It was only a few years ago that professional and amateur photographers had to make a crucial decision at the beginning of a day of shooting regarding what kind of film they would shoot. Color film? Black & White? Slide film? Today, we can save those decisions until days or even weeks after we capture an image, and decide whether the final product will be a color or black & white digital photograph. While this can make processing more complicated, it also opens up another layer of creative choice that we used to have to make in advance.
Capturing the Image
‘Marching Men’ in front of the La Sal MountainsMarching Men Black & White
The first step is image capture. Even if you choose a monochrome setting in camera, as long as you shoot in RAW, all of the color information will remain in the photo’s file, untapped. Of course, the reverse is also true. In the field you might be intent on capturing a beautiful color landscape image, but upon reflection, a conversion to black and white might be your ultimate choice. Occasionally, I will get a client who asks if I can print a given color image in black and white, or vice versa, and I am able to make that happen.
This photo of the Marching Men in Arches National Park is a great example of an image that works well in color and black & white. It is all about personal preference.
Lightroom Processing
Kaaterskill Falls Frozen Amphitheater
When I process images in Lightroom, I often hit the ‘Black & White’ button to temporarily convert the image. For me, this serves two purposes. First, it is often helpful to see an image in grayscale in order to adjust contrast, shadows, highlights and brightness. A super colorful image can sometimes obscure these details, and in fact I may work in black & white for several steps before restoring the color. As long as I work in RAW, the Lightroom ‘Black & White’ and ‘Color’ buttons toggle color information on and off, non-destructively. Once I have the tonal range I want, I can restore the color to see the final image.
Kaaterskill Falls Frozen Amphitheater
The second reason I convert to black & white is that it can reveal something about the image that more powerfully conveys the scene, and it helps me decide if in the end it will be a black & white digital photograph.
Silver Efex Pro
Once I have decided to create a black & white image, and have the image adjusted for contrast and exposure in Lightroom, my next step for image processing happens within Photoshop Elements – specifically with the Silver Efex Pro plug-in. Silver Efex Pro 2 is an incredibly powerful and versatile tool for processing digital images into fantastic black & white images. Originally created as part of the Nik Collection of plug-ins, it was bought by Google. You would think that it would mean it is now more expensive, but the opposite is true. It’s free! (thanks Google!)
Heart Lake Dock Black & White
Unless the image is intentionally soft or out of focus, the first tool I utilize is the Structure tool, which adds local contrast to the images to really make the details pop. Think of Structure as Lightroom Clarity and Photoshop Midtone Contrast, on steroids. Next I adjust brightness and contract, and can tweak the tonality curve if necessary. Then there are fun and powerful tools like color filters, that mimic the effects of the yellow or red color filters we used to use on the lens for black and white film.
Finally, if you are a fan of Ansel Adams’ Zone System (and who isn’t), there is an interactive graph that visually shows you which parts of the image are in which zones.
Grain & Toning
Speaking of black and white film, there are adjustments that mimic the contrast and grain of several types of black and white film. (Many of which aren’t even made any more!) These are handy if you are trying to match the results of your favorite film, or just trying to add a bit of grain to make the image feel more ‘authentic’.
For a final touch, you can add toning. I added a bit of sepia tone to the heart Lake Dock image, to give it a timeless, Adirondack feel. You can also add Selenium (great for winter scenes like the Kaaterskill Falls photo), copper (nice for red rock country images), and several others, all without the nasty chemicals!
Which Photos Should be Black & White?
I admit, I hold some nostalgia for the days of processing photos in my kitchen darkroom. I spent many late nights dodging and burning, watching images slowly revel themselves in developer, working to get that perfect print. Because of that experience, a black & white image sometimes reveals itself to me in a color digital image. Printing in black & white is obviously a personal choice, so there is no right and wrong about which images should be color or not.
Buddha Beach Rock CairnsBuddha Beach Rock Cairns – B&W
Take the rock cairns photo above. When I capture an image with a lot of great texture, like that in the sandstone cairns, it is often complemented in black & white. In the color version, the dark green trees in the background are a bit distracting to me. When I covert it to black & white, the texture pops (using Structure in Silver Efex Pro), and the focus on the foreground rock cairn, rather than the background trees.
Conclusion
Like most things in photography, you will learn much more by doing and repetition than by just reading a blog. Go out, shoot some images, and play with converting them to black and white. Go back to some of your favorite shots that contain good contrast and interesting textures, and play with converting them as well. Make color and black & white prints of the same photo to see how they turn out (and play with different papers while you are at it. My favorite papers are rag papers for black & white). Finally, if you have never worked in a darkroom, your Lightroom skills will improve immeasurably if you take a darkroom printing course.
As always, I’d love to hear your comments. What topics should I address next?
