Woodland wildflowers of the early spring are always a welcome sign to me and a subject that I l love to photograph. Although there are some challenges to photographing wildflowers, the composition possibilities are endless   and you’ll never run out of ways to explore this amazing display.

One of the challenges you’ll encounter when photographing really small wildflowers up close is the extremely thin depth of field, or the range of the photograph that’s actually in sharp focus. And at the same time you usually want to simplify the background so that its not too much of a distraction. You can use a focus stacking strategy which requires fairly precise work in the field and then blend the images together in your digital darkroom. I usually prefer to keep it simple and make the most of a single exposure.

In the image above, I really liked the stark white of the Rue Anemone set against the soft green colors in the background. I also liked the way to flowers seemed to flow which keeps the eye moving. Each individual blossom seemed to be pointed in a slightly different direction which makes the grouping less static.  I chose to place the flower grouping at the bottom to ground the image and also leave some room to let the eye wander in the dappled light of the soft green background. The slight difference in tones adds some visual interest and encourages the eye to explore.

Here’s a couple of quick tips to remember when photographing woodland wildflowers:

1. Pay attention to the background and look for elements that might be distracting
2. Also look at the edges of the frame for distracting elements
3. Consider your depth of field carefully and use Live View and Depth of Field Preview on your camera if you have it
4. Carefully pay attention to the angle of your sensor plane in relationship to the subject, minor adjustments make a big difference
5.  Get creative with very limited depth of field and isolate different subjects

Image Details:

Canon 5D Mk II
TS-E 90mm lens
f/8 at 1/50 of a second, ISO 100

Location:

Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Cover Hardwood Nature Trail

Although probably not the most well known or recognizable waterfall in Tennessee, Machine Falls has a special beauty all its own. The centerpiece of Short Springs State Natural Area, Machine Falls is perhaps most scenic in the early spring after heavy rains and the intense green of the season to frame the falls. It’s located in the southern part of Middle Tennessee and is a short 15 minute hike from the trail head. It may be one of world’s easiest trail heads to find as you park under a giant water tower with the name “Short Springs” on it.

Hiking in at sunrise during a rain shower in 45F degree weather pretty much eliminated all possibility of seeing anyone else. I enjoyed the short walk through the forest before the trail started to wind downhill with the loud rush of the stream and waterfall pulling me closer. There’s not much of a trail once you arrive at the stream so a little bit of creek wading was necessary to reach the falls. But the cold and wet are quickly forgotten when you arrive at the base of the falls and take in the incredible scene.

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Macs: For Safari users, once the image appears in your browser, right click (or control+click) with your mouse and choose ” use image as desktop”.

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A morning at Cades Cove usually turns out to be a morning well spent. No matter how many times I’ve visited, each morning turns out to be different, offering something interesting to photograph. The Cove takes you back in time a little bit, makes you think about what life might have been like 100-150 years ago. And there’s always something magical happening. That’ really what I like to experience and photograph. The nice views are looking South across the valley floor to the distance mountain ridges. The key is to set up quickly and be ready for the low angular sidelight of sunrise to make an appearance–and an impression.

In the image above I wanted to show the bright orange grasses that were lit by the low sunrise light with some interesting clouds hanging above the mountain ridges. I think the orange and blue color contrast is pleasing and the trail of grasses starting with the foreground group catches your eye and encourages you to explore deeper into the scene. Although the Cades Cove signature fog did not show up, it was nice to include some early spring color in the trees below the mountain ridge.

Image capture details

Canon 5D Mark II
TS-E 24mm lens
1/15 sec. at f/16
3 image stitch processed in LR and PS

How you decide to crop an image is a definite artistic choice, one that you make in the field and certainly one that you can make in the digital dark room. And with the Virtual Copy feature in Lightroom you can make different crops and see what works best without consuming a ton of hard drive space, at least until you process it to a master file in Photoshop and save it—if that’s your workflow. I’m often surprised that I like a really different crop of an image when returning to the image after the initial processing work. There’s definitely something to be said for revisiting images 6 months or later down the road.

