OPG LIVE: March 2020

Hi, welcome to "OPG Live." My name is Leah, and I'm here with Ian Plant. Ian, how are you doing today? I'm doing great. Sorry, we normally get like some sort of heads up from the booth about when the program starts, and for some reason that's not working. So welcome to "OPG live," which is a community space that allows photographers like you to connect with other photographers in a virtual setting, which right now is something that we all appreciate, It's all the rage.

not having to have any physical contact. As a matter of fact, Leah and I are in separate studios just merged together magically through the digital process. And today we're gonna talk about my recent trip, my exciting photo adventures in Mongolia. Yes, oh, I can't wait to hear about it, but before you get started, why don't I give some announcements? Okay, that's fine, go ahead.

All right, first we are sponsored today as usual by Tamron. And today we are actually featuring our outdoor photography guide "Community Gallery." You've heard about it before. We're talking about it again. Submit your own photography or view hundreds of other photos that have already been submitted by your fellow OPG community. To submit your photo or just to view the gallery, you can click the banner right below your chat box, or if you're watching on Facebook, you'll be able to find the link in the description.

And as usual, I'll keep an eye on the chat box for any questions that come in while Ian is sharing some photos and some stories. Anything that's immediately relevant, I'll slide right into the discussion. Everything else, we'll get to towards the end of the hour, filling all the way up with your questions, everything about photography, and some things tangentially related, would you say? We like to keep it exciting. Normally, I like to talk about photography, and that's really the topic of our conversation today, but my most recent photo trip was dominated by something other than photography.

As a matter of fact, I did very little photography on my most recent photo trip because I had to spend most of my time escaping from coronavirus. Ah. So we'll get into that. So I've got a few photos from Mongolia to share with you, and I've got a lot of stories about my adventures there and my very arduous journey back home, but why don't we dive right into a few of the photos that I made? And so the first photo is from a place called the Flaming Cliffs, which is this red sandstone area in Mongolia.

Most of Mongolia is arid desert and open grassland, but every now and then you'll get something that's a little bit different from the rest of that sort of seemingly uniform landscape. And so, the Flaming Cliffs is one area that really stands out, and it's known for these sandstone cliffs and formations. And so I was only there for one night. That was my first destination after arriving in the capital, drove out to the Flaming Cliffs and I spent one sunset there. And you can see from this photo that I found this one rather prominent feature.

I spent a lot of time searching the area, looking for good compositions 'cause I knew I only had really one chance to make a photo. I had that one sunset, and I really wasn't gonna have a lot of opportunity to do a lot of, or that the people in the booth are now pointing. There's all sorts of interesting things going on here. We're having some technical issues and I'm sorry, it's distracting, so I'm watching them deal with this. But I'm just gonna keep on talking 'cause I think everything's actually running smoothly, I just don't know it.

So, all right, so I found this one particular shot, and I knew I only had one chance to get it right. So I set up, I found some snow that was in the foreground that had some nice ripply shapes to it, and I used that as my foreground in a wide angle composition. And what I did is I had to scout this when there was still light on the landscape. I waited for the moment when the sun set behind me and that foreground went into shadow, but there was still light on the sandstone feature in the background. So having that lit background scenery, and then having the foreground in shadow is usually the moment that I'm waiting for.

And so when that happened, I was able to take the shot. Now, the difficulty with this is that when I was scouting the shot, there was still light on it, so there were shadows on it. So the scene looked completely different. And so it wasn't until that sun actually dropped down below the horizon that I was able to really see what my composition looked like. So I had to very quickly make some adjustments because it wasn't long before the light faded on the background feature as well.

So it was a quick scramble to make the shot, but I managed to pull it off. Now, you know, it wasn't a bad start to the trip. It's kind of a nice shot. I, you know, I like the way the composition leads the viewer's eye deeper into the scene, but there were no clouds, there wasn't really a dramatic moment, and I was hoping to make something much more powerful on this trip. So the next morning, me and my traveling friend Erez Marom, a professional photographer from Israel, went on to our next photo destination.

And I'm just gonna kind of scroll through this. And that next destination was the Khongor Sand Dunes, which is part of the Gobi Desert. And this is a massive dune field that extends for hundreds and hundreds of square miles. And some of the dunes are as tall as 2,500 feet, so it's really an impressive site. And it's very challenging to photograph 'cause you got to climb up into the dunes and then explore all these big dunes, looking for interesting compositions.

And when I'm making photographs of dunes, I'm paying attention to two things. One is composition, so I'm looking for interesting compositions. I'm looking for features in the landscape like ripples in the sand or the hard edge of a dune crest to use as a foreground in a wide angle composition, or for this particular shot, what I did is I zoomed in with a short telephoto lens. I was using Tamron's 35 to 150 millimeter lens, which is a really nice, kind of general short telephoto zoom. And I'm also looking for strong light.

The best light you're gonna get when you're photographing dunes will be sunrise and sunset. You want strong, colorful light on the dunes. When the sun's too high in the sky, you start losing all the shadows. So the sun has to be low and angled so it's producing shadows. So there's usually about a 45 minute window in the evening, and in the morning where you get that really good, strong, low angle light, that is also very colorful.

So in the morning I start shooting a few minutes after the sun officially rises, you start getting, first some soft light on the dunes, but you don't really have shadows yet. As the sun gets a little bit higher, that's when you get those really deep shadows forming, so the ripples become much more distinct. And the ridges in the sand become much more distinct if you're doing a telephoto shot like this one here. And then probably about a half an hour after that, the sun gets high enough it starts losing its warm color, and so the color is not quite as good on the dunes. And then as the sun gets higher, it's illuminating the dunes evenly, you start losing the shadows and you lose all that form.

And in the evening, it's the reverse. So you've got a 45 minute window, maybe a half an hour in the morning and in the evening where you can make some good dune shots. So what you gotta do when you're exploring a sand dune field is you have to walk around looking for interesting compositions. And then if you find something good, you wait until the light gets good and then you shoot it. And so, because you've got a limited amount of time, you gotta move quickly.

