OPG LIVE: September 2017

Welcome everyone, I'm Ian Plant, professional photographer. And this is the third episode of OPG LIVE. Your online resource for outdoor photography, tips and techniques. We have a new format, interactive format. This is new technology. So, we have to bear with us. We might have to work through a few kinks in this episode, but hopefully we'll get everything running smoothly. I am here today with inquiry verbalization specialist, Lillia Khalif of Outdoor Photography Guide. I just have a few housekeeping items for you guys. Make sure that you're following us on all of your relevant social media channels. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. And also right now, if we go to our Facebook page, we have a special pinned post advertising our Outdoor Photography photo challenge, which is based on Ian's new ebook. You wanna talk a little bit about what the challenge is? Yeah, sure. For the past a year or so, I've been writing a new ebook called "Unseeing". And the whole concept of this ebook is to teach people to learn to see the world differently than what they're used to. We have a way of seeing that we learned from going up the way our eyes see the world, but your camera doesn't see things the same way use you do. And "Unseeing" is all about learning how your camera sees the world, how your camera handles exposure, how your camera handles focal length. All of these things that can have an effect and influence on the final image that's output from the camera. These are all things that you have to learn to see through to create compelling photographs. These limitations of the camera in terms of focal length, in terms of the shutter speed, the aperture you set, the exposure you set and all these other variables are actually part of the artistic process of photography. So, in the upcoming challenge, we are gonna have six weeks, six different challenges, one every week where we focus on a specific aspect of the unseeing process and we turn it over to you and you guys go out and make photos during that week. And then you'll post the photos on our OPG Facebook page. And you'll get a chance to get some feedback from us on the photos that you're taking. And this is just an endeavor to push you to be more creative, to be more artistic, to take your photography to the next level. So, that's gonna be an exciting challenge and it's gonna be starting... When's it starting, Lillia? The beginning of October. The first week in October, you'll get the first challenge in your Thursday newsletter. So, that'll be coming up soon. So, stay tuned. There'll be information posted about that. And that is gonna be a real exciting event. This will be the second challenge we've done. During the first challenge, we had literally thousands of participants and everyone had a really great time. So, we're hoping that this challenge is gonna be even better. And it's gonna be the second of many challenges going forward in the future. So, in this episode, I've had some really exciting trips over the past few months. and it's been a few months since our episode two of OPG LIVE. And in that time I traveled to the South Pacific, to the island nation of Vanuatu, which is famous for its volcanoes. And I recently did a trip to the Badlands of South Dakota. And then I moved down to Wyoming to photograph the solar eclipse. So, it's been really exciting for me. And I wanted to share some of that experience with you. And then we'll take some questions from you, the viewers to see if I can help you learn a little bit more about landscape photography in particular in this episode. So when I went to Vanuatu, Vanuatu has got literally dozens of volcanoes. It's an island nation in the South Pacific. There are about 80 islands in the archipelago of Vanuatu and a number of them have active volcanoes on them. And I visited a few of these volcanoes. I went to one island where I was hoping to get up to see the volcanoes, but it just ran constantly. So, I spent three days in the back country, camping in the rain. Didn't get to see any volcanoes. But then I went to Tanna Island, which has a Yasur volcano, which is one of the most famous of volcanoes in Vanuatu. It's a really incredible experience. And so, I'd like to share some of that experience with you with a video which is the introduction to a course I shot there along with fellow photographer, Zach Mills. We spent one week photographing Yasur volcano. So, I wanna just play for you quickly. The land of fire where the engines of creation still churned with all the fear that planet earth can muster. Here, Yasur volcano, one of the most active volcanoes in the world erupts every few minutes. Each acting superheated lava high into the air. I mean clamp and along with fellow photographer, Zach mills, we've traveled halfway around the world to come face to face with the most powerful of all of the forces of nature, molten rock exploding from the ground with all the wrath of the gods of old. Here, we will put our minds, bodies and gear to the test as we seek to capture the eruptive forces that have shaped our planet. We will contend with steep climbs, clouds of fine ash born on gale force winds and the constant threat of firing missiles of magma raining down from the sky. In this course, Zach and I will take you behind the lens and share with you our secrets for taking compelling photos. Not only will we explain the technical side of things, but more important, we'll discuss in depth the artistic choices we have made along the way. By the end of this course, you'll end up with a stronger understanding of composition that use of light and color and the creative use of exposure. So, join us as we photograph Yasur volcano on the beautiful island nation of Vanuatu. All right, as you can see, the volcano would erupt every few minutes and it would throw these magma bombs into the air. And it was really exciting watching them just go up hundreds of feet into the air and you had to watch them because if they came down where you were standing, things would end badly. So, it was a beautiful location. And if you're interested in seeing the rest of that course or any of my other courses, you can purchase the courses online at the OPG Shop for download. A better way to see all my courses, past, present and future is to sign up for an OPG premium membership which gives you streaming access to this courses plus a bunch of other courses from other photographers that OPG has worked with over the years. And there's a bunch of other benefits as well. Even better than the premium access is the gold membership which will also give you access to everything that the premium membership gives you, but it will allow you to attend my regular gold classes live webinars. Our first gold webinar is gonna be on Thursday, this coming Thursday at 10 AM and it is gonna deal with my basic techniques in Lightroom for processing raw files. And it is the first gold event. This first gold event is gonna be free to everyone. But after that, my gold seminars are only accessible to people with a gold membership. So, you may wanna consider picking up a gold membership or a premium membership so you can see these videos. I wanna talk now a little bit about some of the photos that I made when I was in Vanuatu. And these are videos that are... These are photos that are discussed in more detail in the video. And this particular photo I made on the rim of the volcano and every time the volcano would explode, it would send these magma bombs up into the air and it would take about 15 to 20 seconds for them to completely arc through the scene and finally land. So, while Zach and I were making photographs, we were experimenting with long exposures. We were primarily interested in photographing the volcano at twilight or at night, 'cause during the day, you really couldn't see the lava as well, but as it got darker, the ambient light levels went down lower in the evening or in the morning before sunrise, then you could really see the lava standing out from the surrounding landscape. And with a long exposure while the camera