Day Hike: Nov 1, 2017, 12.2 mi round trip, 8 hours, max altitude 5613’, min 4456’
Egypt Bench Trail Head, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
Today’s Photo Tales trail description destination is the Golden Cathedral in Neon Canyon. I hiked there in early November, 2017, in the endangered Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Southern Utah. I won’t go into the politics today, but let’s just say that I have an‘Endangered Monuments’gallery on my photo website. 25% of the price of any work sold, including all the images in this blog, will be donated to the Utah Diné Bikéyah and/or the Natural Resources Defense Council to support legal challenges in defense of Bears Ears and GSENM.
The Golden Cathedral hike has been high on my list since I first read Photographing the Southwestby Laurent Martrès (I highly recommend this series of books, geared towards nature photographers). I skipped this hike on my first trip to Escalante in 2011 because I didn’t think our rental sedan could make it to the trailhead (boy was I right!). The road and some of the hike is in the GSENM, and some is in the Glen Canyon National Recreation area.
Please note, this is not meant to be an accurate reference trail description with topo maps and coordinates. There is an excellent trail description and map on the Grand Canyon Trustsite.
Getting There
Devil’s Garden in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
The route involves a 10 mile drive down Hole-in-the-Rock Road, which is doable in a passenger car in dry weather. The side road to the Egypt Bench trailhead is several miles of rutted, rocky ‘road’ that includes a stream crossing, deep sand, and slickrock obstacles. Fortunately my Jeep Grand Cherokee rental was more than up to the task, and after a brief stop at Devil’s Garden to capture these unique hoodoos at sunrise, I arrived at the trailhead a little before 9am on a chilly but sunny early November morning. Important tip: don’t try the road to Egypt Bench in a rental sedan! High clearance 4WD/AWD a must!
As I pulled up to the trailhead, I saw 3 millennials unloading their climbing gear from a Range Rover. Egypt Bench trailhead gives access to several different popular technical hikes, but it turns out they were headed to the Golden Cathedral as well. Their plan was to hike up above the Cathedral and rappel down through the pothole arches (natural bridges, technically).
Even when I hike with others, I tend to set a different pace. I hike deliberately, stopping when I see an interesting viewpoint or composition. Sometime I stop for a minute or two, sometimes for hours, often leapfrogging my hiking companion(s). I have a small GPS satellite communicator in case I get into real trouble, but I am comforted by the sight of other hikers at the trailhead, who will at least be headed the same general way. It turns out that aside from the Knut, Shelley and Gabe, I would see only one other hiker the entire day!
The Hike Begins
Golden Cathedral lies in Neon Canyon, which is on the opposite (East) side of the Escalante River from the Egypt Bench trailhead. I have read about 2 different routes – one more ‘direct’ across the slickrock and down a dune toward the river opposite the mouth of Neon Canyon, and a slightly longer, more scenic route that descends to the river via Fence Canyon. I always opt for the scenic route (see map here).
At first the trail is obvious, switch-backing down a slope from the ridge where we parked (+5600’), but after about 1/2 mile heading generally East (and about 500’ lost elevation), the path broadens onto slickrock, with scattered cairns roughly pointing the way. We come to a wash (dry creek bed), and know from my research that I need to cross the wash, then skirt to the left (Northeast) to descend into Fence Canyon from the North. My fellow hikers, who have farther to go to find the route into Golden Cathedral from above, decide to try the more direct route, so we part ways at this point. As I hike generally Northeast, the cairns and footprints in the sandy spots get more infrequent. I am confident that I am headed in the right direction, however, as I am tracking my progress on my phone via Backcountry Navigator Pro app, which has gotten me out of a jam on more than one occasion. I had previously downloaded the topo map for the area to my phone, so even though I am well out of cell range at this point, I can see how I am progressing on the map, and can leave digital breadcrumbs for my return, which is important, as I am not entirely sure I will be back before dark.
After about 20 minutes, I see my new friends angling back toward my path. Having neither phone nor paper map, they have decided that perhaps sticking with me makes sense. I am happy to have the company, so we can all figure this out together. The big unknown for me is the river crossing, which I have read about, but for which I have no visual clues. How deep will it be where we cross? Shin deep? Thigh deep? We shall see.
Golden Cottonwood Trees in Fence Canyon
About 1.6 miles into the hike, we walk through a notch in the rocks, and Fence Canyon begins to open to our right. We are spread out along the ‘trail’, each of us working our way along the rocky canyon edge at various paces, to try to find a route down. After a couple of missteps, following cairns and footprints that lead to steep overlooks with no obvious way down, someone eventually sees an obvious point to the Northeast, beyond which we can see what we think is the mouth of Fence canyon where it meets the Escalante. Scrambling down to the point, we find a series of switchbacks down into Fence Canyon, losing another 500’ to the canyon floor (~+4600’). One of the reasons I chose this hike this time of year is that the leaves of the cottonwood trees turn a glorious golden yellow, so I stop to photograph the backlit trees that line Fence Canyon. I don’t dwell too long, though, as I know there will be more cottonwoods in Neon Canyon, and I am anxious to catch up with my new friends before we cross the river.