So if you find something good, you need to shoot it and then move on to something else. The problem with working with sand dunes is that whenever you walk around, you leave tracks and those tracks can ruin potential composition. So if you find something that's just merely good, but not great you know, my best recommendation is to photograph it once the light starts getting good, but then move on and explore some more and try to find something even better for when the light is at its peak. If you find something really great, sit on it. Don't move, don't walk around, don't experiment.

Wait until the light's at its peak, and then once you get the shot, you can do some minor variation of the composition moving around, but you want to make sure if you find something really powerful, that you're there for the best light. So we spent two days in the dunes, and I did a variety of shots. This was the one telephoto shot that I made. I also did some, some drone photography. And this was, I'm not sure if they're cattle or yaks, but they were crossing the desert.

When I saw them on my video screen when I was flying my drone, I thought maybe they were camels. It turns out they weren't camels. You know, my buddy Erez was like, "well do they have humps?" And I'm like, "well, they kind of look like they have humps you know, but I can't tell, all I can see is their shadows, and the shadows look kind of humpy," but it turns out they were not camels. Probably yaks or something like that. But nonetheless, it made for an interesting aerial.

Here's another drone shot I took, by the way. Not in the dunes, but this was a mountain region we crossed on the way to the dunes. So whenever I get an opportunity to get my drone up to get a different perspective on the landscape, I will seize upon it. And I also did a lot of wide angle photography in the dunes, as you know, anyone who knows my work knows that I'm a wide angle junkie. This particular shot, probably my favorite from my trip to Mongolia, was taken with Tamron's 15 to 30 millimeter lens.

And I was ultra wide, I was at 15 millimeters. So I got very, very close to the ripples in the foreground to accentuate them, to make them a more prominent part of the composition. This helps invite the viewer into the visual design, and it helps lead the viewer's eye deeper into the scene. So I found these really distinct ripples in the sand that were all pointing into that triangle dune in the background. And so I got in really close to make those ripples look bigger, to stretch them out so that they went diagonally into the edges and corners of the image frame.

And all of this helps create this leaning in of perspective that narrows the viewer's eye deeper into the composition. And this particular dune, I liked its shape, so I did a lot of work with it. I actually went back to the same dune for a second night of photography after I took this photo on the first night and the wind had blown and kind of rearranged a lot of the features, so these big ripples were not there when I went back the second day. So wind is your best friend when you're doing dune photography because wind is what creates all these features in the dunes, and a really strong wind will erase footprints and blemishes and things like that. So ideally, you want to time your visit to a dune field after a really heavy blow.

So I went back into the dunes, I did a lot of different photography. This is a shot from the dunes taken with my drone. This was in the morning, and it was a morning where there was a lot of clouds, and so we didn't get good light on the dunes. But when the sun started to peak above the clouds, there was some interesting opportunities. There's this river, and it was completely frozen, but the ice was reflecting all the sunlight, so I got my drone up, flying over the river.

You can see the dunes in the background a bit there, they've got a little bit of light on them. So you can just kind of get an idea of how massive this dune field is. as I pan left to right there. And for this particular shot, I was more focused on the composition created by the reflections in the ice of the river, and those reflections lead the viewer deeper into the scene. I prefer to work with curves and meanders if I can, rather than just straight lines because a straight line will take your viewer from point A to point B, from the foreground to the background.

But it's a one-way ticket, and there's not a lot of variation, but if you've got a curve or a zigzag or something that meanders back and forth, it gets the viewer moving not only from foreground to background, but also the viewer meanders throughout the composition from left to right. So there's a lot of motion, visual motion here that's created by a composition like this. So I'm always looking for S curves or, you know, things like that, zigzags that add more visual energy to my compositions. And here's another shot with my drone. This was flying over the dunes.

You can see that there's a little bit of snow in some of the dune valleys. I wish there was a lot more. It has snowed, maybe I don't know, a week, week and a half before we got there, but it was warm enough during the day that the snow was mostly melted by the time we got there. If we had been there after a big snow fall and all of those dune valleys were just completely covered in snow, I think that would have created a really incredible contrast, but it didn't happen this time. And so, going back to that same dune that I had photographed the night before, the second night there was some clouds.

I experimented with some vertical wide angle shots to really use those ripples powerfully as leading lines, and so you have to get close. I was maybe a foot away from the ripples in the foreground here, with my wide angle lens. And in order to get sufficient depth of field, so that everything from near to far in the composition looks very sharp, you need to stop down and use a small aperture like F16 or F22 or you need to do something called focus stacking. And focus stacking is what I did for this particular shot. So that involves having the same exposure, the same composition.

You just vary the focus point from frame to frame and then you blend those images on the computer. And that gives you that nice, sharp, deep focus look. And I prefer to do this usually rather than using depth of field, because when you stop down to a small aperture, there's this optical defect called diffraction which kicks in, especially at like F16 and F22, and that is gonna overall, make your image look less sharp. It kind of softens the image overall. So focus stacking allows you to get past diffraction for a much sharper, cleaner looking image.

And you can learn all about hyper-focal distance, diffraction, depth of field and focus stacking with my course, "Focusing for Landscape Photography," which is available on the OPG Shop. And I think we've pretty much gotten to the end of my photos from my trip because what happened is when we were done with the dunes, we re-emerged from the wilderness. We had been in the wilderness camping for about three or four nights. And then we came out to civilization briefly before we moved on to our next photo destination to find out that the whole country of Mongolia was basically shutting down because of fears of the spread of coronavirus. Now, at the time I was there, there was absolutely no coronavirus in Mongolia.

I think now they've got maybe one confirmed case there, so the government of Mongolia really wanted to make sure that coronavirus was kept out. They just don't have the health infrastructure to deal with a major outbreak there, so they shut down everything. When I say they shut down everything, I mean, everything. They shut down the roads, they shut down the restaurants, and then any like public gathering places. I think they were even thinking of shutting down all the supermarkets.

