A Little Humanity in the Wild

When we think of landscape and nature photography, we tend to think of those pristine wilderness views, untrammeled and void of people. Because people just ain't natural. Right?

I would beg to differ. People in nature are perfectly natural and should be included for several reasons.

First, including people in your landscape images helps to tell the story. Let's face it. You bring a camera along on your excursions so you can later share the experiences with friends and family. Probably the same people you're out having fun with. You can gather around over wine or beer and laugh, discuss and enjoy the excursion all over again. Having your friends and family in the images rounds out the goofy and the serious experiences.

A person or people in a scene, gives the viewer a sense of scale. You're high on a hillside and want to take an image of the view with the valley below. But it just doesn't seem as grand, does it? get a friend in the photo and if you don't have a friend, put your camera on something steady (a tripod if you have one) and pose yourself. Immediately we see the scale of the view. We all know the average size of a human. Add them to the scene and all of a sudden we know how big that hill you're on really is.

You can add context to your image by including people. Along these same lines is that people in nature photos help to add a little context to the scene. In the image above, the viewer can deduce that there was a hike to the top of the hill in the winter - it must have been a strenuous hike (look how far down the river is) and the hiker decided try her hand with some yoga poses to stretch out her muscles.

Looking for a point of interest or focus to your image, people help to do that. People in your images can add a balancing point to an expanse either by being the subject of the image with an amazing or repetitious background or by helping point the viewer to the subject. The above image would have been ok with the view of the river, but adding the hiker, she now becomes the subject against a hazy background.

In the end, adding people to your nature scenes helps make that scene relatable to the viewer. We all love to look at beautiful images of fantastical places, but add people there and we can all of a sudden see ourselves in those places too - without ever being there or even really needing to be there.

So next time you head out with your camera for some fun with your friends and family, make sure you snag a couple of images with them to help tell the story, add perspective and contest, and really just because they are great people and deserve to be your subject.

A Foray Into Astral Photography

It's been something I've planned to do so many times, stay up to photograph the stars in the night sky - hopefully in a picturesque setting. The only problem has been that all too often my bed is too warm and cozy as opposed to the cold night air.

Not only that, you see, my bed is a very jealous bed and once it has be wrapped in its warm and cozy embrace it is unwilling to release me to the chill of night - even if it's for a little astral photography.

But on a recent trip to Cama Beach, I was determined to try my hand at some night time photography. The setting would be perfect - cabins lined along the beach each with a warm glow emanating from the windows. 

On top of all that, night was somewhat early right before the time change so I could stay up, dress warmly and not have to argue with the warm comforts of my bed.

The front cabin here is mine. I debated as I set up the composition if I wanted to shut the door tightly. In the end, I rather liked the door cracked open - invitingly. Plus it helped break up the dark corner of the cabin.

For setting up the image, I knew from watching a few on-line classes and reading articles, that I didn't want the exposure to be too long (longer that 20 seconds and the stars could elongate too much).So I used 800 ISO (after several images of experimenting with higher ISO and seeing the windows get blown out by highlights) and an aperture of f8 to keep my shutter speed at 20 seconds. 

Focus stayed on my cabin there in the front and I was far enough away that with the hyperfocal distance of the lens, the stars stayed in distant focus. And really, keeping the shutter speed short is supposed to help keep those little buggers from getting too fuzzy.

All in all, it was a fun excursion into a new skill, one I hope I can convince my bed to allow me to keep working on. Hopefully, I'll be able to create the oh so pretty images like I see on-line so often.

And I'm always willing for a little company while out there if you're able to convince your own bed to let you join me.