Crossing the Escalante River
On the floor of the canyon an obvious narrow trail winds through a dense underbrush of reeds, hopping across a narrow stream in two places. Soon the reeds are joined and overtaken by a dense thicket of tamarisk trees, which create a tunnel of sorts on either side of the winding trail, somewhat obscuring the cliffs that line the canyon. I hear voices ahead, and I turn a corner and come upon Shelley and Knut, stopped short of a rushing, muddy torrent of water, perhaps 20 feet across, its depth obscured.
I have to admit, if I had been hiking alone, I would have been rather intimidated by the sight of the rushing river. In my head it was a wide, lazy river I had to cross – this looked entirely different. My dry bag backpack was left home in Brooklyn, and of course camera gear and water do not mix! Gabe was already in the middle of the river, wearing a dry suit, wading across with one end of a climbing rope, attempting to string up some sort of line we could use to cross the swift and muddy river. But he managed to get across the river rather easily, with the water coming just above his knees at the deepest point. We all had a good laugh, as the river suddenly seemed much more tame. I took off my boots and socks, unzipped the legs of my zip-off pants, and crossed the river, with my hiking pole in one hand, probing the muddy river bottom, and my boots in the other, making sure my backpack full of camera gear was well up on my back, just in case. The water was cool, but not cold, and the most difficult part of the crossing was scrambling up the far bank.
Two-headed big horn sheep petroglyph
From that first crossing, the trail through the reeds and tamarisk snaked down the Escalante River canyon. The mouth of Neon Canyon lies about ½ mile downstream from the mouth of Fence Canyon, and to my surprise, the river meandered quite a bit, from one edge of the canyon to other, necessitating a total of FIVE crossings of the Escalante River in each direction, sometimes knee-deep, sometimes thigh deep (waist deep for Shelley). By the third crossing, I just left my boots on, squishing my way thru the tamarisk beyond, as the day had warmed considerably. We worked out way downstream, backtracking once when I chose the wrong trail. The canyon then hooked toward the East. There along the north wall of the canyon is a fairly large petroglyph panel. Mixed with the pre-Columbian, Anasazi rock art are more contemporary images, including relatively fresh cartoonish outlines of a pair of men boxing, and a man on horseback in what appears to be a ranger hat, with dates scrawled from the 1890s.
Neon Canyon
A dramatic looking Cottonwood Tree in Neon Canyon
A few hundred yards farther East, the mouth of Neon Canyon opened up to the North. This narrow, steep-sided canyon is appropriately named, as the tall, vivid red rock walls of the canyon glowed with reflected late morning light, and the cottonwood trees were tall, graceful, and full of golden leaves, backlit beautifully in places. My companions shortly left the trail, climbing to the left to find their way above the Cathedral and the rappelling spot. I continued alone, stopping frequently to photograph along the way, before arriving at the Golden Cathedral just about 1pm.
The Golden Cathedral
Golden Cathedral Potholes
As a photographer, sometimes I am forced to share a special location with tourists and other photographers. Unique places like Delicate Arch, Bryce Point, Antelope Canyon, the Virgin Narrows are often crowded. Photographers are as common as bison and bears in Yellowstone and Yosemite. Sometimes, though, you reach your destination with the feeling that you have just lucked into a private audience with nature. Recently for me, Indian Head in the Adirondacks, the Great Gallery in Horseshoe Canyon, Druid Arch in the Needles, and a sunrise on Dream Lake all qualify. The Golden Cathedral is one of those places. For two hours, while waiting for the rappellers to appear above me, I had this unique spot to myself.
On the way in, the wind had been whipping thru the narrow canyon, thrashing the cottonwood trees to and fro. But here at the end of the trail, there was barely a ripple in the pool below the grotto. As the afternoon wore on, the sun shifted lower and toward the southwest, coming up Neon Canyon to reflect off the pool of water below the two natural bridge potholes that at times pour water into this glorious overhang. The reflected sun worked its way across the stone face, until it reached the openings, casting rippling refractions of light on the walls and ceiling of the grotto – truly magical.
Golden Cathedral in Neon Canyon. Canon EOS 5D Mark iii, 16-35mm f/4 @ 16mm, ISO 800, f/16, 2 image HDR (1/25 & 1/100 sec)
After eating my lunch in the shade of a cottonwood, I set to work. I shot primarily with my widest lens (Canon EF 16-35mm f/4) and a tripod. With the lighting conditions slowly shifting, I worked my way toward the side of the pool, and turning my tripod around, I captured the photo to the left. The high contrast between the shadows of the grotto and the bright sky and sun on the trees necessitated using HDR. I captured three, but only used two images (shutter speeds 1/25 sec & 1/100 sec) to create the final image. With the light reflecting onto the ceiling, and the cottonwoods backlit beautifully, it is of my favorite image captures of the year, and I have already sold a couple of prints! (Find it here. Hint: it looks fantastic on aluminum!). Be sure to read my earlier blog post about my Top 40 Photographic Hits of 2017. All images in that gallery are 25% off through Feb 1!
