techniques

	HOW I MAKE PHOTOGRAPHS
	General Approach When doing nature and landscape photography I strive for the following three qualities. I don’t always achieve every quality in every image, but it's the goal. Originality The best perspective is the one nobody else has seen. I strive for this by taking a creative rather documentary approach to photography. I don't merely capture landscapes, I interpret them. It also helps immensely to shoot places that other landscape photographers don't. Simplicity Creativity is not the ability to make the simple complicated. It is the ability to make the complicated simple. Transcendence The ability of a photograph to transcend mere “pretty” and exist in the realm of “beautiful.” It's what separates fine art from postcard snapshots. I cannot always explain what makes an image transcend the ordinary, but I know it when I see it. Composition Like most photographers, I use all sorts of traditional compositional principles, from leading lines and the rule of thirds to symmetry and ballance. Except when I don't. Special Techniques Like nearly all photographers, I optimize my images in Photoshop by tweaking the contrast, saturation, sharpness, etc. However, I keep editing to a minimum, believing strongly that the better the original image, the better the final result. Dramatic light, vibrant colors, and creativity in general are achieved in the field when I hit the shutter, not at home when I turn on the computer. I use a wide range techniques when making photographs including, but certainly not limited to, the following.

Flash

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	Some people believe if you're photographing nature you should use only natural light. Whatever. Often an object in the foreground is much darker than the background, so I use a flash to balance the exposure. In the photo on the left, the ocotillo was originally so dark it looked like a silouhette, so I lit it up by placing a remote flash to the left of the plant. Larger objects, like the Devil's Bridge at right, may require multiple flashes (in this case, three). So if the lighting in these images looks a bit unnatural...well...it is! But these photos looked like this when they were taken and I like the somewhat surreal look achieved by adding my own light to the foreground.

Backlighting

	Keeping the sun to your back is not a bad rule for photographing friends at a BBQ with a point-and-shoot. But if you want to get creative, that's the first rule you need to throw out the window. A very high percentage of my images are backlit. This can create a wide range of effects.

		Most photographers strive for as much detail as possible in every photograph they make. Ocasionally I do the opposite. By shooting almost directly into the sun, multiple ridges in distant mountains are reduced to elegantly simple tones, from dark on the bottom to light at the top. In this case, the sun is hovering just above the top of the photo (so that I'm shooting toward it, but slightly under it).
		Backlighting causes anything translucent to "glow." In this case, the sun shining through the leaves of a wild raspberry plant from behind give the red tones extra vibrancy. Backlighting also makes the little "puff balls" in the grass sparkle so much that most people think the grass is covered with morning dew, even though it's completely dry on a warm afternoon.
		Backlighting can cause lens flairs (glaire on the lens). Normally I try to avoid lens flairs by using a hood on the lens or by holding a wide-brimmed hat over the lens to block some of the incoming sun. Ocasionally, though, lens flairs are unavoidable. In this case, lens flairs ocur across the image as red spots, especially in the lower-right. Not all photographs look good with lens flairs, but in some images, like this one, they add an artistic touch that enhances the photo.

		Long Exposures

		To give flowing water a silky smooth look, simply lengthen the shutter speed. The longer the shutter, the smoother the water. Ocasionally I use a neutral density (gray) filter or polarizing filter to eat up a couple stops of light just so I can use a longer shutter speed.

	Twilight
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	Sunset is usually a great time to make photographs – but often twilight is even better. The extremely soft, almost surreal colors in the photo of Willow Lake at left only happened after the sun dipped below the horizon. Twilight is also a good time to photograph scenes that, at sunset, have harsh shadows. The photo of Lake Powell at right was taken at twilight to almost completely eliminate shadows that just minutes earlier made the entire bottom half of the image extremely dark. Because of low light, most twilight shots require long shutter speeds, so stabilizing the camera with a tripod is extra important.

	Patterns to Infinity
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	I often zoom in closely on a pattern so that it runs off the edges of the photograph. This suggests to viewers that the pattern continues indefinitely, perhaps for a very long time. For example, people often assume the field of poppies in the photo above is huge when it fact it pretty much disappears just beyond the left and right edges of the image. In the other photo, the elegant pattern in the sand gets messed up just beyond the edges of the photo, but by framing a small part of it very tightly I imply that it continues unbroken across a large area.