was securely fastened to a sturdy tripod, we create these streaks of light as the magma bombs arc through the air, the long exposure would record them. So, using long exposure techniques is something we'll be discussing in the challenge among other techniques. And it's a really great technique for showing the world in a way that's different from the way that the human eye perceives things. So, it's a really great technique for unseeing, as I like to call it and learning to see things creatively the way your camera sees thing. So, the way the camera records the passage of time is not the way the human eye sees it. When people see time, we see these moments going from one moment to the next blending seamlessly in this never ending series of moments whereas a camera doesn't record each of those moments individually. If you're doing a long exposure, it records those moments cumulatively. So, anything that's moving through the image frame, will leave a mark. And so, if it's a magma bomb flying through the air, it's gonna create a streak of light of color that can be used to create an interesting composition. So, that's what I did with that particular photograph. The next photograph I wanna share is a self-portrait that I made while I was standing on the rim of the volcano. And the reason I made self-portraits when I was up there is I wanted to create a vicarious thrill for the viewer to give them a sense of place, to give them the feeling like they're being there. I'm always looking for ways to tell a story with my photographs. And I encourage people to create what I call invitations to participate when they're creating their compositions. These are story cues that arouse the interest and curiosity of the viewer and pull them emotionally and visually into the composition. And it gives them an emotional connection with your subject matter. So, by putting a person in the landscape, in this particular case, it happened to be me in the landscape, you are inviting the viewer into the composition and the person that you put in the landscape serves as a proxy for the viewer. So, it's a real great way to create emotional engagement. And it also gives the landscape a sense of scale and it can also create an interesting focal point for the viewer in terms of the composition. It automatically attracts the eye when you have a human element in the landscape. So, for these self-portraits, what I would do is I would set up my basic composition and exposure time. And then using a electronic release, start firing off shots and then I would lock the release. So, the shots would fire off one after another. And then I would go into the scene and I would assume the position. And then I just waited for an eruption of the volcano behind me to complete the composition. And so, I would stand there in front of the volcano maybe for 5 or 10 minutes waiting for multiple eruptions to go off. And then I go back and I check to see what I got and I keep experimenting here and there until I finally got what I wanted. So, this particular shot was shot at twilight. So, there's a really interesting mix of complimentary colors. You get the warm glow of the lava and then you get the cooler tones of the blues and the purples in the sky. And this mix of opposite colors is actually very pleasing artistically. So, something I'm always looking to do. With the next photo, I flew my drone above the volcano, which was a bit dangerous. Now, standing on the edge of the volcano was of course pretty dangerous for me, but flying a drone over an active exploding volcano is dangerous for the drone, a little less dangerous for me. And when I was up there, I was just amazed. I was looking at the controller of my drone and I saw this face, this evil looking face staring back at me with a little bit of a sneer, this kind of evil looking smile. So, I of course took a picture of it. Whenever I'm making photos, I'm always looking for interesting shapes and I'm looking for shapes that can help tell a story. So, when a shape looks like something else, that's more familiar to the viewer. This can be an interesting way of telling a story. When we were kids, we all spent some time looking up at the clouds and seeing shapes in the clouds, seeing bunny rabbits and things like that. This is the same sort of thing I encourage everyone to be looking for these interesting shapes, looking for these faces out there in the landscape or other compositional elements they might be photographing. Looking for something that looks like something else. And this is a really great way of creating interesting compositions. So, I took this of these twin lava pools. And a moments after I took the shot, the lava pools exploded and sent magma straight up towards my drown. So, I had to very quickly fly the drone up as fast as I could, as far as I could because the magma didn't hit the drone, but then the ash plume was right up into the drone. So, I temporarily lost visual connection. I couldn't see anything 'cause the drone was in the middle of the ash plume, but luckily the drone survived. I survived the encounter and I got some interesting shots as result. And the final shot from Vanuatu that I wanted to share today is actually my favorite from the trip. And once again, this is a self-portrait. This is this invitation for the viewer. You put the human element in the scene and it serves as a proxy for the viewer. And for me, I wanted to tell the story about just how amazing of an experience watching this volcano in person was. And the best way I could think of doing that was by putting myself in the photo and just trying to convey something of what I was experiencing to the viewer and to give them that vicarious thrill. So, when you're doing these self-portraits, it requires a lot of experimentation. It's useful if you've got an app on your phone that connects to your camera. If your camera's WiFi-enabled, that way you can use the live view on the app to preview composition and you can trigger the shutter when you're read to take the shot. But even if you don't have that WiFi connection and you don't have an app, you can still make really compelling self-portraits as long as you're willing to run back and forth between your camera and the scene that you're standing in. And it helps if you've got an attractive friend that you're traveling with who can serve as a model for you. So, that was my trip to Van.... West from where I live in Minneapolis, I went to the Badlands of South Dakota, one of my favorite places to photograph. And from there, I went to Wyoming to photograph the solar eclipse. This was at the end of August. So, in the Badlands, I did some filming with LPG for another landscape photography course. And we're just gonna watch a very quick video that's the preview for that course, which is available to premium and gold members for streaming. And if you want, you can buy it individually in the shop on the OPG Shop for download. So, without... Hi, there, this is Ian Plant with Outdoor Photography Guide. And for the next few days, I'm gonna be photographing the incredibly beautiful and very photogenic Badlands of the earthly name, Badlands National Park in South Dakota of United States. In this course, I will teach you the technical fundamentals that will allow you to successfully execute your landscape photographs. I'll also teach you how to find compelling landscape compositions. The kind of compositions that transport the viewer deeper into the scene and give them the feeling that they were standing there side by side with you as you took the picture. I'm also gonna teach you how to work with weather and with light so that you can make sure that you get the most out of the stunning sunrises and sunsets that are part of your landscape scenes. All these things together are gonna allow you to take your landscape photography to the next level and allow you to start making the landscape photos you always dreamed of taking. All right, so, that was the preview for my Badlands course. I encourage you to check it out. And all my courses I try, like in this webinar, I try very much to