Thankfully they kept those open. So what happened is I was in the interior city of Dalanzadgad when me and Erez emerged from the wilderness with our guides, and we found out that first of all, that my flight out had been canceled. 'Cause my flight went through South Korea, and South Korea had a major coronavirus outbreak after I arrived in Mongolia. So all flights to and from South Korea from Mongolia were canceled, so I had to rebook new flights. And then we found out that the rest of our trip was canceled because of all the road closures.

So Erez and I both managed to rebook and find new flights home on Turkish Airlines. There was a direct flight from Ulaanbaatar to Istanbul, and we had that flight in two days, but then we find out that the highway leading to the capital is completely closed down and there's no way we can get past. And so we got stuck there for one day, and our guide was trying to get permission from the local government officials to get past the checkpoint. And we got stuck there a second day, and it was at 5:00PM on the second day that we finally got permission, which was a relief because our flight out was the next morning. So we would have had to cancel that flight if we weren't able to get the permission we needed to get back to the capital.

And if we had canceled that flight, there weren't any flights available for like a week. I mean, and flights were getting canceled, the remaining flights were all super expensive. I think there was a run. All the tourists in Mongolia were trying to get out. And so everyone was gobbling up the tickets, the airlines were jacking up the ticket prices.

So if we hadn't made that flight, things could have gotten pretty sticky for us. We might've been stuck there longer, and I haven't really kept up with what's been going on there. I don't know if the cancellations continued to grow, whether they kept the country locked down, or whether they finally eased things. But we were concerned that we were just gonna simply get stuck in Mongolia and never get back home until the coronavirus response began to dissipate, so we got lucky to get that permission. Now, as it turns out, we didn't really have official permission.

So our guide basically arranged a bribe, we think with the head police officer at the first checkpoint. Because we show up at the checkpoint, our guy gets out of the vehicle, and then a bunch of police officers grab a bunch of stuff and start loading it into our car. And so I think we were, you know, basically acting as pack mules to bring stuff back to the capital, and they let us through. And unfortunately, this isn't the only checkpoint on the highway. And we knew that we had to go through at least half a dozen police checkpoints before we got back to the capital.

So, you know, we were a little skeptical, but our guide kept telling us everything was okay. And then as we're driving, he says, "oh, we just got official permission." I'm like, "okay, I thought we had official permission, but I guess we didn't. I guess we just bribed somebody." And so then we get to our next check point, and our guide shows him our official permission. Well, it turns out it wasn't really the official, official permission that we needed. So we got stopped at that checkpoint, but within 45 minutes we got our official, official permission, the secret handshake permission that came from the Ministry of Tourism, and this permission was golden.

We got through that checkpoint, and then we sailed through every single checkpoint that we hit from that point on, but it was still like a seven or eight hour drive. We got in at like two o'clock in the morning and managed to catch a few hours of sleep before we went to the airport. When we were at the airport, we were talking with a bunch of other tourists who were leaving with us, and they were telling us horror stories about how they had been trying to get back to the capital to catch this flight out. And some of them were caught in police checkpoints like for eight hours and things like that. So we feel like we kind of got lucky that we managed to get through as easily as we did, even though we had some trouble getting to the capital.

Once we got our, you know, our unofficial, official and then official, official permission, we sailed through relatively smooth compared to everyone else. So pretty much two-thirds of my trip was just cut away, and I wasn't able to get that many photos as a result. The photos that I did make, I mean the sand dunes were pretty cool. I had a good time there, but they kinda look like sand dunes that you might find in other parts of the world. There wasn't really something that spoke to me that said Mongolia.

I was really hoping to get something that really showed a sense of place during the rest of the trip, but it didn't happen. Luckily we got out and, you know, I flew into Istanbul. My flight had been delayed so I had a layover overnight in Istanbul, but the airline put me up in a really swank hotel, so that was pretty cool. And then the next morning, I flew out to Boston. I was wondering what the situation was gonna be like when I got back to the US.

I thought maybe there'd be some health screening, that there'd be delays at Immigration and Customs. I got through Immigration and Customs faster than any trip I've ever had in my life. I kid you not, the moment I got off the plane to the moment I picked up my bag and walked out of Customs was maybe five minutes. It was a breeze. It was just, you know, that amazing for me probably pretty bad for people in the US who were hoping that coronavirus would be stopped in the ports of entry.

So there you have it. That was my photo adventure. I'm sorry I didn't have many photographs to share with you. I had a lot of interesting stories. And now I'm ready to answer your questions, either about my trip, the photos I've shown or anything else related to photography.

Or is there no one watching, because they're so afraid of coronavirus that they're afraid that they're gonna get it from their computer? Oh, we've got viewers. We've got viewers. You've got some questions, but before we- That's just an allergy cough. That's not coronavirus.

Don't worry about it. Before we get into the questions, just a quick reminder, you can follow us on social media. That's Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter. Lots of photos there. That community gallery is always available to participate in, either if you just want to flip through and view the photos or submit your own, you can always hop onto those.

And I'm actually going to start with a question from Dan F. Hello, Dan F. Because I think it's very timely. Dan F wants to know what was your most epic photo adventure? And I'm going to add if it wasn't this one.

Well, I think this easily was the biggest disaster as a photo adventure. I think my most epic photo adventure ever, and it's in really interesting contrast to this particular trip, was when I went to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is arguably the worst conflict area on Earth over the past few decades. They, you know, they have, over the past 20 years, they've had a disastrous civil war. They've had like over a dozen volcanic eruptions and it's been just a really, a horrible place to be for a long time. And I went there a few years ago.

