the shutter speed not too much but I want to capture the snow falling and the Rams running and then about 20 minutes later it really started snowing and I got that Carside so the moral to the story is don't go hiking just hang out by the car you know have a cocktail cup of coffee whatever diffuse light you know if you're going to shoot waterfalls or moving water there's diffuse light and then there's reflected light okay this is diffuse light that Elliot Porter shot was reflected light where he's shooting in the shadows but the sun is on the bank on the other side and the Beautiful Thing of digital is you can see what you're getting so the wind was blowing like crazy and I wanted to get a shot of the Aspen leaves moving but I wanted the trunk the the trunks still so again just by shooting different shutter speeds and looking at what I'm getting I can choose the right shutter speed at the moment and then just continue to shoot and I'm going to end with these two slides this was my first day at uh Glacier July 3rd and there's a a visitor center at Logan pass and then there's a boardwalk that goes up to Hidden Lake and I came up the boardwalk and I saw all these Glacier lies and where I took this picture was just a huge Meadow of Glacier lilies uh but you know I know the national parks they really protect our Parks well I didn't want to walk across this Meadow I mean the flowers were beautiful so I went back down to the visitor center I went in and I asked the ranger I said so you know is that area open up there well now you think about that I mean you're in a national park and some guy asks if the area is open right so they hear a lot of stupid questions every day and this probably was the dumbest question he heard that day and he looked at me kind of crosseyed and he said well did you see any signs that said it was closed I said no I didn't he goes well it's open good so I came up here and I came across the snow and I was very happily shooting up with a meadow of of Glacier lies and I turned around I saw this shot and I framed it up and I shot it a number of different ways and I went back to the hotel that night I really liked the framing and everything but the sky was a little dead there wasn't a lot of character in the sky it was Sid lit so I figured I'll come back tomorrow July 4th so I drive back up July 4th come up go on the boardwalk and don't you know it every 10 yards was a sign area closed protecting the flowers but it was okay because that actually ran that picture ran in the magazine and then the national par the Postal Service picked it up and bought it as a stamp as well so look I don't come cheap 85 cents so with that we have run out of time and I thank you very much whether you're a hobbyist or a professional B&H has the answers to your questions experience a world of technology at our New York City Superstore connect with us online or give us a call our staff of experts is happy to help

Channel: B&H Photo Video Pro Audio

Views: 359,726

Keywords: BH Photo Video, BH Photo, Landscape Photography (Literature Subject), B&H, Photography (Visual Art Form), Michael Melford, bhvideos, bh photo, b and h, b&h, Optic 2015

Id: 5iLnn2VI2h4

Length: 49min 44sec (2984 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 22 2015