Some landscape photography books and websites claim that sunset photos are amateurish and should be avoided by true Landscape Photographers as they are plain boring.
Really?
One of the most inspiring views in our planet is an spectacular sunset, or a sunrise if we are early risers. It is no surprise that we all aim up our cameras to remember and to share the view. I’ve seen simulations of Martian sunsets and they look sad and nearly colorless. I will not be a colonist there, trust me. In the Moon, with no atmosphere, they are just black!
So here I am, sharing yesterday’s sunset in my corner of our beautiful planet. I hope you will find it as pretty as it looked to me!
An ultrawide lens (anything below 24 mm in 35 mm equivalent format) can provide a sweeping view of an open landscape, but I also find it important for crowded forest and tree covered environments.
The widest rectilinear lens I own is an 11 mm lens by Irix and it is an excellent lens, but these pictures are made with other lenses. They are landscapes I made while testing an ultra wide 11 mm lens by Venus Optics on my Z7 alongside a 12 mm Samyang fisheye lens. I no longer own either lens but the photos I made that afternoon are good representatives of what can be done with these optics.
A fisheye lens allowed me to frame the pastures with he branches literally above my head. By keeping the horizon near the center of the frame, it remains straight on a fisheye lens image.
One thing I sometimes dislike about ultra wide rectilinear lenses is that elements in the corners of the image can look too stretched, like sucked into the frame. Because of this, I sometimes actually prefer using a fisheye lens: when used carefully, one can can hide the strong deformation we associate with their extreme projection. By keeping the horizon near the center of the frame, it remains straight on a fisheye lens image. In other cases, the image can be reprojected (defished as some people call it) to avoid the curved corners.
Removing just enough of the fisheye distortion can provide a convincing ultra wide image without the light falloff that plagues rectilinear ultra wide angle lenses in the corners. A photo using the rectilinear Laowa 11 mm lens works fine and takes advantage of the stretching of the lower tree branch to give depth to the composition.
You can be the judge now and decide if this approach works as I really wanted to include nearby elements from a restricted point of view: I was literally shooting from a barbed-wire fence in all the photos I show here.
Have you tried using fisheye lenses for landscape photos?
Here are two images made from about the same viewpoint using the 11 mm rectilinear lens and the 12 mm fisheye. They are clearly not identical but both are very usable. Do you like one better than the other?
After seeing, and taking, many snapshots of the water on a sunny, tropical beach it is not difficult to notice that the water always looks frozen and the movement and intensity of the moment is missing.
One of the prettiest beaches on Costa Rica’s west coast is on the inside of a circular bay that gives protection to the swimmers from the open ocean waves and is named Carrillo Beach.
A mountainous, tropical country like Costa Rica is bound to have plenty of waterfalls. This is the second part of my previous post: mountain river, waterfalls and lush tropical vegetation with great weather.
When somebody asks me how to use a new camera my advice is always: set it in one of the auto modes and shoot away for a few days. Let it show you what it can do. Enjoy it.
Going through old slide film scans, or even the original slides is always a rediscovering adventure. Ektachrome’s grain and Velvia’s contrast look very different from today’s clean 36 MP images… Continue reading Slide Film Years, Revisited→
I wish you all the best in this New Year with this image of the Supermoon I made on January 1st, and a little story about making the image. Continue reading High Mountain Supermoon→
I live in the Pacific Rim of Fire so it is no surprise that eventually ash is going to fall from the sky, like it has been on and off for the last two years: small amounts luckily. This has consequences for photography of course. Continue reading The volcano and indoor photos→
Writings about the art and technique of photography. Mostly with Nikon and Olympus equipment.
eduardo libby: photography blog 