The security situation stabilized briefly, and I was able to slip in as a tourist to go photograph mountain gorillas and to also photograph this volcano that had erupted so many times, and that it created so much destruction and devastation. And the volcano was amazing. I hiked up to the top of this 12,000 foot volcano, 10,000 foot volcano, something like that. And I camped overnight on the rim of the volcano, and I was able to photograph the lava lake down below. You can go to my website, ianplant.com, and check out my lava lake pictures from there and some other lava photos from around the world.

So it was really quite an epic trip, and it's a great contrast. When people ask me how my trip to Mongolia went, I said it was actually worse than my trip to the Congo. Well, I'm just gonna let that sink in. It was worse than a trip to the Congo. So I would say that's epic.

You know, like Mongolia, you know, the Congo seemed like a perfectly nice place when I was there. I didn't have any problems. And I really enjoyed my visit there. And Mongolia is a lovely country. It's just bad luck that I happened to time the trip in the middle of a global pandemic.

And I believe just about an hour ago, the coronavirus epidemic was officially declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization, so we can call it that without being too sensational. Yes. I don't know if that's good. I don't know what that is. It's information, it's facts.

Information is always good, even if it's bad information. Correct. Yeah. Well, let's keep on with our questions. Okay.

Our next one comes from Barb. Barb asks how much planning goes into your photos? Do you have an idea of what you want before you are even in the country? This is a really good question, Barb. So I would say that I'm not really a huge planner.

Like, I don't like trying to figure out what sorts of shots I'm gonna get. I like to go to a place and just explore and keep an open mind to the possibilities. And I do this in part because it allows me to have a much more unique portfolio. You know, when you are kind of first starting off in photography, you tend to look at what other photographers are doing. And I think it's fair to say that, you know me, like a lot of people you end up copying other people's shots.

You see a really cool shot, you're like, I want to get that shot. And as you evolve as an artist, as you get more comfortable with the craft of photography and you start exploring your own personal artistic vision, I think it's a good idea to look less and less at what other people are doing and to really kind of chart your own course. So I really don't do a lot of that sort of planning. Like I'm not creating a shot list. I'm not thinking of the shots that I want to get, but I do want to know something about the areas that I'm going to, like I don't want to go into this completely blind, just show up in Mongolia, for example, and just kind of drive around until I see things.

Like, so I do plan. I do try to figure out what the best scenic opportunities are. And I do this usually by looking not at photography guides or anything like that or looking at what other photographers are doing, but I might look online at travel guides, you know, hiking guides and things like that. So I'm getting the perspective of people who enjoy the outdoors, but who aren't necessarily photographers, so I can learn about the scenic areas without having my personal vision infected by the shots that other professional or very skilled amateur photographers are getting on their trips. So that way I can go and make the shots that I want, but at least I'm hitting some areas that are going to be conducive to good image making.

So the planning goes as far as necessary to sort of figure out what might be the geographic areas or the subjects that appeal to me, but that's where I stop. And I basically go in with as open a mind as possible and with as much of a clean slate as I can so that I can find my own unique creative vision. All right. Let's dig into some more details on the next question. Digging in.

Yes. This comes from Rob. Hello, Rob. How do you adjust your technique when shooting outdoors on bad weather days? Yeah, so you know, there's two types of bad weather days.

There are bad weather days where the weather is actually just bad and not very conducive to photography. And then there's quote-unquote bad weather days that are the kind of days that tourists hate but that are actually awesome for photography. And so, you know, part of what I'm doing as a landscape photographer is I'm out there waiting for those second type of bad weather days, those days where things are actually just really awesome for photography, those are the moments I'm waiting for. So the good weather days, like, you know, when I was in the dunes in Mongolia, there was a lot of times when there was sunny weather, and those conditions aren't necessarily conducive to the types of weather, types of photography that I wanna make. So I'm waiting for the storms to come in and I'm waiting for these really dramatic weather events to fill in the space in the sky in my composition and help me create more expressive, moody images.

So I'm actually waiting for that type of bad weather. The other kind of bad weather, let's say, if it's just like, you know, boring overcast or rainy or something like that, there's not much you can do when the weather's really bad like that. Like you can adjust, maybe you can switch over to photographing something more intimate. There are certain types of scenes that will work in that kind of light. Like for example, if it's overcast and rainy, I love going to photograph waterfalls on a day like that 'cause that's really good light for that type of photography, but for the grand sweeping wide angle landscapes that I love to make, that sort of weather usually isn't very good.

So for the most part, the way I adjust is just to make sure that my schedule has enough padding in it so that if I'm on location in a beautiful area, I can wait for the kind of weather that I want to get the shots that I'm looking to get. And when I don't have good weather, when it's not conducive to making good photos, I spend as much time as I can scouting for compositions. I think this is something that people don't really understand that is so important to making great landscape work, to making really, truly original landscape work. You just don't show up and just stand there in front of beautiful scenery and take a shot. If you do that, your shots are going to be not as effective as they can be, not as original.

If you wanna make those really powerful, compelling compositions that draw the viewer in, you've gotta find more than just that background scenery. You've gotta find something in the foreground, something you can put in between the camera and the background to give your composition depth, to lead the viewer in. And if you want to find a shots that are unique, that are different from what other people are doing, you can't just go to the spot that everyone else goes to. You've got to get out there, explore, find those compelling foregrounds that you can juxtapose against that dramatic background scenery, so it takes a lot of work. So when the weather's not good, usually what I do is I get out there and explore.

I spend a lot of time developing good compositions and then once I've got a bunch of them, I will go back to each of those, if I can on a trip, when the weather conditions are conducive to making great photographs. Jeffrey just came in with a follow-up question. Hello, Jeffrey. Yeah, following on the current topic, do you have any good tips for what to do on those days when you have the quote deadly clear blue skies? Oh, yes.

So you know, deadly clear blue skies can be good for some types of photography. So, slot canyons, perfect example. Those are really great on a sunny day. You need all that bright, sunny light bouncing and reflecting down into the deep canyon to get those really amazing colors. Now, problem is most places in the world don't have slot canyons.