just give you all the information that's rattling up inside my head and just dump it out in front of you so that you can learn as much as you possibly can. I talk about the technical aspects of photography, but more importantly, I talk about the artistic aspects of photography 'cause to me that's really the most important thing anyone can learn how to use a camera. A monkey can learn how to use a camera, but it's a bit different if you're trying to take artistic compelling photographs that are gonna really connect with people. And I think that's the part that a lot of people struggle with. And it also is the most difficult, but it's the most rewarding aspect of photography. So, I encourage everyone to try their very best to make artistic photographs and to really think hard about how they can create a compelling photograph that's gonna connect with the viewers. And that's the way that you make photographs that stand the test of time. And one thing I love about the Badlands National Park is that it's not exactly the most exciting landscape in the world. It's the kind of landscape that if there wasn't a national park there, you might just drive past it, but it's beautiful, nonetheless and this is something that a lot of times people ask me questions about whether they can make great photographs without traveling to exotic places. And I tell them certainly going to exotic places, flying halfway around the world to photograph a volcano in the South Pacific, can help you make really interesting photographs. But if you can't learn how to make great photographs in the areas that are close to home, then you're never gonna be able to make a great photograph no matter how exotic or how engaging your subject matter is. So, I encourage everyone to try their very best to make photographs even in the places that seem mundane to work with subject matter that other people might not find that exciting. And to find that subject matter's unique beauty. Find a way of revealing that beautiful essence in your photograph. So, the Badlands are a really great exercise in this 'cause you go there and it's an interesting landscape, but it's fairly nondescript. It doesn't stand up pretty like somebody national park or the Grand Teton. It's not very obvious. You have to spend a lot of time exploring. And one thing I really love about this landscape, I'm gonna share with you a few of the photos I've taken there, is there's all this colorful, cracked mud in the landscape. And to me, that's what's so compelling about this landscape, is that crack mud. So, why don't we go to some of the photos that I've taken there and I'll talk about them. I took when there was a thunderstorm coming in and I love stormy weather for landscape photography. If you give me a blue sky, sunny day, I have nothing that I can contribute at all. There's nothing I wanna do with that landscape. I wait for stormy weather to come in. I want clouds in the sky. I want color. I want drama. I want excitement. I wanna be able to tell a story with my photographs. The blue sky days are for the tourists, where photographers, you want the bad weather. So, for this particular photo, this wicked thunderstorm was coming in. So, instead of running for safety, I ran out into the landscape and I found some crack mud patterns. Now this wasn't a very interesting landscape. There was this colorful red crack mud, but there wasn't anything standing up pretty. There were no big mountains in the background. So, what I did is I just focused on what I had in front of me, these crack mud patterns. I got close with a wide angle lens and I looked for some interesting lines and interesting shapes that I knew would help lead the viewer from the foreground deeper into the composition, into the background. And once I had my foreground set up, which to me is the most important part of a landscape photo in many ways. Then it was just a matter of waiting for the storm to come in. I ran a bunch of long exposures. I basically stopped down to F22 and brought my ISO down to 50 so that I could cut the light as much as possible and lengthen my exposure. I didn't have a neutral density filter with me or the vice called a lightning trigger which you can use to capture lightning. So, I had to get exposures between one and two seconds long and run continuous exposures one after another kind of like with the volcano waiting until I finally got an exposure with a lightning bolt in it. So, this is the lucky shot where I finally got a nice, good lightning bolt into my shot. And this was the result of just looking at the landscape, looking at the shapes and piecing it all relating the shapes in the foreground with the shapes in the sky. And I also liked the color contrast, the rich blues of this dark, stormy cloud that was passing overhead contrasting with the warmer red tones of the cracked mud, helps create that complimentary color scheme that I think is very effective. Another photo from the Badlands, just give you another example of the kind of patterns you can find there. And this cracked mud and the erosion that's created after it rains there, creates all these interesting colors. I spent hours, days wandering through this landscape looking for these compelling juxtapositions of shape and color that come together, that tie together a foreground with an interesting background. And then I wait for the clouds to come in. I'm out there at sunrise and sunset waiting for that perfect light, that perfect condition, those perfect shapes in the clouds that compliment the shapes of the landscape. Waiting for it to all come together, it requires a lot of patients. So, the final image I'd like to show you from the Badlands is an example of what happens when it does all come together. I found this really interesting erosion patterns and I took this after a heavy thunderstorm. That thunderstorm that we saw in the first picture with the lightning bolt. after it rained, the erosion patterns in the mud got carved very deep by the rain. And I couldn't really walk in the landscape. The landscape is mud after it rains and you can't walk through it. So, I did stay close to the road. So, I found this composition literally five feet away from the road. So, you don't even have to go far into the wilderness to take great landscape photos. You can actually do what a good friend of mine, George Stocking in Arizona, a landscape photographer calls roadkill photography which is taking photographs no more than 20 or 30 feet away from your car. And so, I made this photograph as the storm was clearing at sunset. As it was breaking up, it caught all this beautiful color and light from the setting sun. And so, the shape of the clouds, the color in the clouds all came together perfectly with this foreground that I had carefully scouted and selected. And it was a great moment to be able to bring it all together. So, after my trip to the Badlands, I moved on to Wyoming in late August for the solar eclipse. And this time I decided to plunge deep into the back country to photograph the eclipse. And what I wanted to do was be in a position where there was dramatic scenery that would allow me to take a wide angle shot of the eclipse. So, this particular shot I'm showing right now is the telephoto view. This is a pretty standard view of the eclipse during totality. And this is the same shot that people all around the country got. So, I wanted to do something a little bit different. I wanted to get a wide angle shot with dramatic scenery. So, I spent months planning and scouting until I settled on the Wind River Mountains in Wyoming. And then with a friend of mine, I hiked into the back country. I hike about 40 miles in. It took me two days to get in there. I was at a camp the whole time there where thousands of mosquitoes, they were biting me left and right. It was an awful, miserable experience. I was there four days of hiking, 40 miles total, 40,000 mosquitoes biting me all just to take one shot. Well, actually more than one shot, I was shooting my wide angle shots. And while the exposures were running, I had a second camera with a telephoto