The Art, Science, and Craft of Great Landscape Photography Glenn Randall (www.glennrandall.com) Project Editor: Maggie Yates Copyeditor: Maggie Yates Layout: Hespenheide Design Cover Design: Helmut Kraus Printed in China ISBN 978-1-937538-47-7 1st Edition 2015 © 2015 Glenn Randall Rocky Nook, Inc. 802 East Cota St., 3rd Floor Santa Barbara, CA 93103 www.rockynook.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Randall, Glenn. The art, science, and craft of great landscape photography / Glenn Randall. – 1st edition. pages cm ISBN 978-1-937538-47-7 (softcover : alk. paper) I. Title. TR660.R365 2014 770.92--dc23 2014043876 All rights reserved. No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher. 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This book is dedicated to my parents, who first introduced me to the wilderness, to my wife Cora, who always inspires me to do my best, and to Emily and Audrey, our daughters, in hopes that their generation will continue to value, protect, and enjoy our precious wild lands. Table of Contents Acknowledgments ....................................................................ix Foreword ...............................................................................x Introduction ...........................................................................1 Chapter 1 Landscape Photography Looks So Easy ..........................................11 Viewing a Print vs. Viewing Reality .....................................................12 Chapter 2 In Search of Extraordinary Landscapes ..........................................23 Chapter 3 Visualization .....................................................................39 Using a Map to Help Visualize Photographs ..............................................41 Shooting Moonset at Sunrise ..........................................................47 Chapter 4 The Art and Science of Light .....................................................59 Lighting Fundamentals ...............................................................61 Blue Skies and Red Sunsets ............................................................64 White Clouds and White Haze .........................................................71 Rainbows ...........................................................................74 Rainbow Position Chart ...............................................................79 Rainbows and Polarizers ..............................................................82 The Rarest Light of All ................................................................84 Chapter 5 The Art and Science of Composing Compelling Images ........................91 The Essentials of Graphic Design .......................................................95 Balance and Depth ...................................................................99 Focus Stacking ......................................................................106 Color ..............................................................................108 Chapter 6 The Perfect Exposure ............................................................115 How Light Meters Work ..............................................................115 Exposure Danger Zones ..............................................................116 Histograms .........................................................................120 The Four Basic Exposure Strategies ....................................................123 The PhD Strategy ....................................................................124 The Limiting Factor Exposure Strategy .................................................124 The Rembrandt Solution .............................................................126 Which Split ND Do You Need? ........................................................130 HDR ...............................................................................132 The Universal Exposure Strategy ......................................................133 vi Chapter 7 Digital Capture and Processing of High-Contrast Scenes ......................137 Countershading .....................................................................138 How our Visual System Processes High-Contrast Scenes ..................................141 Capturing Rembrandt Solution Images in the Field ......................................143 Merging the Images in Photoshop .....................................................146 Smart Objects and the Masks Panel ....................................................148 Final Thoughts on the Rembrandt Solution .............................................151 HDR: Great Potential, Many Pitfalls ....................................................152 Setting up an HDR Image .............................................................155 Tone-Mapping in Lightroom ..........................................................157 Keeping it Real with HDR .............................................................159 Final Thoughts on Realism and HDR ...................................................165 Chapter 8 Take a Walk on the Wide Side ...................................................167 Setting up a Single-Row Panorama ....................................................167 Finding the Nodal Point ..............................................................170 Camera Settings for Single-Row Panoramas ............................................172 Stitching Panoramas .................................................................173 Shooting and Processing High-Contrast Panoramas ......................................173 Multi-Row Panoramas ...............................................................177 Chapter 9 The Landscape at Night .........................................................185 Photographing the Milky Way .........................................................185 Depth of Field for Selected Lenses Focused at Infinity ....................................186 Focusing and Composing at Night .....................................................187 Maximum Shutter Speed Chart .......................................................190 Holding Detail in the Land ............................................................190 Processing Milky Way Images .........................................................194 Shooting Milky Way Panoramas .......................................................196 Photographing Star Trails .............................................................200 Removing Jet Trails ..................................................................203 Closing the Gaps ....................................................................204 Photographing the Aurora ............................................................205 Can Night Photographs be Authentic? ..................................................210 Chapter 10 The Psychology of the Compelling Landscape .................................215 Landscape Photography and Evolution .................................................217 On Culture and Creativity ............................................................225 Index .................................................................................228 vii Acknowledgments The roots of this book go back many years, and so there are many people to thank. My parents deserve thanks for the patience and love they showed when they took my sister and me camping, then hiking, and eventually backpacking in the wilds of California. My wife, Cora, and our children, Emily and Audrey, deserve thanks for tolerating the long absences that a career as a landscape photographer requires. I’d like to thank the many photographers whose work inspired me during my photographic journey, including Galen Rowell, David Muench, Jack Dykinga, and Tom Till. And I’d like to thank the staff at Rocky Nook for their painstaking efforts to make this book as good as it could be. ◀ Stormy sunset over Longs Peak from the Ute Trail, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado ix Foreword I am in love with photography books. They are the ultimate showcase for a photographer’s words and images, and one of the most powerful and impor- tant legacies that we leave behind as image-makers. As a photographer, I am inspired by looking at photography books. As an educator, I learn about photography by reading books on the topic. I have surrounded myself with photography books on every conceivable subject—they are one of my few indulgences. For six years in the 1980s, I ran a photo bookstore in Maine. Now, as direc- tor of Santa Fe Photographic Workshops, I receive photo books on a weekly basis as gifts, for review, to be considered for our campus bookstore, or from photographers who want to teach for us. Given my passion for photography books, I was delighted to receive an advance copy of Glenn Randall’s new book, The Art, Science, and Craft of Great Landscape Photography. Glenn is one of our most popular instructors at the Workshops (and a friend), so I began pouring over his book as soon as it arrived. Immediately I realized that the book posed a pleasant dilemma for me. Over the years of collecting photography books, I have found that they fall into three categories—books on the technical aspects of the medium, books on the creative and aesthetic side of photography, and books filled with images (monographs). All three categories are well represented in my ever- growing library. Structured person that I am, all of my books are meticulously organized by category and subject matter so I can easily find whatever I am looking for. All was well in my world of photography books until Glenn’s new book threw me for a loop. The Art, Science, and Craft of Great Landscape Photography is a wonderful collection of Glenn’s stunning landscape images, but it is also brimming with his advice on how to craft stronger images, along with clear explanations of key photo-related topics in geography, atmospheric optics, vision, and psychology. The scientific information is always coupled with tips on how to put that information to practical use in the pursuit of great images. The book also contains Glenn’s musings on the creative and aesthetic sensibilities we need as artistic beings to create compelling state- ments. So should Glenn’s book go in the monograph category or with the technical manuals? Perhaps it should go into the creative category instead? I was stumped. Where should I put it? On what shelf and in which cat- egory did it belong? I realized that if I didn’t put this beautiful book on the x right shelf I might never find it again. A moment of panic ensued, and then I relaxed. The Art, Science, and Craft of Great Landscape Photography falls into all three of my categories, so it ended up on my coffee table where I can find it easily regardless of my photographic mood. Thanks, Glenn, for throwing my world of photography books completely off kilter. I suggest you read this book because it is beautiful, informative, and inspi- rational. Let me know if you figure out what category to place it in. Reid Callanan Director, Santa Fe Photographic Workshops, January 2015 ◀ Indian paintbrush and Peak Two at sunset, Grenadier Range, Weminuche Wilderness, Colorado xi Chapter Foreword xii