As a matter of fact, unless you're in Arizona or Utah, good luck finding a slot canyon. So in Mongolia, for example, couldn't find any slot canyons. Sand dunes are actually pretty good for sunny weather because you get some really strong directional light at sunrise and sunset. So you can make dramatic images like the one, I'm just gonna pull up the, my favorite one from Mongolia again here, and you guys can, control room, there we go. Thank you, control room.

So for example, a shot like this, there's no clouds in the sky, but there's some really good colorful light on the scene. I would have preferred there to have been some stormy clouds above the dunes, but I would have wanted the clouds in the background, not covering the horizon where the light was coming from. So you kind of have to have that balance. So the sand dunes are actually pretty good. And another thing that I like to do on a sunny day when I'm not really getting the light that I want for the wide angle scenics that I like to do that require the clouds in the sky to really bring it together, I like to fly my drone.

And when you're flying above with a drone, pointing the camera down, you get all of these interesting shadows on the landscape. And so you can find textures, compositions, colors, and shadows that are really effective with your drone, even if that sort of light isn't conducive to wide angle land-based work. So I find that by mixing up what I'm doing, adding the aerial perspective into my photography, those dreaded blue sky, high pressure days are no longer dreaded as much, and so I find that I can actually make compelling shots on those days, but it's the days where you get that weather coming in, you get those stormy clouds, and you've got that gap on the horizon where the sun is rising or setting and you get beautiful light on the landscape and on the clouds, that's when it all comes together. And those are the moments I'm waiting for. All right.

Last question for now on the topic, Todd is wondering if you've ever gone out chasing storms to get photos. Ah, yes. I don't have to chase storms, storms chase me. There you go, very easy. So I, you know, I've never actually done storm chasing per se.

Like during the summer here in Minneapolis, you know, Minneapolis isn't really known as a storm chasing place, but Minneapolis is very close to the Great Plains. And so within a few hours, I can be out to the Dakotas and those are great places to chase storms, but instead of chasing the storms, what I usually do is I just go out to like Badlands National Park and wait for the storms to come in. 'Cause during the summer, the storms are really common so it might not happen every afternoon, but most afternoons during the summer, you get some great storms building up. I have on occasion, gone down to the Desert Southwest during the so-called monsoon season. And you know, when the, sorry, when the monsoon is going on.

I'm getting all tongue tied here. This happens when I'm talking too much and not drinking enough water. When the monsoon's going on, once again you've got a pretty good chance in the afternoon of having the storm clouds building up. So whenever you've got heat and moisture, there's a good chance of getting storms. So the reason why I don't chase the storms, I mean, I'm not really looking to photograph the storms themselves, though storm chasers can get some amazing photographs when they find those wicked thunderstorms building up.

Usually I want the storms to be an element of a composition that I've put together. So instead of chasing the storms, I find good compositions and wait for the storms to come to me. All right. The opposite of storm chasing, storm waiting. Yes.

Being stormed chased. That's right. All right, Richard's got our next question. Hello, Richard. Richard asks, "Do you ever focus stack, and if not what technique would you use for greatest depth of field?" I do focus stack.

As a matter of fact, if you check out my course available on the OPG Shop, "Focusing for Landscape Photography," you will learn my process for focus stacking as well as using hyper focal distance, depth of field, and small apertures to get that really sharp, near-far focus effect. So focus stacking is an important tool, I think to have in your arsenal because it can allow you to get a much sharper image than you might be able to get with depth of field alone, but I think everyone needs to know how to use hyper focal distance and depth of field to get that near-far effect because you can't always focus stack if you're in the moment and you have to move quickly, or if you're working with a dynamic environment like a coastal environment, or, you know, waterfall where things are moving, focus stacking isn't gonna be as easy. So learning how to do it the old fashioned way is something that I think everyone should learn how to do. Now, as a general rule of thumb, if you're doing wide angle photography, like landscape work where you've got something near and something far, what I do is I don't focus on the near object. I don't focus on the far object because if you focus on the near object, you're wasting depth of field and the background will be out of focus and vice versa if you focus on the background.

You have to focus somewhere in between those two points, and the focus point should be closer to the near object than to the far object to truly optimize the depth of field that spreads out when you stop down to a smaller aperture. So my rule of thumb is to estimate the distance from my camera to my foreground subject and then double that distance and focus on that point. So if I've got a scene, for example, I'm photographing sand dunes in the Mongolian desert before coronavirus pandemic sweeps through, and the ripples in the foreground are three feet away from my camera, I don't focus at three feet, I focus at six feet. So I take that estimate three feet from the camera to the foreground and I double it, and I focus on that point. And then I stop down to a small aperture to spread the zone of depth of field to cover my foreground and my background.

And for most landscape scenes, you're gonna need a small aperture like F11 or F16 to get that depth of field. You can use smaller apertures like F16 and F22, but when you stop down to those really tiny apertures, there's something called diffraction, which is an optical defect that kicks in, and this causes the overall image to look less sharp. It basically softens the image, so you get more depth of field, but overall, everything looks a little less crisp. So focus stacking allows you to get that deep field focus effect without losing quality because of diffraction. So, it's a good idea to learn both techniques.

And my course "Focusing for Landscape Photography" is your best bet to understand those very clearly. All right, John's got a question here. Hello, John. John asks, "Can you accomplish photo stacking in Lightroom?" So Lightroom doesn't photo stack itself. You have to use a plugin, and the plugin that most people prefer to use, the program I use for focus stacking is called Helicon Focus.

And I actually, I don't really use Lightroom, so I'm using a different path to work with Helicon Focus, but my understanding is that Helicon Focus will take, you can take files from Lightroom, you can export them to Helicon Focus and focus stack them there, and then re-import the final image back into Lightroom. It doesn't come back as a raw file. It comes back as a TIF file, or something like that, but you can go from Lightroom to Helicon Focus and back. But Lightroom does not focus stack in and of itself, at least as of now, and if you're using Adobe Photoshop, you can focus stack there, but it's not an automated process. You have to kind of go through some steps.