shot. I had my 100 to 400 zoom with a two X converter. So, I was at 800 millimeters for this particular shot of the eclipse that I'm showing right now. So, I was taking these shots while I had my wide angle shot running, but it was the wide angle shot that I was there for. I had scouted the location. Unfortunately, the eclipse was so high in the sky that I had to go really, really wide. So, even though I was very careful to select a scene with huge mountains that were really close by, I ended up going so wide that those mountains look small. So, the scene didn't work out quite the way I had hoped. But when I realized when I got on location that the mountains weren't gonna be as prominent in the scene as I had hoped they would be, I focused instead on the foreground finding an interesting foreground that would lead the eye into the scene. And so, I scouted this stream and I got very close to this attractive set of rapids with wide angle lens. By getting close to the rapids, I made them look much bigger than they were. Relative to other portions of the scene, it gives them more prominence in the scene. So, I was able to create this interesting composition from the elements that I had on hand. I really wished that I had some big towering mountains in the background that would have been more prominent in the scene. It didn't quite work out as well as I'd hoped, but I still think this was a pretty interesting shot. And it allowed me to create a shot of the eclipse that was a lot different from the telephoto shots that most other people were taking. So, this is a critical part of this art of unseen. That's gonna be the topic of my new ebook and it's gonna be the topic of the six week challenge that's coming up soon, is learning how to see the world in ways that are different from people. Showing people something that they haven't seen before, showing people a vision of the world that challenges their typical perceptions, is I think at the core of making really fantastic photographic art. So, why don't we go back to the... Do we have any questions, Lillia? We do. We have a few questions. First of all, this one is relating to the Vanuatu shots. Somebody is wondering, Joseph, "How do you get so close to the lava flows? Are there any tips and tricks you have for it or is it just kind of get brave and pray for the best when you get up there?" Well, that's a great question, Joe, thank you. There are actually a few places in the world where you can more or less safely photograph lava. So, Vanuatu in the South Pacific is one area on Tanna Island, Yasur volcano. There's also Hawaii National Park, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on the big island, Hawaii. And there, you can often get close to surface flows of lava where you can get close enough where you can roast a marshmallow or poke the lava with a stick if you're so inclined or better yet, make a photograph. Stromboli Volcano in Italy is in a place where you can get a good access to an active volcano. So, there are a few places. There's also some lava lakes around the world. There's one right now in Nicaragua called Masaya Volcano. There is my personal favorite, which is Nyiragongo Volcano in the Congo, which I visited last year, maybe two years ago, it's all blur at this point which is the biggest lava lake in the world. And there's a few other places as well where you can see these active lava lakes in a safe environment. So, for Yasur volcano, you're up there with guides and the staff there monitors the volcano. If the volcano's too active, you're not allowed to go up to the crater rim. So, while I was there, it was just perfectly active. So, I could be up on the crater rim. Even then I was constantly on the lookout whenever there was a big explosion, I would track the magma bombs as they were going in the air. And lava is not something that you wanna mess with. It's ridiculously hot. And when I was photographing in Hawaii recently, I was actually very close to some surface flows of lava. And as I said, you can walk up close enough to these surface flows where you can reach out and touch the lava if you are so inclined. It's a bad idea. I was close enough working with a wide angle lens that I could actually feel the heat on my arms. It was burning my arms. It looked like I had a bad sunburn after I was done. So, what I do when I work in close to a surface flow is I'll wear long sleeve pants and a shirt and a hat, cover some of my exposed skin. And it's still really hot when you're that close to the lava, but it will keep your skin from literally cooking as you get too close. I also recommend wearing a pair of gloves if you're that close to lava because even if your skin isn't getting too hot, your equipment and your tripod can heat up quite a bit. So, you grab on your tripod and it's like holding a hot potato as you're bouncing back and forth from hand-to-hand. So, a pair of gloves will help you move your equipment around without having that hot potato moment. With lava, all I can say is be safe, be cautious. At a place like Vanuatu, you're actually not close enough to the lava so that you can feel the heat or anything like that. So, it's actually relatively safe when you're in a place like Hawaii. When I go there, usually I work with... I'll hire a private guide who can help me navigate to the most interesting lava flows. I think it's a good idea having a guide along because they can keep an eye on the lava if it's moving. If there's any sudden outbursts of lava where there's a breakout and the lava starts moving a little bit faster maybe down a hill or something like that. You're busy focused on the photography, it's nice to have a second pair of eyes. And the private guides can also avoid dangerous areas on the lava field where there might be an old lava tube that is on the verge of collapsing. They know the area very well. So, there's a lot of hidden dangers as well that they can help you avoid. And they can take you to places like for example, my guides took me onto some private land that was adjacent to the national park there. So, I was able to fly my drone and do things that I would not have been, otherwise, able to do in the national park. I do talk a lot about a lot of these techniques in a recent ebook that I released called "How to Photograph lava", which is a bundled with my Vanuatu video course on the shop. So, if you buy a download of the course on the LPG shop, you can also get this short ebook, which is a guide. Everything you need to know for getting great lava photographs. And referencing back to that second eclipse photo that you took. Ragu is asking, "How do you decide your proper exposure settings for shooting water rapids so it's not too long or too short?" That's a fantastic question. A lot of times I will experiment with different shutter speeds. So, the question is what shutter speed would be too long or too short? It really depends on how fast the water is moving and the volume of the water. So, with a smaller stream where there's not a huge volume of water, I know I can get away with a longer exposure if there's a big waterfall or something like that. If I have a really long exposure, the water can be completely blurred out and just be this undifferentiated mass of white. So, what I'm usually trying to do with my water photos is I wanna find that blend between blur, that creative, artistic blur, but still keeping some texture in the water. I don't want the water to go pure white without any texture. I wanna keep some texture. So, with smaller streams, that often means exposures that are as long as two seconds, four seconds or even longer. For big waterfalls, often, I might be looking at one 15th of a second or one fourth of a second, maybe a little bit longer depending on the volume going overhead. It also depends on your personal artistic tastes. For me personally, I don't like having a really short shutter speed with water and freezing the motion of the water because I don't think that's realistic. That's not the way the eye perceives it. The human eye perceives the water in motion. We don't perceive it