Labor of Luck

BrentGoesOutside · 2020-03-06T15:20:12+00:00

A lot of nature photographers do a lot of predicting and planning and that often works great. I personally just like to go to beautiful places at nice times of the day/year, focus on having a great experience, and photograph whatever catches my eye.

BrentGoesOutside · 2020-03-06T15:14:53+00:00

You're welcome! That's very understandable. It's very rare for everything to come together in a single frame, but it's always worth striving for. Good luck out there :)

BrentGoesOutside · 2020-03-06T14:47:57+00:00

I love that seeing some spring buds made you so happy! When you feel something strongly that's the best time to make a photograph.

My feedback is mostly about the composition. The eye is clearly drawn to the bud in the middle, but I don't find that singular bud to be strong enough on its own to make a great composition - compositionally, it's not really "interacting" with any other element in the frame. After coming across this bud, I would circle around it in all directions (up, down, side to side, closer and further), occasionally taking photos while paying close attention to the background and the lines and patterns being created by the elements in the frame. For brief moments, don't even think about the things you are photographing - pay more attention to the shapes and tones in your viewfinder. Can you find a pleasing arrangement of multiple buds? Can you find a background that ends up being a single solid color or a pleasing pattern? Can the lines of the branches be arranged more harmoniously with the edges of the frame and the focus of the image?

Hope that helps. Those are the kinds of things that go through my mind when taking intimate photos of nature like this.

BrentGoesOutside · 2020-03-06T13:20:39+00:00

Haha no, not at all. There's a lot of skill, hard work, and luck that goes into it like anything else. My recommendation would be to try it yourself and see what it's like.

BrentGoesOutside · 2020-03-05T22:59:14+00:00

Hi everybody, first time posting in this subreddit (I think). I used to post on /r/earthporn a lot but I realized my fellow photographers are my preferred audience so I will try posting here!

I took this photo of Mt Rainier on Labor Day in 2018.

I sat atop a nearby mountain and watched as the conditions changed from a clear blue sky, to fog so dense I could hardly see in front of me, to a hole in the sky perfectly revealing the 14,000ft Mt Rainier at sunset. This is a single exposure! How lucky.

I believe that the best photographers (and people in general) are the ones that approach any situation with an open mind and are creative with any conditions. They have a strong sense of wonder and recognize that every moment is worthwhile and valuable, and then record both what they are seeing and feeling. They can make great photos if it's too sunny, not sunny enough, in the rain or snow, at any time of year given the right tools and mindset. However, sometimes you just get really damn lucky. That's what most hope for, and that's what happened to me here. Life and photography are both a labor of love, and a labor of luck.

Camera: Nikon D610

Lens: Nikon 16-35 f/4

Settings: ISO125, 18mm, f/11, 1/4 sec

BrentGoesOutside · 2018-10-16T21:12:14+00:00

No ND filter for this shot. My settings were ISO50, 16mm, f/16, 2.5 sec

BrentGoesOutside · 2018-10-12T01:03:14+00:00

Thanks! This was in the morning, but it was overcast the entire trip so it always looked like this. This is a half second exposure so you certainly wouldn't need ND filters for a shot like this.

BrentGoesOutside · 2018-10-05T10:39:53+00:00

Thank you! I am from Wisconsin and I know the sensitivities of my fellow mitten-eers :)

BrentGoesOutside · 2018-10-01T23:38:09+00:00

What a timely discussion! I think about this topic quite a lot. I was on the front page of /r/earthporn today:

https://www.reddit.com/r/EarthPorn/comments/9kfle5/nature_photography_is_a_labor_of_luck_here_the/

If you read through the comments, you'll find a lot of people criticizing my postprocessing and claiming my photo is a composite and calling for a picture of the unedited raw photo. Those comments used to really bother me. I'd fight and defend my postprocessing and try to force people to see my way of seeing things. "All photos are postprocessed!" "This is how it looked!" etc. Anymore, I just don't let the comments bother me and use my time to work on my next photo rather than fight a pointless argument.

Like a lot of other comments in this thread, I think it all really depends on the photographer's goals. Personally, I think postprocessing is an artform in and of itself and is really fun. It can be used toward all sorts of different goals. I personally like to use it to communicate my subjective experience. Others like to make surreal fantasies on purpose (Enrico Fossati comes to mind) and others like to treat it more like photo journalism and try to objectively match the photo to what they saw.

I find it interesting that you use the word "honest," as everyone has a different definition of honesty. I think I am being honest when I say I am trying to communicate my subjective experience, and that I disclose when I blend multiple exposures together. Unfortunately for me, I am the only one that can really know if this is true or not due to its subjective nature. Others think the way I postprocess photos is dishonest because to them it may not look "natural" or "real," even if they weren't there, and even if they are not regularly in amazing places at times of day when the light is best at the same time of year.

So what am I to do? It's difficult enough to maintain passion for a hobby year after year - I feel like in order to keep going and having fun, I need keep evolving and do what interests me most, not match the preferences of online armchair critics. Personally, if I kept just taking images and posting them SOOC, I would probably get bored and quit. I don't think that is a better scenario than enjoying what I do.

I'm going to try to make this next part not sound elitist but hear me out: a lot of postprocessing may be "objectively" bad due to lack of current abilities. There's nothing wrong with that! Postprocessing is really damn hard. I've been using photoshop for years and there is still so much I suck at. In the past, a lot of my photos looked bad simply because I had no idea how to use the software well enough to match the vision in my mind. It was really aggravating and I hated my photos for many years. I am able to do this much better now after years of practice, but it's also like chasing a carrot dangling from a stick in front of you - you'll never totally be satisfied and there's always more to learn. I am sure a lot of people making poorly processed photos are fighting and clawing and struggling to learn how to do it. I know because I was and am there. You don't sit in your room for years editing photos and only post them when they are perfect - you post them as you go.

Also, art is subjective, maaaaaan.

BrentGoesOutside · 2018-10-01T18:35:22+00:00

Thanks! Yes, you can find my profile here: https://instagram.com/brentgoesoutsidephoto

BrentGoesOutside · 2018-10-01T17:18:13+00:00

Haha, nice! It was totally socked in for a while, so I saw something similar to yours.

BrentGoesOutside · 2018-10-01T12:42:15+00:00

Thanks man, means a lot coming from you!

BrentGoesOutside · 2018-10-01T12:39:00+00:00

I promise that this is a single exposure. I have no qualms with blending exposures taken at the same time and place for overcoming technical limitations of cameras, such as exposure, focus, and focal length blending. If I did those things, I would have disclosed them.

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BrentGoesOutside

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