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?
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.
Thanks to a partial lifting of our restrictions, and a couple days of good weather, we got the chance of visiting Waterfall Gardens, a private park and Zoo in the Costa Rican mountains. We went there on a weekday and I knew we would find almost nobody there.
I have been honored to have a Black and White Photography Exhibition at the prestigious Calderón Guardia Museum in Costa Rica. Opening day on February 26 drew a large crowd of nice people and here are some snapshots from that night. Continue reading My Photo Exhibition in Costa Rica!→
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.
Wildlife photos inside the Rain Forest most of the time means subject in deep shadow, background overexposed… well, sometimes the background is in deep shadow too! Continue reading Rainforest Photos and the Nikon Z7→
Can you imagine a volcanic explosion so violent that creates a crater nearly 7 miles wide, a 700 ft. high tsunami that obliterates the Bronze Age Minoan Empire, and its remaining Caldera eventually becomes the most spectacular tourist destination of the Greek Islands? Continue reading Santorini Album→
Writings about the art and technique of photography. Mostly with Nikon and Olympus equipment.
eduardo libby: photography blog 