as being frozen. If you use a short shutter speed, the water ends up looking like ice. So, I wanna find a long enough exposure where I can incorporate some blur, some blending into the movement of the water and that gives it a look that's a bit more natural to the human eye. So, experiment freely. That's the great thing about digital cameras as you can try with different exposures until you find one that suits your personal artistic sensibilities. I usually start with about a half second and then maybe I will experiment with longer or shorter exposures from there until I get what I want. All right, and Nancy just asked a question that I've seen submitted multiple times ahead of the live show. And this is a question that people tend to ask frequently. "Can you talk a little bit more about focusing the foregrounds that are very close in your photographs?" Some best practices for those kinds of photos you're taking. All right, so, the question is about focusing on the foregrounds, but really this is a question about achieving sharp focus throughout the image frame in landscape photos. So, the standard traditional landscape photography is to have everything in the image frame as sharp as possible to make everything look sharp. And by all means, definitely experiment freely with limited focus effects if you're shooting landscape. But most of us when we're shooting landscape are looking for that sharp focus look that extensive depth of field from near to far. And this is actually a very complicated topic. I wrote a whole ebook and did a video course on this called focusing for landscape photography. I encourage you check it out if you wanna get the long story. The short story is that there really are two ways to achieve this deep focus effect. One is to use what is called hyperfocal distance. When you're focusing on a landscape scene, you can't just focus on your subject. So, when you're focusing for wildlife, you just focus on your wildlife subject and that's what you wanna have in focus, you don't really care about the rest. You may even wanna have the background blurred out of focus. Focusing is pretty simple, but with the landscape scene, what's your subject? It's not the mountains in the background, it's not your foreground, it's the entire scene. So, you wanna focus somewhere in between the foreground and the background. And this is called the hyperfocal distance, the hyperfocal point. So, you focus there and then you extend your depth of field by stopping down and using a smaller aperture to cover the foreground and the background in the scene so everything looks sharp. And this usually means that you're focusing somewhere. What I do as a rule of thumb, is I estimate the distance to my foreground. And then I double that distance and I focus there. So, if my foreground is that cracked mud in the Badlands and it's three feet away from me, I'll focus on a point that's six feet away from me. That is roughly my hyperfocal point. And then I'll stop down to a small aperture like F11 or F16 to make sure I've got sharp focus throughout the image frame. The other technique for getting that sharp look, that sharp focus look throughout the entire image frame is to do something called focus stacking. So, when you're focusing on a point and stopping down using depth of field, you really are still only having a very small portion of the image frame, actually in focus. Depth of field just creates the appearance of sharp focus, but you don't really have all of those points in sharp focus. So, with focus stacking, what you do is you focus on multiple points throughout the scene and then you blend those images together on the computer later using a focus stacking program like Helicon Focus. And the advantage of focus stacking is... There's actually several advantages. One, you can achieve deeper depth of field than through using hyperfocal distance and a small aperture alone. So, you can actually get closer to your foreground and get everything sharp in the image using focus tag. And this is very similar too if you're using a tilt shift lens or back in the old fashioned days of large format cameras where you would actually use movements of the camera and the lens to alter the plane of focus to get that deep field sharp look for your photographs. Focus stacking allows you to do pretty much the same thing except you're doing it through the computer rather than doing it through the technical aspect of photography. So, what you do with focus stacking, another advantage of it is that you can avoid really small apertures, which creates something called diffraction which actually limits image quality overall. So, if you're shooting at really small apertures like F16 or F22, you'll have a lot more that is appearing to be in focus through depth of field, but you're gonna have this slight loss of image quality overall. So, when you focus stack, you can use an optimum aperture that really enhances the overall sharpness of the image. So, the final image focused stack can look much, much crisper and sharper than you can achieve normally, which means you can do bigger prints on your wall and exciting things like that. So, focus stacking is a great technique, but it's also tricky to use sometimes if you have moving elements like if you're working with moving water or you have grass or trees that are swaying in the wind or clouds moving overhead. Focus stacking can be tricky blending it all together. So, I encourage everyone to learn both focus stacking technique and also to learn hyper-local distance because you never know when you're gonna have to use one or the other. But if you really wanna learn more about it, it's a very complicated topic, but I make it a lot simpler in my course focusing for landscape photography. I encourage you check that out. All right, we got a little more personal question here from Anya. She's wondering how you find your locations to shoot at when you travel. Do you do a lot of research prior to your chip or do you kind of throw a dart board at a map, pick, this is where I'm going. Is there any method to your madness on where you're traveling? Well, I'd like to think that there's a method to my madness, but anyone who knows me, knows that there's just madness to my method. So actually, I do a combination of things. I do sometimes like to wing it just to show up at a place that's caught my eye or seems interesting and just immerse myself in the landscape and react to what's going on. And this has actually been the way I conduct my photography more often than not in the past 12 years of being a professional photographer. But the more I do this, especially with landscape photography, the more that I think that research and planning is critically important. One thing I don't like to do when I'm doing research and planning is to look too much at the photographs that other photographers have made because I don't want to be chasing other people's shots. So, I don't want their vision to infect my own personal vision. I might do a Google images search of a location and look at the shots that tourists have taken just to get a sense for what the landscape looks like. But what I really try to avoid is looking at other serious photographer shots as much as I can. And from there, I will often consult Google Earth or I'll look at satellite images on any of the mapping software that's available out there like Bing Maps or Google Maps or whatever. And what I'll do there looking at the satellite images is I just wanna get a better sense of what the landscape looks like. I will consult apps that you can download on your smartphone that will show you where the sun is rising and setting for any particular landscape. So, one app that I use is called the Photographer's Ephemeris. So, this gives me an... Excuse me, this gives me an idea about not only what the landscape looks like from above with the satellite image, but where the light's gonna be at sunrise, at sunset or any given point of the day. The most critical thing you can do though is to show up at the landscape and scout. I spend hours every day scouting. And