Company From Above
Kelley rappels into the Golden Cathedral
About this time, I heard voice from above, as my new friends had found their way into the slot canyon above. Their timing was excellent, because they were perfectly illuminated by the sun as they rappelled in. At times they each had two distinct shadows, one direct, and one from the sun reflected in the pool. Their ropes made slight ripples in the pool, adding to the magic happening on the walls of the grotto.
Singer/Songwriter Gabriel Kelley is well-lit as he rappels into the Golden Cathedral
It was a real bonus to have these three as action subjects to photograph. I don’t often photograph people in nature, but sometimes it really helps to give a sense of scale to the image. I am not a technical climber, so I can only imagine what it must have been like to see the Golden Cathedral for the first time as you rappel down into it!
Return Trip
The return trip was fairly uneventful. Retracing our steps was fairly easy, even once we were back on the slickrock. I had my phone in case we got off course, but the ridge where the parking lot waited was visible once we got past the river crossings and out of Fence Canyon. The hike up was quite a slog, especially the last mile or so, which included 500′ of switchbacks at the end of a 12.2 mile hike. That was longer, with more elevation gain (1200’+) than some of the descriptions I read. The entire round trip hike took about 8 hours, including a 2 hour stop at the Golden Cathedral. We arrived before the sun set, but it was dark by the time we got back to Escalante, and had a lovely meal of pizza and beer at the Escalante Outfitters Cafe, with great memories and new friends.
This is the first of what I hope will be several Photo Tales descriptions of some of my favorite images. Do you have an image of mine you’d like to see on Photo Tales? Click the Contact Me button above to let me know. I love feedback!
Colin in his booth at an arts festival in Bennington, VT
When I am in my booth at arts festivals, I often get asked “what kind of camera do you shoot with?” The question is often posed by someone looking to buy or upgrade their camera system, looking for advice. When I am selling my work, I would rather talk about the work than my camera gear, so I often give the short answer: “I’m a Canon guy.” In the interest of answering that question more thoroughly, today’s topic is “What’s in my Camera Bag?”
Hint: When you see someone’s work you like, saying “wow, you must have a really nice camera” is about the worst insult possible to a professional photographer. Imagine telling a talented painter “you must use a really great brush”, or an actor that “your costume was so pretty”.
Colin’s Bag of Camera Gear, Canon Style
Cameras:
Canon EOS 5D Mark III (full frame sensor)
Canon EOS 7D (cropped sensor)
Canon G15 (point and shoot)
I upgraded to a full frame Canon 5D Mark III a couple of years ago. That was a major upgrade, because I had to upgrade most of my lenses as well. At the time I owned a mostly Canon EF-S lenses that only worked with my cropped sensor EOS 7D. (and my 30D before that). I have gradually replaced those lenses with EF lenses. (18-55mm EF-S => 24-70mm EF; 75-300mm EF-S => 70-200 EF; 10-22mm EF-S => 16-35mm EF). The 5D is definitely less noisy in the shadows, meaning I can shoot at higher ISOs, and it’s great for low light and night photography ).
I still travel with the 7D, though, because it’s always important to have a backup camera body. (I learned that lesson on my first Utah National Parks trip!). It’s also useful to use the 1.6 cropped sensor to extend the range of my telephoto lenses. I rented a 150-600mm last summer, and on the 7D it was the equivalent of a 240-960mm! That made shooting bears in Glacier and Bison in Yellowstone much safer!
My G15 is a good quality point and shoot, which shoots in RAW. I call it my “beach camera”. It’s the camera I carry with me when I might want to snap a quick shot, but don’t want to be burdened with a big camera bag, or worry about my DSLR gear being stolen. In April I bought a waterproof casing for it, which allowed me to capture my first underwater images while snorkeling in Roatán.
Lenses:
EF 24-70 f/4L IS USM
EF 16-35 f/4L IS USM
EF 70-200 f/4L IS USM
Sigma 24mm f/1.4 DG
The 24-70mm is my favorite landscape lens – it’s what’s usually on my camera, along with a circular polarizer. When I need a little wider angle, the 16-35mm is fantastic as well. With it I can get close to a foreground object, and create a dynamic relationship with middle ground and background subjects. The 70-200mm is a good, solid mid-range telephoto. I find it very useful in mountains or canyon for capturing wide panoramic stitched images of landscapes. When attached to my 7D, it’s the equivalent of a 100-320mm lens, which is also decent for wildlife. A 100-400mm is on my wish list, but that’s a big piece of glass with a big price tag. In the meantime, I rent super telephoto lenses for big trips when I need them.