If you use a stacking program, like Helicon Focus, it's all automated. You just touch a button and it stacks it for you, and it does a really great job. So I recommend Helicon Focus. All right, hope that's helpful. Susan's got a good question coming in, too.

Hello, Susan. Finally. It's a little more general. Some feminine representation. It's been all dudes so far.

Oh, I thought we started early, Barb led us off. That's right, we had a lady first. So it's been mostly dudes. Well, Susan wants to know, she says there's always something new to learn when it comes to photography, so what is something new you've learned recently? I have learned do not plan a photo trip during a global pandemic, bad idea.

Just say no! You know, I'm always learning new things. And for me, it's a little bit different, like I'm typically not learning new technical things or craft related things. For me, it's more of a evolution of my personal vision and my compositional skills. So, you know, I'm not really having those big "Aha, Eureka" moments anymore.

For me, it's just this kind of gradual, incremental path that I'm on that, you know, I'm just trying to get a little bit better at everything I do the more I do it. So I can't really think of like something big that was something I didn't know about photography that I suddenly figured out or someone told me. That hasn't happened for me in a few years. But, there is always something more to learn. You can always get better, and I'm always pushing myself to do things better than I've done before and to continually push that envelope and just advance my craft and skill as much as possible.

All right, Grace has, for the moment, the last question that we have in here. Oh, we just got another one slide in. We do have 20 minutes left, so feel free to keep dropping questions in. 20 minutes, ah. 20 minutes, maybe we should slow down.

I'm sorry, my body's still on Mongolia time. You know, like my brain's not working. I'm not really here. Well, Grace has a question about your thoughts on silicon camera skins. Hmm, silicon cameras skins.

You know what? I think I just learned something new. Can someone please tell me what a silicon camera skin is? All right well, we'll wait for a little detail to come in on that. My thoughts are that skin is good.

I mean, like I like skin. I can't imagine not having skin. I'm not sure how I feel about silicon skin, though. So when you explain what silicon cameras skins are, then I will be happy to answer that question. I'll keep an eye out for that.

See, you do learn something new every day. Aha, all right. Well, Paul dropped in a question right as I was saying Hello, Paul. we were running low on them. So Paul asks, are there any places you haven't visited and are desperate to and how much time do you spend traveling?

Well, I spend probably about 40% of my time traveling. Well, it seems like it's only 40%. If you asked my wife, I'm gone 75% of the time and there are plenty of places I haven't been that I'd really love to go to. And I'm hoping to get to some of those places over the next few months, but I've got a feeling that my travel plans for the next few months are going to get canceled, so we'll see what happens. So, you know, one place I haven't been to, you know, I've been to every continent, but Antarctica.

So I haven't been there, and I'm not really rushing to go there. Like, I feel like I'm gonna go there at some point, but because you got to do the whole cruise ship thing to go there, I think I'll wait until I'm more cruise ship age appropriate. I mean that intellectually, because physically I'm pretty much there, but I still have the mentality of a four-year-old, once again, according to my wife. And so I don't think I would fit in with the other cruise ship people, so I'm gonna wait a little while before I go to Antarctica. But yeah, I've got a trip planned to the South Pacific in May.

We'll see if that goes off, but I'm gonna visit a number of islands in the South Pacific. I'm really looking forward to that trip. I'm not sure if it's going to go off or not, but fingers crossed that I'll be able to get out there. I'll be going to Vanuatu, which I've been to before, but I'm gonna get a chance to go back to this great volcano on Vanuatu that I love to photograph. And I'm also going to explore Fiji, the Cook Islands, and French Polynesia.

And so it'll be a really cool trip, if in fact flights aren't canceled. So fingers crossed, here's hoping. That's right. All right, Jerry's got our next question. Hello, Jerry.

It looks like Jerry has sensor dust that won't go away, even after swabbing. I thought you said that Jerry had censored us and I was like, No! did I say something wrong? Jerry would never. No, of course not.

Sensor dust that won't go away. Okay, so the best thing you can do for that is go into your local camera store. First, find out if there is a local camera store because a lot of them went out of business a few years back, but most local camera stores will do a free sensor cleaning for you, and they've got all the swabs and the tools and their, you know, salespeople have got at least probably more technical expertise for cleaning sensors than the average photographer does. And so that should be your best bet is to go in and take advantage of that. And if you don't want to go into your camera store, there are a number of products out there that are designed to get rid of sensor dust.

I honestly, I haven't used any of them in years. So I never clean my sensor because I'm using Canon cameras and the Canon sensor cleaning technology seems pretty good. And for the most part, I don't have any dust problems. And what I do, if I do get some dust that seems to be sticking around, is I might turn the camera sensor shake de-dust thing on a few times. Just, you can kind of like manually set it up so that you could run the sensor cleaning mechanism, and you know, I might do that like 10 times until the dust finally gets off.

So if you've got a problem, you can just run it through that cleaning cycle a number of times and you should be able to get it off. Most cameras have got some sort of automatic sensor cleaner, and most cameras do a pretty good job these days. You know, as I said, I haven't cleaned my camera sensor in five years. So that goes to show you that it's really not as much of an issue as it used to be, but yeah. Check out your local camera store.

They might be able to help you. Good luck, hope that helps. Oh yeah, and good luck, hope that helps. Thank you. All right, and our next question comes from a guest.

Hello, guest. Anonymous for the moment. Anonymous. What made you passionate about photography? What made me passionate about photography?

I don't know. I think part of it is it's the only type of art that I've tried, that I'm not horrible at. Like, I can't draw to save my life, I'm a horrible musician, I can't sing, I can't dance. I mean, I'm really, really bad at all of these things. And photography is the one form of art that I actually don't suck at.