scouting starts usually in the vehicle where I can cover a lot of distance and I can explore a national park, for example. Just kind of see what the highlights are, but it doesn't end there. The most important and critical part of scouting is getting out and moving around on your own two feet, immersing yourself in the landscape and really trying to figure out what there is. As I said before, I'm looking for this really compelling foregrounds. So, to me, a good landscape shot has a compelling foreground and a compelling background. At the very least, you need a compelling foreground, something that's gonna really draw the eye in. And even if you don't have a compelling background, you can always hope for some really great light in the sky at sunrise or sunset to serve as your background feature. But it all starts with the foreground. And that all starts with moving around and looking for those interesting shapes, those compelling shapes that you know are gonna lead the viewer in. And then you just have to cross your fingers and hope you get lucky when the magic hours come. And so, usually what I do is when I've scouted a location for sunrise or sunset, I try to scout a few alternatives that are nearby because you never know where the clouds are gonna be in the sky. And so, you can't really predict. Even if you know where the sun is gonna be at any given moment, you can't really predict where you're gonna get those great shapes and those great colors in the sky. So, I have my primary composition scouted out, but if the light, if the clouds just aren't working for that location, I will go to one of my secondary composition that points a different way. So, I'm always trying to have a few options. There's nothing worse than being on location when you have absolutely stunning sunrise or sunset conditions and not knowing ahead of time what you plan on shooting. You're scrambling, you're running around like a chicken with its head cut off and it is the worst possible feeling knowing that you could not get a great shot of that beautiful moment because you weren't prepared. All right, we have another landscape photography question from Yatindra. "Which metering do you recommend for landscape photos? What's your take on exposing to right?" All right, this is a fantastic question. So, when I'm shooting landscape photos, I'm typically working in aperture priority mode. I know a lot of people shoot in manual mode as well. I prefer the priority mode because that way if the light is changing quickly, I don't have to be fiddling with all the controls. The meter will compensate automatically for those changes in the light. Even if you're shooting in a priority mode, you need to learn how to use exposure compensation. Just because your camera tells you that something is a proper exposure doesn't mean it's the correct exposure or doesn't mean it's the exposure that you want for the photograph. So, exposure compensation allows you to adjust the exposure so that you get it right. Now, the second part of this question was about exposing to the right. And what this is is that the camera data is output into what is known as a histogram. And you can view the histogram on your camera or you can view the histogram later on your computer. And the histogram is a graphical representation of all the tones and the colors that are contained in the image file. And the left side of the histogram represents the shadow area. So, the very far left is pure black. And then the right side of the histogram represents the highlight areas of the photograph. And the very right edge of the histogram represents pure white. And so, this notion of exposing to the right came about because of a fundamental characteristic of the way data is rendered in a digital photo file. And what happens is that areas that are on the right side of the histogram, in the highlight areas, there's more data associated with those tones than tones that are falling in the shadow areas. And more data means there's more flexibility for processing that data in the image file and you get less digital noise which detracts from the quality of the image. So, if you expose to the left, if you've got most of your exposure on the shadow side of the histogram, if you try to brighten that, you will end up with lots of noise. You'll see the noise in the shadows really bad. So, by exposing to the right as far as you can without overexposing anything, without clipping your highlights to pure white, you're actually optimizing the image data. It gives you more flexibility and it reduces the noise so you have a higher quality file. So, this is why people say expose to the right. A lot of modern digital cameras have such good dynamic range and good noise control that even if you have deep shadow areas, you can pull out that data without getting too much noise. So, it's not as critical as it was a few years ago, but if you have an older camera model, if you're really looking up and optimize your quality, you wanna make sure that you exposed to the right as much as you possibly can. So, I expose to the right. It may mean that to the eye, the image looks too bright. Well, what you do is when you're processing the image file, you darken it so that it looks properly, has the exposure that you want. And this is something I'll be discussing in my first gold class on Thursday. So, I definitely recommend everyone attend that free class because I'll be talking about a lot of these processing techniques that I use when I'm converting my raw files. And I think it's gonna be very helpful for people in talking about taking an exposed to the right file and bringing an exposure down. It's pretty simple to do. It's something I'll demonstrate. So, just remember when you are exposing to the right, do not push the exposure so far that you end up overexposing and clipping your highlights. You wanna keep detail on those highlights. You don't want them being pure white because you can't recover that detail. So, you wanna go as far to the right as you can without having those spikes on the very right-hand side of your histogram. Great and we talked today a little bit about how bad weather is really good for photographs, but Diane is wondering if any of your photography gear has had to be benched because of your desire to get photographs in bad weather. I have a pile in my closet of camera gear that has been destroyed. Usually, bad weather hasn't done it. Usually, it's been dropping my camera and water in particular saltwater. I remember once when I was in Indonesia, I was doing some snorkeling and I had a camera housing for my camera that failed. And so, the camera was exposed to saltwater, which is like magma for your camera electronics. But yes, I have definitely destroyed my fair share of equipment. I do recommend that if you're gonna be exposing your equipment to the elements that you have it insured. And I usually bring backup equipment with me just in case I have a camera or a lens fail. So, I always have a backup camera with me. Everyone has their own personal tolerance for risk. I'm actually extremely careful and cautious when I expose my camera to the elements, but that doesn't stop me from doing it. So, for example, just a few days ago, I was kayaking on Lake Superior and I was doing some photography from my kayak. And so, I knew that even though I can keep my camera safely wrapped up in a dry bag while I was kayaking, that the moment I took it out in my kayak with the waves bouncing me back and forth that I was running the risk of dunking my camera in the Lake and destroying it forever. So, I knew it was the risk I was wanting to take 'cause I wanted to get some shots from that perspective, but I was extremely cautious about doing it. I just never do these things without thinking them through and thinking about the best way to keep my equipment safe. Usually, one thing that I think most people are the most concerned about is the rain. Most cameras are sufficiently weather sealed to deal with some light rain. If it really starts raining hard, you just got to get your camera underneath the jacket or in a