Here’s a short check list to ask yourself when cropping an image:

1. What’s the subject of the image and is there a crop that might work best for the subject?

2. Is there potential for this image to be part of a project or folio with other images that have a similar crop?

3. How does the visual mass of the main subject change with different crops?

4. Is there a way to keep the viewer’s eye moving through the scene with a different crop?

5. How does a different crop affect the relationship between the main visual elements?

Maybe there are other items to add to your checklist or maybe you prefer to crop by feel and ask questions later! Either way, it’s great fun to experiment with different crops before rushing on to process the next image in the folder.

In comparing this scene from Roaring Fork, it’s easy to see how the two different crops change the image and viewing experience quite a bit. In the panoramic image, the large boulder on the left is really prominent and it’s a large triangle that’s actually pointing toward the next boulder upstream and helps get the eye moving through the scene. The eye then might circle back down to the bright cascade and then move back upstream to explore the boulder that’s far away. Either way the eye moves in a circle or a zig zag but does not exit the frame or get stuck in one spot. The panoramic crop really helps communicate the scene as a whole, the cascade and the surrounding signs of early spring.

The second crop tends to focus the eye much more on the bright cascade and the boulder on the left becomes much less prominent. The image becomes much more about light than the other elements of the wider scene. A little stronger, more bold image with the cascade having much more visual mass in relation to the rest of the scene.

Original exposure was a 3 image stitch with the TS 24mm lens f/3.5

1.6 sec at f/11

What  are your thoughts on cropping? What’s your work flow in the field or digital dark room?

Springtime in the mountains is always something I look forward to. The sense of anticipation of spring really begins to build and I can’t get to the Smokies quite fast enough! Part of the excitement is the unknown. Although I’ve been to the Smokies every spring for many years, each visit reveals something new. There is the risk I suppose of returning to the same place over and over and simply photographing the same subjects in the same way. That’s certainly a possibility. But I tend to take the opposite view. I don’t think you can really know and photograph a location deeply unless you’re there through the seasons and over the course of several years to experience the moods and  subtle qualities that define a place.

This year is a great example. Spring was 7-10 days later than normal. It’s really unusual to see the Trillium at peak and the Redbuds on display at the same time. Normally by mid April the Redbuds are long gone and most the the Trillium are past their peak. I think too that once you’ve photographed some of your favorite subjects and are happy with the images you’re more free to explore other subjects that you’ve passed by or overlooked before. Photographing the landscape is often about balance. Balance in your composition and balance in your decision to photograph the familiar or explore something new. I’m glad that this spring I was able to visit the familiar and explore some new subjects.

Check out my eBook on the Great Smoky Mountains

Ian Plant and the crew at the Dreamscapes blog are a group of talented photographers who also happen to be great writers that infuse quite a bit of humor into their posts. They produce must-read material for the landscape photographer in particular. Visual Flow is an ebook by Ian Plant and George Stocking that needed to be written for a long time. If there is a better or more comprehensive source solely dedicated to composition for landscape photography, I haven’t seen it.

Composition is a big topic and I agree with Ian that it is the most challenging aspect of landscape photography to master and easily the most important. So if you’re looking to add more compositional tools to your tool box you’ll absolutely benefit from adding Visual Flow to your ebook library. No matter what your level of mastery might be I believe that you can always be informed by other ideas and approaches. I’ve followed the work of Ian and George and have appreciated their skill with composition and knew Visual Flow would be an important read.

Photography is ultimately a two dimension artistic medium so you have to understand the elements of 2-D design as a starting point. And once you understand what those elements are, you then have to figure out how to arrange those elements in a way to express what you want to say creatively. This is composition. And it’s not easy to do it well. Ian does a great job of walking you though the elements of design and deconstructing images to demonstrate each of these tools. One of the key steps in advancing your composition is to see the landscape as design elements rather than it’s literal elements. Ian calls this learning to think in the abstract and it’s a wonderful place to begin improving your composition.

George Stocking is a master at composing the landscape photograph and the more you understand about composition the more you begin to appreciate the well composed images of the talented photographic artist. It’s easy to see George’s influence on Ian’s work and I think their collaboration is one of main strengths of Visual Flow. Now, you won’t become a master at composition overnight, this actually takes years. But, you can speed up your learning curve by working through the image design principles and strategies that are demonstrated throughout Visual Flow. Highly recommend Visual Flow when you’re ready to take your landscape composition to the next level.