Ruby Beach Campfire and Milky Way – Canon 5D Mark iii, Sigma 24mm @ 15 Sec f/1.4 ISO 3200
My only prime lens is the Sigma 24mm. This super-fast lens gives me the ability to shoot as wide open as f/2 or even f 1.4, which can mean the difference between capturing just a few stars and a brilliant milky way on a clear night. You will notice that none of my other lenses are faster than f/4. I find that I almost never need to open up wider that f/8 or f 5/6 for most of my landscape shots, and with Canon lenses you typically pay double for the f/2.8 equivalents. If I shot weddings or sporting events this would be crucial, but for me the extra stop of light is not necessary. However, most of my lenses do have the ‘L’ designation, which is Canon’s shorthand for their high quality lenses, with superior optics, weatherproofing and durability.
I am 6’-4” tall, so finding a tripod that matches all my criteria is tough: A) Tall enough when fully extended that I don’t have to stoop to look through the eyepiece. B) When collapsed it will fit in my checked luggage. C) Light enough that I can hike with it. D) Sturdy enough to survive a couple of legs in a rocky stream or a dusty slot canyon. Combined the Obentripod and ball head weigh in at just less than 4 lbs.
Key Filters:
B+W Circular Polarizer MRC (67mm & 77mm)
Tiffen 77mm 812 Warming filter
The Circular polarizer is almost always on my lens, and I count it among my most useful photographic tools. A future blog post will address this important subject. I find the warming filter is useful to combat the sometimes harsh midday light in the red rock country of Utah or Arizona.
Camera Bag:
Colin always follows the rules
Vanguard Up-Rise 48
My camera backpack comfortably fits one DSLR, 3 lenses, filters, batteries, extra memory cards, and space for water and snacks, plus the tripod. Along with a full 3 liter Camelbak full of water, plus snacks, my full pack weighs about 25 pounds including all of my camera gear. It has both a waist strap and chest strap to distribute the weight, and a quick access compartment on the side so that I can quickly access my DSLR and lenses with the bag on one shoulder. For long hikes, I generally only carry 2 lenses to lighten my load.
Camera Buying Advice
I am usually not much help in terms of advice to someone buying their first DSLR. I have been a Canon guy since the film days, and so I am not that versed in the various models of Nikons, Sonys or Fujis. Even Canon comes out with a new DSLR model every few months, from the basic consumer models to prosumer to pro, and there are so many to choose from. The choices really can be daunting. The most important piece of advice about camera gear is this: you can capture better quality photographs with a good piece of glass (lens) and a mediocre camera body, than with a top-of-the-line camera body with a mediocre lens. When planning to buy a new camera, make sure to budget money for at least one good lens.
If you are one of those people, I generally recommend that you visit a local camera store to get your hands on the gear, and get some advice from a professional who knows the equipment. In NYC, we are lucky to have two of the best camera stores in the world (B&H and Adorama). B&H especially is fantastic, as they have a Canon desk (and a Nikon desk, etc.), surrounded with all the options to play with, and pros to help you find your way. Even if you ultimately buy somewhere else, it pays to visit B&H to shop.
Questions?
I am always available to answer any burning questions you may have about one of my blog posts. Either leave me a comment, or see the Contact Us tab at the top of the page. Have an idea for a future Light and Photo Blog topic? I’m all ears!
I grew up in the 70’s listening to Casey Kasem on Saturday afternoons, so I’m a sucker for a good old Top 40. In that vein, in lieu of an end of the year newsletter, today I posted my personal best photos of 2017 in my annual Top 40 Photographic Hits from 2017 Gallery. See details below on my Top 40 Sale!
Once again, my travels took me to some pretty amazing places in 2017: two visits to Moab, Arches & Canyonlands, my first experiment with underwater photography coral reef off Roatán, a huge summer camping trip out west to five national parks, Autumn trips to Vermont and North Carolina, plus a special trip to Antelope Canyon and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
Moab, Arches, Canyonlands & Bears Ears
Snow-covered remnants of an Anasazi tower ruin on the rim of Mule Canyon in the Cedar Mesa area of Bears Ears National Monument (Jan 2017)
As I have every year since 2011, I spent a few weeks in Moab, Utah, exploring the photographer’s paradise that is Southeast Utah. We are really lucky to own vacation rental property in Moab, so that has become a second artistic home for me, typically in the off-season. In January I made a brief foray into the newly formed, and more recently endangered, Bears Ears National Monument. I have only begun to briefly scratch the surface of the thousands of natural and cultural wonders to be found within the boundaries of the Monument, and look forward to exploring more in the years to come.
The president has issued an order abolishing two of our most cherished public land areas: Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments, potentially exposing 2 million acres of unique wilderness, and 10’s of thousands of cultural sites to drilling and mining. I have created a Endangered Monuments Gallery. It highlight some of the beautiful historical and natural resources that are now endangered by losing protection as National Monuments. I promise to donate 25% of all sales from this gallery to Utah Diné Bikéyah or the Natural Resources Defense Council, to support legal challenges in defense of these unique areas.