I mean, at least I think I don't suck. Maybe you guys think that I suck. You know, I always was into the outdoors. I was hiking and backpacking and all that sort of stuff since I was a kid. And so I picked up photography just to compliment those activities.

I mean, I bought my first camera when I was 23 years old, and it was after my first year of law school, big shocker. I was a lawyer for eight years, hard to believe, but you know, my first year after law school, I was making some money working for a big law firm in New York City, so I bought a camera. Little did I know that I had just made a huge $100,000 mistake on my law school education 'cause I was hooked on photography. I can't really explain why I loved it, I was just hooked right away. And before I knew it, it turned into a serious hobby and then a passion and then ultimately a career.

Now I don't even call it any of those things. I call it a lifestyle or I don't know. It's just my life. I can't imagine life without photography. It's the only thing I care about.

Once again, those are my wife's words, but yes, it's true. When I got married, on our honeymoon, I got up early in the morning to make photographs. My wife's like, what are you doing? And I'm like, babe, you knew when you were getting into this, that you're not my wife, my camera is my wife. You're just my mistress.

So yeah, my wife's complaints about me might be rooted in something justifiable. I also feel like she needs like a guest credit on this OPG session. We'll have to have her on sometime. She can tell you some stories. But yeah, I mean, I just love it.

I don't know why I love it. I can't imagine life without it, and it's the only thing I care about. And that's pretty much all that I got to say about that. I'm sure a lot of you feel the same way that I do, and I don't think we have to explain it or figure out why, we just have to engage in our passion and keep doing it and keep getting better. All right, and on that note, we've got more questions about photography to get to.

You know, the more I talk, the more you guys want to hear me talk. It doesn't make any sense to me. So let's dig back into some photography, Max K. Max K, hello, Max. Max is asking, how do I change the lighting setting, lighting slash settings so that the objects in the foreground are not blacked out by a bright background?

Well, so there's not really a, I mean, you can adjust your exposure. You can increase your exposure value, but if you do that, then the dark stuff is gonna be brighter, but the background is gonna be washed out. It's gonna be too bright. So basically what you're dealing with is a contrast range in the scene that you're photographing that exceeds the dynamic range of your camera. So your camera sensor can't capture the same range of light to dark that the human eye can see.

It's much more limited. So you either have to make compromises. You have to expose for one and let the other go bright or dark or you have to find a way to balance your exposure. And one way you can do this is by using something called a graduated neutral density filter. It's a filter you hold in front of your camera, and the top half is darker than the bottom half.

The bottom half is clear, there's a gradual transition between the clear and the dark, and the darker part of the filter will block light coming in, to a certain degree, depending on how strong the filter is. And you use this, for example, when you're photographing a sunset sky and you've got objects in the foreground on the landscape that are in shadow. So, you hold the dark part over the sky, and the clear part goes over the shadowed landscape. And that helps balance the exposure and bring the exposure within the range of your camera sensor's dynamic range. Or another thing you can do, and this is a lot, this is something that a lot of photographers do because using filters can be a pain, is you need to learn how to blend multiple exposures.

And so that involves setting up a shot and taking multiple exposures, one dark, one light, maybe one in the middle, and then blending those exposures on a computer to simulate that graduated neutral density effect. So you're taking that wide range of contrast from light to dark, and you're squishing it down into something that your camera can handle. And that's how you, that's a very complicated answer to what was a very simple question. The answer is there's no simple way of doing it. It's just a technical limitation, but there are ways of getting around it.

All right, let's move on to Jorge's question. Hello, Jorge. When you make these long trips and incredible photos I can't believe you take along five tons of lighting and photographic equipment plus six assistants. So just what lighting equipment do you take with you? Okay, in terms of lighting equipment, absolutely none.

Like as a landscape, you know, primarily an outdoor photographer, landscape and wildlife. When I'm shooting landscape, there's no lighting equipment. Everything is shot using natural light. If I'm shooting wildlife, I might bring a flash unit with me to provide some fill light. But once again, that's mostly natural light as well.

I don't have any assistants. And in terms of my gear kit, I keep it as light as possible. So for this trip to Mongolia, I had a camera body, I had a spare camera body because the last thing you want to do is be on a trip where your primary camera fails or gets stolen or is broken. So I always carry a spare and I had two lenses with me, my wide angle zoom, my 15 to 30 millimeter wide angle zoom and then a 35 to 150 millimeter, short telephoto zoom. And those two lenses were more than enough to cover everything that I wanted to photograph when I was in Mongolia.

As a matter of fact, if I had to choose, I would pick just one lens and it would be a wide angle zoom lens that would cover like 95 to 98% of the landscape work that I do. So I keep my kit as light as possible because it gives you more flexibility. When you're carrying around your equipment in the field, you're less tired and that gives you more energy to be creative. And it makes getting through airports and dealing with carry on restrictions all the more easier. So if you've got access to six assistants, by all mean, bring them along.

If you've got the money to pay for their plane tickets, then go ahead, but not me. So I keep it as light as possible because I think keeping it light, that equals freedom and flexibility. When I do workshops, I have a lot of clients who come with these giant camera bags filled with a gazillion lenses, and they're always begging me to tell them which lenses to leave behind. They just got too much stuff, and, you know, you might be thinking, well if I don't bring something along, I might need it. And that's true.

There are times where I'm like, oh, darn. I wish I'd brought that lens along with me. Too bad, I've gotta shoot something else. But, there's also a lot of times where I've got too much equipment and I'm just too tired or it's too much of a pain in the rear dealing with stuff, and it limits my energy for photography. So I'd rather have more flexibility and more energy and more creativity.

All right, this is very close to an answer, but I'm gonna give you a chance to add on any additional details from another guest. It's a really similar on-point topic. What camera gear do you carry for a long trek or backpack to minimize the weight, while still being able to cover most of the situations? So anything to add, any little details that you might wanna? I think it's pretty much the same answer.