The hike to the Subway in Zion National Park is quite an adventure. But it’s the beauty along the way that’s equally as stunning as the destination.

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Macs: For Safari users, once the image appears in your browser, right click (or control+click) with your mouse and choose ” use image as desktop”.

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PC’s: Once the image appears in your browser, right click and choose “set image as background”

Enjoy!

Valley of Fire is a magical place of color and stone that captivates the imagination. The low late afternoon side light created some cool conditions to photograph the stone and sky. Wonderful place to explore and photograph.

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Macs: For Safari users, once the image appears in your browser, right click (or control+click) with your mouse and choose ” use image as desktop”.

If you’re using Chrome you’ll need to right click the image and save it to your desktop. From there go into your system preferences under the Apple menu and select Desktop and Screensaver. Click the plus mark on the lower left and select your new wallpaper from the desktop!

PC’s: Once the image appears in your browser, right click and choose “set image as background”

Enjoy!

The forecast was not good. Any time a winter storm with a name is approaching, look out! But after making the late night drive from Zion to Bryce we were hoping for just a brief glimpse at sunrise. I was hiking and photographing with good friend and business partner Ken Koskela. We had originally planned to hike the Narrows and move on to Bryce and eventually hike Coyote Gulch in the Grand Staircase. Well, rain and winter storm warnings changed those plans for us but we were still hopeful for some clouds to clear at sunrise before heading back down to Zion and eventually Valley of Fire where the storm would not be too much of an issue. The Narrows and Coyote Gulch would have to wait for another day. And that’s ok, it’s always good to look forward to something new to explore on the return trip.

Well, we woke up about an hour before sunrise and it was not raining super hard but the rain was a soaking rain and the clouds were heavy. And it was maybe 35F so there was some sleet and snow in the mix. Then we heard the forecast for a winter storm warning for southern Utah and that cemented the decision to head back down. Although we would have loved to photographed Bryce in the snow, we didn’t have quite enough time to wait out a storm until the roads could be cleared and safe for driving. So, it was all or nothing for sunrise and we decided to shoot Sunset Point which provides lots of interesting perspectives to photograph the canyon. And so it did not look good up until 10 minutes before sunrise. But suddenly the clouds miraculously broke and we headed down the trail to get set up and take some shots as long as the light would hold. Unbelievably, we had about 30 minutes to shoot which was amazing given the forecast and conditions. The light in Bryce is unique and the hoodoos really glow adding to the surreal nature of the moment. We were super excited about the open window we had and made the most of it. The lesson for us at least was to give it a shot. You never know what might develop in spite of the forecast. Weather moving in or out is always dramatic and if you can shoot it safely with a healthy dose of optimism, you might just get something interesting.

Optimism. There are a lot of tools in the gear bag of a landscape photographer but maybe none more important than optimism. I’d been to Zion several times and always wanted to photograph the Watchman in some cool light. As is often the case, the skies turn out to be blank and nothing really interesting happens. But this day was a little different. I’d been up early photographing the sunrise at Bryce with my good buddy Ken Koskela. We had a brief window to shoot Bryce and were feeling a little lucky already. And so we’d driven back down to Zion and had  fun day of hiking and shooting in the rain, sleet and snow. Yep, that’s right, the postal service has nothing on the landscape photographer.

We really wanted to photograph the Watchman at sunset since the last light falls on the face of the canyon walls and we’d struck out on all our previous attempts. Sunset was around 5:30 pm local and against our better judgment we pulled up to a spot that we’d found earlier and could make the short hike if the rain decided to stop. Things didn’t look good at all as the rain was coming down or rather going sideways and the clouds were thick, really thick. And just when we thought it might be time to turn around and get some dinner, the rain stopped. Now it’s 5:15 so we hustled down the slick trail and set up in case the light decided to appear between the rain clouds. And it did. The show was amazing. We watched in sort of an awed silence and the intense colors of last light made their way up the canyon walls of the Watchman. And if that wasn’t enough clouds floated by just above the Watchman without obscuring the distinct lines of the canyon profile. Couldn’t believe it and still can’t. The light maybe lasted 10 minutes at the most. Sometimes optimism just makes all the difference. It sure did that night.