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Digital Outback Fine Art Photography
Handbook
© by Bettina & Uwe Steinmueller
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7 Some selective outdoor disciplines
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7.1 Landscapes
7.2 Birds
7.3 Plants and Flowers
7.4 Urban Landscapes
7.5 Lost and Found
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| This chapter glances over some areas of
outdoor photography we have the most experience with.
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| 7.1 Landscapes
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Point Lobos Impression @ Big Sur |
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Landscapes are our main passion. Capturing meaningful landscapes is
very demanding. The reasons are:
- Landscapes a huge (compared to small photos)
- The weather and light
- Capturing the essence
- Avoid the cliché
Here an example. Highway 1 at Big Sur is one of the most exciting landscapes
we have seen. We love to portrait this amazing scenery but it is very
challenging. On the other side this is the fun (and frustration) of
landscape photography.
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Here are some of the criteria for landscape images:
- Colors
- Patterns
- Light
- Weather
- Drama
- Detail (which makes it a challenge for 35mm and digital)
- Telling a story (make the viewer wander through the image)
- Graphical impression
- Emotions
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Landscape is not really a digital domain right now as many fine art
landscape photographers miss fine details in digital images. We just
try to our best inside the limits of today's digital SLRs. Again the
result counts and the resolution of digital cameras will soon get close
to medium format film cameras.
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Rock Patterns at Hwy 1 |
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| Our friend Jim Collum made a whole series
of large format prints from rock structures at Hwy 1 (mainly Garapatta
Beach and Pebble Beach north of Santa Cruz)
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| References
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Michael Reichmann's: The
Luminous Landscape, the name says it all
Stephen Johnson: Digital
Fine Art Landscape Photography Amazing landscape images using 4x5"
cameras with BetterLight scanning backs
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| 7.2 Birds
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Snowy Egret |
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In our early photography we never thought to photograph birds. But
here in California the beauty of these creatures demanded our attention.
Now we think that bird photography can be beautiful art (see Art Morris)
and also birds are very amazing in:
- Colors
- Patterns
- Behavior
- Elegance
- Movement
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| Also birds can be very interesting as part
of the scenery
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Pelican Attack (at Point Lobos)
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| Now we not only love birds we also have
a high respect for great bird photographers. But bird photographers need
also some special equipment
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| 7.2.1 Birds are so small (you need long
glass)
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Pelican at Santa Cruz Pier |
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If you start photographing birds you never think the focal length of
your lens is long enough. Below 300mm it only makes sense to photograph
pretty large birds (e.g. Pelicans at Santa Cruz Pier), Serious bird
photographers use lenses like 400mm f/2.8, 500mm f/4 or even 600mm f/4.
These lenses are then even used with tele converters 1.4x or 2.0x (some
even stacked!).
Using these lenses requires rigid tripods, special heads (e.g. Wimberley
Head) and excellent long glass shooting technique. Also the use of image
stabilization (Canon's IS system dominates the market) helps getting
sharp images. The long lenses are mostly shot wide open (you need all
the shutter speed and ISO you can get). Photographing long glass wide
open can result in beautiful blurred backgrounds which let the viewer
even more focus on the beauty of the birds.
The downside of these lenses is their price and weight. As we mainly
focus on landscape we want to stay more mobile and decided that such
long lenses are not for us.
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| References
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Art Morris: "Birds
as Art"
NaturePhotographers.net
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| 7.3 Plants and Flowers
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Tulip at Villa Filoli |
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| Spring is clearly our flower time. Both
wild flowers and cultivated flowers can be amazingly beautiful. One of
our favorite places is Villa Filoli with one of the most amazing gardens
in California.
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| With flower photos we often enter into the
range of macro lenses. Most of our photos are taken with a 100mm macro
lens (on a digital SLR this will be ~130-160mm). With such a lens we get
close enough and still can keep some distance from the object.
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Here are the criteria we focus on with flower photos:
- Color of course
- Patterns
- Abstractions
- Textures (no surprise that many fabrics imitate flowers
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| As with all outdoor photography the seasons
are important for your work. Flowers and other plants have there most
interesting colors in Spring (the fresh, young colors) and Fall (the muted
colors).
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Eastern Sierra Wildflowers |
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| Recently we also took some photos of cactuses
mainly to capture their patters.
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Cactus at Big Sur |
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| 7.4 Urban Landscapes
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Italian Bakery in NY |
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Urban landscapes can be as fascinating as pure nature. Most often the
scenes get more interesting if the time/nature has painted the scene.
Newly created buildings hardly ever grab our attention for photography.
Here are some examples (some are just a dream for use right now)
- Venice Italy
- Bodie the Californian ghost town
- New York in Soho and Greenwich
- Indian temples
- Mayen temples
- Mexican buildings (New Mexico)
Always where color and patterns strike the eye we would like to capture
these impressions.
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| We are not dogmatic about only photographing
"outdoors". For example in Bodie we consider the views inside
as an integral part of our Bodie portrait.
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Chair in Bodie |
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| · Urban Landscapes
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| 7.5 Lost and Found
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Puppet in Niles (photographed through the window) |
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This is a fun category which include photos which do not fit anywhere
else. These are often photos of things just found unplanned on our way
and worth capturing:
- A single moment in time
- Capture emotions
- Make us smile
- Make us sad
- The beauty of the the ugly
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Doll near Gilroy Orchard |
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| References
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| Michael Reichmann's: The
Luminous Landscape, the name says all
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| © by Bettina & Uwe Steinmueller
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