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Clouds and Landscape Photography

Mark Esposito — Mon, 18 May 2009 03:55:08 +0000

It’s hard to overestimate the importance of clouds in Landscape Photography. When I started out doing Landscape I thought blue skies were the best. I guess if you’re used to boring overcast clouds of whitish-grey, the saturation of a blue sky is really pleasing to the eye. However, artistically, it becomes a large space with nothing interesting to hold your attention.

If you’re shooting Macro, these clouds are just what you needed as they diffuse the light leaving no harsh shadows and good saturation. Usually with Macro photography we aren’t including the sky in the photo anyway.

On the other hand, not all Landscape photos need the sky. Take a look at the photo of Spiderock in my earlier blog post here. The overcast sky took away from the mood I wanted to portray, so I left it out. I had to clone in some dark grasses (in Photoshop) in a small strip at the top. (not shown)

Finally, here’s an example from my recent trip to Arizona. The site is called Church Rock. As great as Church Rock is, the clouds made the composition. I used Nikon’s super wide-angle lens Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 to exaggerate the clouds. I’m printing this on Epson Exhibition Fiber paper, which has super bright whites. Printed at 16×24, or even cropped at 16×20 it’s really beautiful.

More Info on Clouds

Wikipedia has a short article on clouds that might be helpful here.

I just ordered the following book on Amazon since it had some good reviews, and it’s inexpensive.

Click on the image to order it.

Canyon Seating

Mark Esposito — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:50:15 +0000

I happily broke the Rule of thirds (just about) with this photo in order to get the clouds. The rule seemed to violate what my eye told me was right, so out goes the rule. (you know what they say about rules)

The reason it works (for me) is that the tree and clouds fill the top half of the photo, so there isn’t much dead space in the sky.

I was thinking about a title for this scene, and what came to mind was “Canyon Seating”. It looks like a great spot for a sleeping bag as well. That would be some scene to wake up to – if you could get past the fear of something licking your ear, or rolling down the hill into the canyon.

Interestingly this was shot with the Nikon 10.5mm Fisheye lens, which you would never guess. It’s a fantastic lens that I would recommend highly for most Nikon bodies. (except the D3/D700) In the uncropped version you can see some curvature in the horizon, but cropped I don’t see it.

Nikon 10.5mm f/2.8G ED AF DX Fisheye – Buy on Amazon

Technical Details: Nikon D200/10.5mm, 180/sec @f9
My current gear: See the Bio page

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Heading to the Southwest

Mark Esposito — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 03:22:13 +0000

I’m heading off to a Photo Workshop in Chinle AZ and Monument Valley Utah with Alain and Natalie Briot in the next couple of weeks, so I hope to have something new to show when I get back. It seems like good composition would be easier at a place like the Grand Canyon, but this is far from true. The senses are overwhelmed by the vastness and power of the view, but that doesn’t automatically translate into a great composition on print. In fact, if you just throw the wide-angle lens on the camera, trying to capture the feeling, you’ll probably end up with a bunch of busy photos with no subject for the eye. It may still be a pleasing image, but it probably won’t go beyond that.

This image had something that I really liked beyond pleasing, but I had to do some serious cropping to get the foreground right, and as such I think the print will have to stay on the smaller side.

Feel free to comment on it.

By the way, Check out Alain’s new book coming out on Composition link here

Nikon D200/12-24mm @ 14mm

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