Author Archive for Dave Wares – Page 3

Scenic Outlook – Choosing Your Horizon

When out in the field and faced with a fabulous scene in front of you, there are three choices to consider when it comes to where you should place your horizon; Top, middle, bottom. Positioning the horizon in one of these three places will dramatically effect the perspective of the picture and will help to give your photographs a more dynamic edge. Generally speaking, the casual snapper and beginner photographer will tend to put their horizons more or less dead centre, as this is the way we usually see the world from a standing perspective. However, this tends to give pictures an unnatural balance with the photograph feeling as if it should be viewed as two halves. There will be times though, that placing your horizon in the middle will work a treat.

Lets look at some examples below.

Top:

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Scenic Outlook – Go Portrait

When it comes to landscape photography it may seem perfectly logical that you should keep your camera in a horizontal/landscape position, usually we are confronted by sweeping vistas and sometimes even the widest of lenses just doesn’t seem to be enough to fit it all in. However, turning your camera to a vertical/portrait position can be equally rewarding and in fact may help to improve your pictures in certain situations.

The strength of any picture will always be partly down to how you choose to compose the frame. I always take a few moments to have a good look at what’s in front of me, deciding what elements are available to help draw the viewers eye through the scene. Take a look at the picture below.

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Scenic Outlook – What Gear Do I Need?

So you’ve seen all these amazing landscape shots from various photographers and you think to yourself, “I’d like to do that, but what do I need to get started?”. I’m assuming here that there will probably be people reading this that may be very new to photography and are looking for some sort of guidance. So what I’m going to do is compile a short list of things that you might want to consider getting hold of at some point or another, though there is no need to go out and get it all at once.

The simple answer to that question is a camera and a tripod. Is that it I hear you say. Well yes and no. If you’re a total beginner with only a compact camera who’s looking to delve further into the photography world then yes you can start to get out there with no more than these two items. Something to take the picture with and something to keep the camera as steady as possible. This is all I had when I started and it did me fine until my experience started to grow. I would recommend that you find out where the self timer is and use that to take your landscape pictures as this will prevent you from jogging the camera during the exposure. I will cover camera settings and things like composition in a future post.

As your knowledge begins to grow you’ll find that you start to need more and more bits of equipment. Purchasing a more versatile camera would be the obvious first choice, personally I would skip the bridge cameras and go straight for a DSLR system as this will give you more options in the long term. The standard zoom that ships with most cameras is actually a very good range for the landscape photographer and is in fact the zoom range that I use 90% of the time albeit that I purchased a better quality lens.

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Scenic Outlook – Get out of bed!

What is it that makes great Landscape pictures? Good camera craft, an understanding of composition? Both of these are incredibly important but they’re not the only thing. Great landscape photos come from a love and dedication to get out there and enjoy your surroundings and to see the wonderful low light bring definition and shape to the landscape; which means getting out of bed early. Now I realise that great low light also happens at the end of the day too, but for now I’m going to talk mornings. One of the best times of day to be out as a landscape photographer is first light, in fact I’d go even further and say that you should really be out there well before sunrise, by at least an hour in fact. It’s time to set the alarm for stupid o’clock, resist the allure of the duvet and forget about breakfast. Breakfast can be your reward for a good mornings shoot. If you’re going to be out for a while then throw a drink and a couple of chocolate bars into your camera bag.

The winter months are a Godsend for us landscape folks as not only are we blessed with great low light throughout pretty much the whole day, the days are shorter too which means that you won’t have to get out of bed quite so early, 6-7am instead of 4am or earlier during the summer. (Depending on your geographic location of course)

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Scenic Outlook – Introducing Dave Wares

My interest in photography started back in 2003 when I bought a small digital compact camera with the intention of taking snaps of the family. After a short time my interest started to expand and I found myself going out more to photograph the local scenery. It wasn’t too long before I became frustrated with the limitations of my compact and so I decided to buy my first SLR, however, I didn’t have the cash needed to purchase the DSLRs of the time so I went the film route instead, I then spent the next three years shooting slide film. It was in these early days that I developed my love for shooting landscape and nature, being inspired primarily by photographers such as Joe Cornish, David Noton and Andy Rouse. Another figure that has been a great source of inspiration is my cousin Steve (whom I also work with). He has been a keen landscape photographer for many years and I owe a lot to him for helping me out during my early days. In late 2005 my slide scanner died which pushed me to purchase a DSLR in Jan 2006. I believe this enabled my photography to improve at a much faster rate simply because of the instant feedback I got, rather than having to wait a week before getting my slides back.

Since then I have expanded my interests further and a couple of years ago I got heavily into Urban Exploration, going into various derelict venues shooting all those nasty things that others have behind. I must say that this has taken my photography to a new level and given a new lease of life to the old grey matter. It has also led me into the world of HDR and 2010 was definitely my year for that, though my first HDR attempts were with landscape shots. I seem to have developed my own style with HDR and have somewhat gotten a reputation in this field with those that know me, this is probably due to the fact that I didn’t really seek out any tutorials and just processed things in my own way. Read More→