bag. Someplace that's safe because a heavy rain is almost like dropping your camera on the Lake. So definitely, depends on your personal tolerance for risk. But as for me, I can... One of these days I'm gonna take all this old equipment. I'm just gonna do a video where I smash it on the ground like that scene from the movie "Office Space". So, keep an eye out for that. That'll be coming in the next few months. Coming soon. Yeah. All right, we have a question that was asked by both Debbie and Valerie. "How often do you use a graduated neutral density filter in landscape photography?" This is a fantastic question. So, I used to work with graduated neutral density filters all the time. So, a graduated neutral density filter is a filter that is darker on the top than it is on the bottom. It's clear on the bottom and it's got this graduated transition from clear to darker. And it's designed so you can pull the filter halfway down across the image frame and you can darken the sky. So, when the sky is bright and colorful at sunrise or sunset, but the landscape's in shadow when it's a little bit darker, this helps balance your exposure between the sky and the landscape. So, I used to always use graduated neutral density filters 'cause I was almost always shooting at sunrise and sunset. So, it was a very common filter for me to use. I don't typically use filter as much these days including light filters because of blending techniques. You can take multiple exposures and blend them together on the computer. And I will be showing a technique for that in Lightroom using something called merged HDR on Thursday. So, if you're interested in learning more about that, you should attend that gold event. But you can create a much more natural and seamless blend on the computer. The problem with the grad is that it was a transition, but it was still a line. As you pulled it over your scene if you had mountains or trees sticking up into the sky, those would get darkened as well. And sometimes they would get over darkened. So, it was a little difficult to achieve a natural look with grad filters. So, you can get a much more natural look with computer processing techniques these days. And also there's a lot of a wide angle lenses that have those bulbous pop-eye for an elements that make using filters way difficult. And I love those lenses. So, I can't really use filters with things like my Cannon 11 to 24 millimeter ultra wide lens because you're getting a filter rig on that. You have to buy an oversized filter rig that's like this big and it's just not practical to carry around. So, because of that, I almost exclusively rely on image blending these days instead of using grad filters. But if you don't have one of those pop-eye lenses or you don't mind carrying around an extra big filter set, grad filter is a useful thing to have because even if you know how to do image blending, sometimes you'll be working with scenes like I talked about with focus stacking where you have moving elements from exposure to exposure, can make blending and image together difficult if not impossible. So, sometimes you may wanna use the grad instead of using the image blending to get that balanced exposure and not have to worry about a difficult blend later. Now, with a lot of modern cameras, they have these really increased dynamic ranges. The dynamic range of some of the newest cameras is amazing. So, I know a lot of photographers that don't even bother with exposure blending, because they can capture just about everything they want in one exposure and then just pull detail out of the shadows. So, that's an option as well, though I still think that learning how to do image blending ends up creating better, cleaner files. And it's a good thing to know how to do anyways. So, I do recommend learning exposure blending. And we'll talk a little bit more about that on Thursday, so I hope you can attend. All right and we're getting a little low on time. So, I think we have time for one more question here. Going back to when we're talking about scouting for photography and finding places and having backup places, Aria was asking, "How do you remember the spots that you've previously scouted?" If you need to come back at a time where there's perhaps a better lighting, better weather and you wanna take the photo at a different time. Are you like, "Turn left at this rock, mark this tree." How do you remember where to go back to take your photos? I guess I'm kind of like a squirrel in that regard. I think squirrels forget 20% of the nuts that they gather and hide. I guess I've got a pretty good memory. There's not a lot of times where I forget a location. If it's something that really excites me, I remember how to get there. But one thing you can do is you can have a GPS with you. Either a handheld GPS device or just use GPS app on your phone. And mark the locations of certain landscape features that you find really compelling so you can get back to them. Definitely, write yourself instructions, but more often than not, if it's something that's really good, I will remember where it is and I can find my way back to it even years later. Though sometimes there's a little bit of trial and error if I'm trying to get back to a good spot. But that's a fantastic question. I think using GPS is definitely the best way to make sure you can find those locations later on. We probably have time for a few more questions if we've got a few more coming in. A few more? Yeah. All right. I don't mind talking. I'd rather give you guys as much information as I possibly can. Why not? "Can you explain what hyperfocal distance is and an easy way to calculate it?" Oh, goodness. Well, no, I cannot explain it in an easy way. I did give you the rule of thumb earlier about focusing on something that's twice as far from the nearest element of your shots. If you're foreground's four feet away, focus on a point that's eight feet away that gets you in the ballpark of hyperfocal distance. It's a very complicated topic. I do recommend checking out my course focusing for landscape photography. It takes this incredibly complicated topic and distills it into something that's much more easy, user-friendly and simple. And I guarantee that when you're done with it, you probably still won't understand what hyperfocal distance is. I wrote the book. I don't understand what it really is, but I know how to use it. And I know how to make sure that my images are sharp throughout the image frame. It's actually quite simple. So, get the book. I encourage you to do that. And definitely, in the next few days, I encourage everyone to attend the first free gold class, which will give you a taste of what we have to offer with gold membership. And I think it's gonna be an exciting event. As I said, I'm gonna focus on my processing techniques using Adobe Lightroom or or Adobe Camera Raw, which is basically the same processing engine. And it's not gonna be giving you any magic bullets for processing. My processing workflow is actually fairly simple and straightforward, I think compared to a lot of the folks out there that are creating these composite Photoshop art. I'm not doing that. So, if you're interested in learning more about that, that won't be the place for you, but if you're interested in just learning how I approach it. To me it's not really about the technical process. It's the artistic decisions that I'm making that I think are the most important part of that course. So, I think that is something that you'll find interesting if you wanna learn more about that artistic side of processing. And that will be the first gold class that we do. Subsequent gold classes, we'll delve deeper into processing. We'll talk more about taking the image from the raw converter into Photoshop and doing some more advanced image blending and things like that. And also talking about a bunch of other techniques. And we're gonna talk about a lot of artistic concepts as well in the gold classes. So, I recommend you check that out, check out the free introduction and see if you like it. And everyone, I encourage you to