Landscape photography from the field

Bracketing

Mist, Gorges, and Bracketing in the Dark: Lessons from a Perfect Day at Caminito del Rey
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Mist, Gorges, and Bracketing in the Dark: Lessons from a Perfect Day at Caminito del Rey

There are mornings when the land just gives you everything. The mist sits in the valleys like it was placed there. The light comes up soft and diffuse. You round a corner and your stomach drops in the best possible way. Most photographers spend years chasing that kind of morning. I’ve had a handful of them in twenty years of doing this professionally, and every single time, what separated a good take-home from a great one was preparation made in the dark before the light arrived.

Fishing for Light: Field Techniques from a Fiordland Sunrise (William Patino)
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Fishing for Light: Field Techniques from a Fiordland Sunrise (William Patino)

There’s a version of this job that looks glamorous from the outside. Golden hour, dramatic peaks, camera pointed at something magnificent. What that picture leaves out is the morning you drove three hours in the dark, hiked another ninety minutes in the cold, and watched a wall of grey cloud swallow every last bit of light before sunrise even began. I’ve had more of those mornings than I can count. Twenty years in, I still have them regularly.

Block the Sun With Your Finger: A Dead-Simple Trick for Cleaner Sunset Exposures
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Block the Sun With Your Finger: A Dead-Simple Trick for Cleaner Sunset Exposures

Shooting directly into the sun is one of those things I keep telling myself I’ll figure out properly, and then I get to the location, the light starts doing something extraordinary, and I just start firing frames and hope for the best. After twenty years of this, I have better instincts than I used to, but the two core problems never go away: the sky is always brighter than the foreground, and pointing your lens at the sun is an invitation for flare that can quietly destroy an otherwise strong image.