Underwater and Overwater photography in Roatán, Honduras
A school of blue tang crossing the reef near the Iron Shore off Roatan’s West Bay Beach. (April 2017)
I got to make my first open water dive, and played a bit with some underwater photography on our April trip to West Bay Beach on the island of Roatán, Honduras. Unlike its larger cousin in Australia, the coral reef off Roatán is alive and well, and full of marine life!
I captured this photo from a platform on a cliff above the reef. I was originally shooting wide angled shots of the extensive reef and turquoise waters, but when I looks at screen, I noticed a dark shadow that moved from one photo to the next! Sure enough, there was a school of Blue Tang swimming nearby, so I quickly swapped my lens for a telephoto and captured the shot above. The swirls of refracted light in the water remind me of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Plus it’s a photo of Dorys!
National Parks Grand Tour Camping Trip
Iceberg Notch and the Ptarmigan Wall, Glacier National Park, Montana (June 2017)
This was a trip I had been dreaming about and planning for many years. This summer we packed up our camper-trailer and drove West from NY on a long summer camping trip to the Mountain West. We visited 5 national parks in North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and Colorado, 4 of which were new to me! We first camped at Many Glacier Campground in Glacier National Park, where we had camped in a tent 10 years earlier. This time the mid-June snowpack kept me from hiking to some of the higher elevation places I had hiked to before, like Grinnell Glacier, but the waterfalls were glorious in their Spring melt, and I managed 9 or 10 hikes in 8 days, the last of which was an awesome ranger-led hike to Iceberg Lake, which was just beginning to thaw (right).
Right Place, Fourth Try
Occasionally as a photographer you get lucky – right place, right time. Most of the time it takes careful planning, some amount of luck, and often a certain amount of stubbornness. In our 8 days in Glacier, I visited various parts of Swiftcurrent Lake four different evenings to shoot the sunset. Each of the first three afternoons, the clouds looked to be setting up nicely for a lovely evening, only to have the sun sink behind a think bank of clouds that filled in over the mountains to the West. Finally, on a windy and bitterly cold evening, I parked my tripod on the deck of the Many Glacier Hotel, and captured the image below
Colorful sunset clouds over Grinnell Point and Mt. Gould on Swiftcurrent Lake, in Glacier National Park, Montana. (June 2017)
Magic in Yellowstone
The vivid rainbow colors of the Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming (July, 2017)
While I don’t necessarily recommend visiting Yellowstone for July 4th week, nonetheless I experienced some serious Yellowstone magic on my first visit (the trick was to get up early to beat the crowds!) I have never seen so much wildlife: bison, pronghorn, elk, ospreys, even a lone wolf. The wildlife was outdone only by the natural wonders of Yellowstone: geysers, huge waterfalls with rainbows more predictable than the geysers, and a seemingly infinite variation of thermal water features. My favorite was the Grand Prismatic Spring. Ever changing in colors and moods, it was truly one of the most vibrant things I have witnessed in nature.
Autumn Color in Four States
A colorful collage of Autumn leaves reflected in the ripples of the West Branch of the Little River in Stowe, Vermont. (Oct, 2017)
It was a challenging Autumn for photographers. A weirdly cool stretch in late August followed by a hot September played havoc with the trees. It was not the best fall foliage season. Nonetheless, I was able to capture some interesting fall color shots, on a foggy mountain lake in the Catskills, on the Little River outside Stowe, Vermont, surrounding waterfalls near Highlands, NC, and in Neon Canyon in Grand Staircase- Escalante National Monument in Utah.
Antelope Canyon Swirls of Light and Stone
Twisting, striated layers of red sandstone walls of Upper Antelope Canyon, Navajo Tribal Park. (Oct, 2017)
To be honest, I had been avoiding Antelope Canyon. We’ve all seen the vivid shots in magazines and coffee table books – breathtaking. I had visited other slot canyons, and loved the experience and got some great shot. I had buyers come into my art fair booth to request Antelope Canyon. So why my reticence? I had heard stories and read accounts about how overcrowded and dusty Upper Antelope Canyon could be, with herds of tourists in the narrow canyon. I envisioned huddling over my tripod in the dark, trying to protect my gear from dust, and rushing to get a shot off before the next wave of tourist came around the corner. Well, I am glad I finally went, and I am sure I will visit many more times in the future. Our guide on the photo tour did a fantastic job of keeping the crowds away, and pointing out the changing light, and I came away with several keeper images that I imagine will be nest sellers at future festivals. Only two images made the best of 2017 list, but there easily could be five. Truly a wonder of the natural world. Just, wow!
I could go on and on about each of these 40 photos. I will go into more detail about some of these images and adventures in blog post to come, but let’s get to the exciting part – the sale!
Top 40 Hits of 2017 Sale – all sizes and formats 25% Off!
