Telling a Story with Pictures—Course Preview

Telling a story with pictures is an intriguing concept. In this series of videos, professional landscape photographer Steve Kossack will guide you through the exciting process of telling a story with pictures. Touring the high Arizona desert, he uncovers dramatically colorful scenes. The idea is to tell the visual story of the struggle to survive in this hostile environment.

He shows you how to concentrate on composition: a good foreground element, a distant middle ground, and a background sky. He follows these simple steps: set the aperture and shutter speed, take a vertical and a horizontal image, then check the histogram for exposure and the focus for sharpness. He covers how and when to use a variety of filters including polarizers, blue & gold, color combo, and numerous neutral density filters. How to use a tilt-shift lens to balance the perspective. How the elements of texture, light, color, shape, and form can aid in making a photograph. “You are telling the geographic story through a landscape photograph,” he explains.

Perched on a high cliff overlooking the Colorado River valley, Steve captures an an iconic scene favored by veteran landscape photographers: Horseshoe Bend on the Colorado River. He takes you into a cavern in Arizona and composes visual stories of The Exit, the Flying Angel, the Desert Wave, and the concept of the salad bowl. When photographing an abstract, he demonstrates the importance of precise composition. He climbs into a canyon cavern and shoots the colorful walls, amplifying the story of ancient waters seeking the lowest point inside the sandstone cavern. “Field landscape photography is a passion with me,” Steve says.

Follow pro shooter Steve Kosscak into the desert canyons, where he will give you landscape photography tips to help you tell your stories through your own outdoor photography. “Telling a story with pictures,” Steve explains. “That’s what this course is all about.”