		Dramatic (but Natural) Reflections


		Trees at the water's edge can create dramatic reflections, especially in the fall when the foliage is yellow, orange or red. Sometime nearby orange or reddish cliffs create similar reflections. Such reflections rarely cover a large area, but if you zoom in on them very closely you get a "pattern to infinity" effect that suggests the colored water covers a much larger area than it really does. Both of the above photos were taken in the same location. The top photo is simply a very small part of the larger scene.

	HDR Sometimes the range of light across a scene is so great that it cannot be captured in a single exposure. In the scene below, the sky is far brighter than the ground. I could properly expose for one or the other, but not both. One way to deal with this is to create multiple exposures of the same scene, then merge them later in Photoshop. Any number of exposures may be combined, although it's rare that I merge more than two. HDR (High Dynamic Range), as this technique is called, has become very common, especially with landscape photographers who often shoot very big places under naturally uneven light.
	Exposure #1 (no editing): The ground is properly exposed, but the sky is too bright.		Exposure #2 (no editing): The sky is properly exposed, but the ground is too dark.
	The two images above are merged in Photoshop to create a proper exposure across the entire scene (in this particular shot, a polarizing filter was also used to eat up a couple stops of light so I could slow down the shutter to make the water appear smoother. A bit of contrast and saturation (but not too much) were also added in Photoshop.

The ethics of using HDR are debatable. Here’s my opinion. The human eye can detect a far greater range of light than a camera. Therefore, combining multiple camera exposures does not create a fake or unreal scene. On the contrary, it makes a scene look much more like your eye sees it. The exception is when HDR is over-used by combining exposures that are so dramatically different that they transcend even the capabilities of the human eye, resulting in a fake-looking image (if you're combining four or five exposures into a single image, you're probably going overboard). However, just because some photographers abuse HDR does not mean others cannot employ it as an honest technique.

Even though I believe HDR has its place, I avoid using it if another technique will suffice. For example, if the foreground is far darker than the background, I may light up the foreground with a flash and capture the entire scene in a single take. Or I may wait until twilight when harsh shadows mostly disappear across an entire scene, allowing everything to be adequately captured in a single take. However, if the foreground is too big for a flash or the twilight thing just isn't working, I use HDR.

One reason I avoid using HDR whenever possible is that it significantly increases the amount of time and effort required to capture and edit an image. First of all, you have to take multiple exposures instead of just one. All the exposures must be perfectly registered so they can later be merged, which means extra care must be taken to thoroughly tighten and stabilize the camera on a tripod. Then of course there’s extra editing when you get home. Depending on the complexity of the images I’m combining, I may spend anywhere from a few minutes to over an hour in Photoshop. Contrary to what some people assume, Photoshop has no HDR “auto merge” feature that works worth a damn. Most of my photos end up being merged semi-manually if not completely manually, and that takes time. Getting back to the ethics of HDR, if the technique were a form of cheating, it would be like all forms of cheating and reduce – not increase – the amount of time and effort required of a person.

It should probably be noted that another way to get around using HDR is by using a graduated neutral density filter (fades from dark to light gray). I used to have one but I lost it somewhere in the Sierra Ancha, and ever since I learned HDR I just never saw the need to replace the pricey, delicate, and rather cumbersome little accessory.

Combining Multiple Techniques

Many of my photographs combine several of the aformentioned techniques. That photo of the poppies, for example, incorporates not only a "pattern to infinity" but also backlighting and a flash for the foreground (coming from the right side to make the poppies pop a little more). The photo of the smooth, silky waterfall was made by not only using a long exposure, but by employing HDR to properly expose both the water and sky.

	Equipment
	In 2005 I began shooting nature and landscapes. That same year I also switched from film to digital photography. I began with the Nikon D70, then over the years upgraded to the D200, then the D300. I now shoot with a Canon 5D full-frame camera with L-series lenses.