During the bleak winter period, I always like to share a bit of color to brighten everyone’s day. To make this event even brighter, for the rest of January all of my Best of 2017 images are on sale!Matted photo prints, canvas gallery wraps, and glossy aluminum prints in all sizes are all 25% OFF! This sale only applies to my Top 40 Photographic Hits of 2017Gallery. So come on in and take a look. Even if you don’t buy anything now, let me know which ones you like best, especially on social media – I love feedback!
No codes necessary!
Choose you favorite(s) from the website, click the “Add to Cart” button below the photo, and choose a size and format from the drop down menu.
Sale ends 11:59pm EDT Wed, Jan 31.
Please Leave Me Feedback!
As I try to figure out which of these Best photos of 2017images might be most interesting to my buyers in the coming year, it is crucial that I get some feedback from my fans and fellow photographers. I would love to hear from you, either by leaving comments here on the blog, leaving comments on the website page of your favorite photo, or on my Facebookor Instagram feeds, where you will find most of these images from post over the past year.
I hope you enjoy your trip through my 2017 that was.
People often ask me “how do you capture the water like that?” Perhaps you too have seen waterfall photos with the water flowing like a silky dream, and wondered how the photographer got that look. This post will focus on waterfalls photography, including my tried and true techniques for capturing photos of both serene silky cascades and powerful torrents.
No matter how steady your hand, and how good your camera or lens claims to be at Image Stabilization (IS*), the longest you can possibly expect to hand hold your camera without obvious shake and blur is 1/15th to 1/8th of a second, and probably less. Since moving water in waterfalls requires anywhere from 1/10th of a second up to several seconds to get that silky water effect, you simply must use a tripod (or a flat rock) to steady your camera for those long exposures necessary for waterfalls photography. And since you are shooting on a tripod, make sure to also eliminate camera shake from itchy shutter fingers by using a remote shutter release or internal camera timer, and live view or mirror lockup to remove shutter shudder.
*(VR) Vibration Reduction for you Nikon shooters, (OS) Optical Stabilization for Sigma lenses
Shoot in Manual or Shutter Priority Mode
Digital cameras are smart, but they won’t intuitively know that you want to shoot a long exposure unless you tell it to. Plus, in fully automatic mode, some cameras know you can’t hand-hold a long exposure, so they often won’t even allow you shoot a long exposure unless you are in Aperture Priority (Av), Shutter Priority (Tv) or fully Manual (M) mode. Every camera is different, obviously, so get out your camera manual and play around a bit to get the hang of the different modes. It really is worth spending some time, as moving from Automatic or Program mode to manual is the biggest hill to climb to get from novice to photographer. Going completely manual requires you to read your camera’s light meter to get the appropriate exposure, but using shutter or aperture priority does that work for you.
Keep in mind that for digital cameras there are 3 different variables that each affect the other: Shutter speed, aperture & ISO. For now, shutter priority is a good choice for waterfall photography because the shutter speed makes a huge difference in the look of the final image. If you want to ‘slow down’ the water to make it silky, drop the ISO as low as you can, which in shutter priority mode will make the aperture smaller (the f-stop will increase), giving the photo greater depth of field.
Sidebar: There are lots of advantages to shooting longer exposures: Long exposures => smaller aperture => greater depth of field + lower ISO => less noise/grain + silky water
Experiment with shutter speed
1/200 sec f/6.3 ISO 2500
Now that we’ve mastered how to get cool, silky shots, let’s mix things up, shall we? As we’ve already discussed, the shutter speed can make a huge difference in the look of you image, even if the exposure is exactly the same. Sometimes, especially when the subject is a large waterfall, with a lot of water, I play with shorter exposures to capture the power of a strong falls. Let’s take a closer look at several images of the same falls, taken in succession on the same rainy morning.
Detail at 1/200 sec
Notice in the detail of the first image, which was taken at 1/200th of a second shutter speed. See how the flow of water, which in real-time looks like a continuous stream of water, is in reality a collection of individual water drops. Fascinating, right? At longer shutter speeds, generally at least 1/10th of a second, these drops blend together, giving the illusion of silky, continuous water. I find that my favorite silky waterfalls shots are usually between 1/2 sec and 2 seconds long, and to capture the majesty and power of a big waterfall in full flood, perhaps 1/100 to 1/250 sec.
1/30 Sec f/11 ISO 16001/5 Sec f/16 ISO 1002 sec f/22, ISO 100
I make a point, after I have captured the image of a falls that I really like, to switch things up and shoot 2 or 3 shots with a much faster (or slower) shutter speed, to see what comes of it. Using RAW files, you can always adjust color temperature and exposure after the fact, but there is no magic button in Lightroom or Photoshop to separate out the individual droplets of water (or blur them together), so make sure you capture some variations in the field to give you more options. It all comes down to individual preference. Take the two images of Havasu Falls below, for instance. They have almost identical exposures and composition by keeping the F-Stop high(aperture small), and inversely adjusting the ISO and shutter speeds. I have sold large prints of both, because the buyers had very different (and personal) reactions to the two images. The higher shutter speed may feel more real to one viewer, but some folks really prefer the silkiness of the slower shutter speed.