participate in the challenge that's coming up in early October. As I said, it's gonna be six weeks, six different topics. Each topic is gonna challenge you to learn how to see the world in a different way not only from everyone else, but from the way that you see things with your own two eyes. So, it's really, this challenge is designed to get at the core of the art of photography, which is different than any other form of art in so many ways. And it really is to force you to learn to see artistically and to use the technical aspects, the technical limitations of your camera equipment creatively to create unique and compelling artwork. So, I encourage everyone to do that. And anything else Lillia that we need to add on? Yeah, actually, we have two questions that are kind of in the same vein from Debbie and Fran. One, "Do you feel a polarizer is good to use with water photos? And do you use a polarizer on your 1124?" Fantastic question! I do. The polarizer filter is one of the few filters I still use. I think that when you're photographing waterfalls and streams, polarizer is a great filter. So, a polarizer really is designed to remove glare and reflections. Actually, a polarizer can be used to enhance reflections as well. So, there are two times when I think it's particularly useful to use a polarizer. When you're photographing streams and waterfalls on an overcast day, you may have a lot of wet rocks and water that is reflecting glare from the gray sky above and that's really unattractive. And it detracts from the quality of the image that you're making. So, polarizer removes those reflections. So, it helps enhance the contrast. It gets rid of all those annoying white hotspots and it can also enhance the color and saturation of any autumn foliage or spring foliage you have around the waterfall. Another great time to use a polarizer is when you're photographing rainbows. And this seems a little counterintuitive. Rainbow is not really a reflection. It's a refraction, but it's kind of the same thing. And if you polarize a rainbow, you can actually remove it, but if you keep spinning the polarizer around, you'll notice that that rainbow colors seem to pop out more vividly. And what's happening is that you're actually polarizing the background. So, the rainbow is popping out and looking stronger as a result. So, that's what I meant when I said that a polarizer can be used to enhance the reflection. So, when I'm photographing, let's say, a stream in shadow in autumn when the foliage in the background is sunlit and I'm photographing just the reflections of that colorful foliage in the water, I'll use a polarizer to enhance those reflections. I'll spin it around. At some point, the reflections will disappear, but at some point you'll be polarizing stuff other than the reflections. And it makes the reflections pop out. So, reflections, whether they be rainbows in the sky or colorful foliage reflected in the water, that can be another good time to use a polarizer. You just have to keep spinning it around until you get the effect that you like. And if you don't like the effect, take the polarizer off. One time you shouldn't use a polarizer is when you're photographing a blue sky. It's often said that you wanna use a polarizer to make a blue sky darker and rich or blue and the polarizer will do that. But if you're working with a wide angle lens, you're gonna get uneven polarization. So, some parts of the sky are gonna go really dark and other parts, not as dark. And this is because the amount of polarization depends on your angle from the light source. So, the polarization effect is strongest when you're 90 degrees from your light source like the sun. So, if you're with a wide angle lens, you're capturing a wide view of the scene, parts of the scene or farther away from the light source than other parts. So, you get this uneven polarization. The best way to get that dark, blue sky look from a polarizer is to selectively darken your blues when you're processing the image. That's something I will be discussing on Thursday. All right and let's squeeze in one more question. One more question? All right! Yeah "Do you have a rule of thumb when you're photographing in the golden hour, like at sunrise and sunset? And do you prepare your gear settings in advance when you go to shoot?" So, if what you mean by the question is whether I have any sort of idea what my settings are ahead of time. No, I don't. The settings are all going to depend on a lot of different variables. How bright the light is, how colorful the sky gets, how much you're stopping down your aperture. When I'm shooting landscape, I'm always thinking primarily of aperture. That's why I'm typically shooting aperture priority. So, aperture control your depth of field. So, I will set my aperture to ensure that I get the depth of field I need for my photograph to get that sharp focus from near to far. And then the camera will automatically select what it thinks is the correct shutter speed. And I will use exposure compensation to change that if I think it's selected the wrong exposure. Some scenes, both aperture and shutter speed become important variables. And in that case, I'll shoot in manual mode. And then to control my exposure, I can change my ISO up or down to get the exposure time that I want. So, there's really no rule of thumb. All I can say is be out there early. I always try to show up at least an hour before sunset or or an hour before sunrise 'cause I like to shoot not only the golden hours, but the twilight. So, I'm usually there maybe two hours before the good light if I'm scouting a location and I need some time to look at things and check things out. Also as the sun gets low and low in the sky, if you've got clouds or storms drifting by, you can get some really interesting lighting effects. Even before you enter those golden hour times, you might still be able to get some really great shots if you've got compelling clouds. So, I always show up early, shoot until the sun goes down and then I stay out late. I keep there shooting through the twilight if it looks promising. Sometimes I wait until the very edge of light before I stop shooting because you can get some really unearthly colors and light when you're shooting in the dark of twilight before the sky goes completely black at night. Some of my favorite photos have been taken on the edge of light. And I do the reverse at sunrise. I show up early so I can shoot that twilight. So, I'm there at least an hour before the sunrises. Sometimes I'm sitting in the dark for an hour before it gets bright enough to shoot, but that's okay. I'd rather be there with extra time than get there late. So, that's my only rule of thumb, is be out there and plan to be there for a while. So, maybe take a drink with you, a glass of wine. If you're sitting out there for sunset, you know you're gonna have some extra time. You can sit back and relax and enjoy the beauty of landscape. And then when the magic happens, you can be ready to go. And I just wanna address two things in the chat here from Daniel and Larry. Yes, this will be available for replay at outdoorphotographyguide.com. If you missed the webinar, you can watch it back on the website. Do you have any closing remarks for us, Ian? Well, thank you very much for attending. You guys have been fantastic and you've given me a lot of great questions. I hope to be having the next OPG LIVE episode in sometime in October. So, we'll be giving out details for that. And now that we've got our new interactive format, we're gonna start in some guest photographers as well so you're not just hearing me drone on and on about my photography. You can hear someone else talk about their photography. So, we're hoping to make this bigger and better and more interesting and bring multiple viewpoints. And all I can do is tell you right now, stay tuned, we'll be announcing details for the next episode of OPG LIVE soon. Hope to see you on Thursday for the first gold class. And hope to see you during the upcoming unseeing challenge. Thank you very much and have a great day. Bye! Bye!