I mean, you know, if I'm shooting wildlife, it's a much more difficult story because you need the longer lenses, the bigger heavier lenses to capture a lot of wildlife subjects. But for my landscape work, as I said, honestly, if someone were to put a gun to my head and say, choose, you know, forcing me to choose just one lens, it would be my wide angle zoom. No doubt about it because that's pretty much what I use for most of my shots. It's very rare that I take out a focal length that's longer than 16 millimeters. I consider 20 millimeters to be a telephoto shot, so that's just me, though.

Some people shoot different things and, you know, there's nothing wrong with carrying two or three lenses, but if you've got more than three lenses in your bag, then you're probably carrying too much stuff. All right, speaking of wildlife shooting. Goodness, it's my turn to trip on my words. Another guest is asking, do you use auto ISO for wildlife shooting? If so, what is your minimum shutter speed and maximum ISO?

Well, I do use auto ISO when I'm shooting wildlife. I think it's indispensable because when you're in the field, light changes and the last thing you want to be doing is scrambling to change your settings because it's gotten darker or brighter. And so with auto ISO, I don't have to worry about it. And honestly, I just let it flow. I mean, I never set a maximum auto ISO.

I pay attention to it, I know if it's getting dark that I might have to start making some compromises. Like, if I notice that my ISO is at 4,000 or higher, maybe I'll slow down my shutter speed a little bit. That might mean that I need to take more shots to get a sharp image. You know, there are compromises you might have to make, but my philosophy is even if you are shooting at a ridiculously high ISO, I'd rather be shooting and maybe have to throw those shots out, than not shooting at all. To quote the great Wayne Gretzky, I believe, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

So I have taken shots at 10,000. I've taken shots at 20,000 ISO, and you know, some of them are actually usable. I've got one shot taken a 20,000 ISO that looks phenomenal. You'd never know that it was taken at 20,000 ISO. So, I just keep shooting and, you know, nine times out of 10, those high ISO shots, I might have to throw out, but hey I gave it a chance.

If I had stopped shooting because I hit my maximum ISO, I never would've gotten anything. So, it's better not to worry about that too much. But when you do see the ISO creeping up, you know that there is a very good chance that your image quality is gonna diminish, so if you need to make compromises to keep the ISO in an area that is acceptable, then just be aware of what's happening to your ISO and make the changes that you need to make. So that would be my best advice for that sort of thing. All right, well, we have a little less- And I think there's a video on the OPG site about using auto ISO.

So if you go to OPG's website and you type in the search bar, "auto ISO," you'll see my video from Kenya about that subject. I think it's Kenya, yeah. Awesome, great resource for you. All right, we have a little less than five minutes to get through these last few questions. So we'll move on to Jonathan's question.

All right. Jonathan asks, what are some dos and don'ts about having people in your landscape shots? What is the best way to pose them? Should there be more than one, et cetera? Well, there are no dos and don'ts, there's only what you want.

Some people don't like having people in the landscape at all. I used to be like that, I've evolved and I've gotten more into it. When you do have people in the landscape, I think one bit of advice that I would offer is you want to avoid having them look directly at the camera, by and large. That's gonna look a little bit more posed or like a tourist snapshot. So usually you want the person posing in a way that's gonna create a shape that compliments the overall composition or the visual design.

You know, one thing that I think a lot of people tend to do when they're making these people in the landscape photos is they want the person in the landscape to serve as a proxy for the viewer. So it's an invitation for the viewer to feel like they're being taken into the scene, and as a result, you want them facing the same way the viewer is. So you want their backs to the camera, looking into the scene. So a lot of people will take a photo of the landscape with a person in the shot, but they're far away, so they're kind of a small element within that big landscape. And they're looking into the scene, that helps the viewer feel like, hey that's me.

I'm looking into the scene as well, so that becomes a proxy for the viewer. And the viewer sort of like mentally transports into that person in the shot, so that's one way to do it, definitely. All right, let's wrap up with one last question. One last question, that's good because I'm getting cranky. What do you recommend one consider when looking at buying a wide angle lens?

Well, there's many different things that you need to consider, depending on what type of photography you're doing. If you're doing just landscape work, then what you don't need is a super fast lens. Like you don't need to F2.8 lens or something like that. You can get by with a little bit of a slower lens. You want it to cover a good zoom range.

So, you know, my preference for landscape is to have something that goes ultra wide. So, you know, something that goes at least 16 or 15 millimeters, or 14 millimeters on a full frame camera is really great. Being able to go wide gives you much more flexibility when you need that extra coverage. And you also want a lens that's gonna be really sharp. You want something that's gonna perform well, not only in the center of the image frame, but also on the corners and the edges.

So that's another thing to consider. So you don't need something super expensive. You don't need something super heavy. If you're shooting with a crop sensor camera, then that's gonna make the, even the ultra-wide zooms a lot lighter and also cheaper. One final thing to think about is that some ultra wide zoom designs have these bulbous front ends, these Popeye designs that make it difficult if not impossible to use filters with.

So if you wanna use filters, you're gonna need to find a wide angle zoom that doesn't have that front end, that glass, that sticks out. So you want to avoid that Popeye design. All right, well, I do want to draw your attention to, Ian mentioned it just a moment ago, but our fantastic team behind the scenes was able to drop direct links into the chat box to some of those auto ISO videos that you can find on the OPG website. So just click on those links if you want a little bit more detail, that's right in your chat box. If we didn't get to your question this time around, please join us the next Q and A session that we have.

Keep the questions coming. We have a lot of fun with them, but other than that, that wraps up our OPG session. I'm gonna send it over to Ian for final thoughts. Yeah, well, I mean, I think you said it all, but yes, we do plan on doing this again next month. Even if there is a global pandemic, we should be okay to make it into the local studio here.

And remember, you can't actually get the coronavirus from your computer. It's not that kind of virus, so with that note, I'm Ian Plant. I'm Leah Zahner. And we're signing off for now. See you next time.

Thanks, bye.