Havasu Falls – 1/100 sec f/13 ISO 2000Havasu Falls – 1/3 sec f/16 ISO 100
Shoot on a cloudy or rainy day, if possible
This one may seem counter-intuitive. As you can see from the images so far, water coming over a falls gets churned up, and creates highlights that often are much brighter than the surrounding dark wet rocks or leaves – in rafting it’s called whitewater for a reason. If there is sun directly on the falls, the highlights will jump off the right side of your histogram, or if you compensate the exposure for the brightly lit white water highlights, you will lose details in the shadows.
If the day is sunny, or party sunny, then try to time your arrival at a waterfall for when the falls are in shade, with little or no direct sunlight on the highlights. Bounce light can help fill in the shadows the same way a bright overcast day will, and you will still have less contrast. If you are shooting in shutter priority, you may find that you need to use exposure compensation by 1/3rd to a full stop to expose for the shadows, or use Auto Exposure bracketing to insure the right exposure, especially under shifting lighting conditions (think partly cloudy with fast-moving clouds). My default bracketing is three images: 0 and ± 2/3rds of a stop, unless I think the contrast is so high that HDR is necessary.
HDR can be very difficult when shooting waterfalls. Moving objects give HDR software trouble, and when the water changes shape, and/or leaves on nearby trees or flowers move during long exposures, the results can be disappointing.
Use a Circular Polarizer Filter
Like many nature photographers, a circular polarizer is usually on the end of my lens.
I used a circular polarizer filter here to cut down glare on the wet rocks, and to reveal the rocks below the water.
A circular polarizer filter is incredibly useful in and around waterfalls: to take the glare off of wet rocks, dial-up reflections in a pool, or reverse that to reveal the rocks below. When shooting up at a falls from below, it can make blue skies bluer, or give cloudy skies more contrast. It has the pleasant side effect of dropping the amount of light that reaches your lens by a stop or two, making longer exposures, and/or smaller apertures, possible. Sometimes I add an ND filter to the mix if I need to ’slow down’ the water even more.
Using Water as a Composition Element
The usual rules of composition apply: ‘If you see something pretty, throw something in front of it.’
Water Carved Pools and Reflections – 5 Sec. f/16 ISO 100
Often the best way to show water movement is to have a solid foreground or mid-ground object (like boulder or log) that stays solid as the water flows around it. With a large falls, try zooming in enough to have water entering and leaving the frame, which can give a lovely sense of capturing a moment in time and space, for a creek that starts far upstream and continues beyond. Many waterfalls are not just one fall. Try shooting from below, and using a smaller cascade as a foreground for the main event. In the above photo on Upper Buttermilk Creek in Ithaca, NY, I noticed the lovely tree reflection in the puddle, and set up my tripod very close to it, using a very wide-angle lens (Canon 7D with an EF-S 10-22mm) to capture the stillness of the pool along with the curving sweep of the falls. A circular polarizer brought out the reflection.
Waterfalls can make excellent black and white images. There is something timeless about waterfalls photography that works well in a medium that was mastered at the end of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries. It is also a way to solve a problem: waterfalls are generally at their most dramatic in April or May, when Spring rains combine with snow melt to give waterfalls their biggest flow, but when buds are just starting to appear on trees, and flowers are not yet present to add that pop of color. As you can see, they work for winter waterfall shots as well. A future blog will touch on my favorite technique converting color digital images into black and white masterpieces.
Sometimes you get Rainbows
Lower Falls Rainbow in Yellowstone National Park – 108mm 1/125 sec f/18 ISO 400
Most people who visit Yellowstone National Park use apps to try to predict when geysers will erupt, but if the sun is out, rainbows at Lower Falls in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone are even more predictable! Rainbows in waterfalls are generally only formed when there is alot of mist and spray kicked up by a powerful falls, with the angle of light just so (mid morning in July, depending on which viewpoint you shoot from). While a few of the highlights in the water are a bit blown out, this sunny photo worked out because the cliff rocks are also brightly lit (and a lighter, yellow stone). Here the exception proves the rule. I used my trusty circular polarizer to maximize the color intensity in the rainbow.
Conclusion
Thanks for reading my first blog post! The plan is to drop one of these each week. Future blogs will be a mixture of instructional blogs like this one, details of my hiking adventures to some fantastic places, and the day-to-day realities of my photography business.
Please subscribe to the blog at the right, leave me feedback about what you thought of this post, visit my Photo Galleries atLightandPhoto.com, and consider joining one of my upcoming photo workshops, or booking a custom photo tour.
Want to put all of these techniques into practice?
Sign up for my upcoming Weekend Catskills Waterfalls Workshop May 4-6.
Colin’s Bag of Camera Gear, Canon Style
