Is Landscape Photography Political?

Short answer from my hero, Robin Morgan: "There is no atom that is not political."
Longer answer: when the planet is in danger from climate change, and when the post powerful man on earth can detonate nuclear winter, of course it is. Especially when we have overwhelming evidence that that man has the emotional maturity of a 12 year old boy.
How can we care about our beautiful places, lit by the best of special light, without concern that they, and we, are in grave danger?
Is there anything we can do, living in a "democracy" where only some votes count?
Is it enough to photograph the special places?

Tablet Challenges

I've used a pen tablet by Wacom for years for my photo processing. It makes everything more precise. My old tablet lacked features of the current models, so I got a new Intuous Pro model for Christmas.
It seemed to work as I gradually learned the features and customizable keys, but I was not convinced that the pen pressure sensitivity was working, supposedly a default characteristic when using Photoshop. Then, one day, the lights defining the perimeters and keys no longer stayed on.
A call to Wacom was an exercise in frustration. While the tech support representative agreed that something wasn't right, she had no idea how to sort it out or solve it. Send it in for repair, she said, a feat made more difficult by the fact that I never got the follow-up email with instructions to do so. For a product that was malfunctioning 2 weeks after being unboxed, I could only wish there were another maker of tablets that had any credibility.
Amazon seemed the easiest route to return, but I decided to give a software approach another look. I uninstalled and re-installed the same current driver. It's working properly now, and I'll give it another couple of weeks to prove itself functional. Failing that, it's back to Amazon and a quest to find another company with real support. Does such a thing exist?

                                                              Night Photography

My latest effort is to work on night photography. Everyone seems to have a slightly different take on the best practices, with some common themes.
1. Darkness is essential. In general, this may take a bit longer than one would hope. If you're after stars, wait until it's really dark.
2. Some daytime work is also essential. It's just too hard to come upon a good plan when the world is pitch-black. Plan the photo in the day. Make the photo in the night.
3. Care and deliberation are essential. Recently, I did the first 2 photos of the night sky with my lens cap on. That didn't work so well. Take time setting up. This involves knowing the location ahead of time, bringing a headlamp, going slowly (it's dark).
4. Composition is just as important at night as in the day. This goes back to the daytime work and the planning. Think foreground.
5. Equipment:
1. tripod with good head. My preferred tripod is currently a Feisol carbon fiber. I recently upgraded by ballhead to a RRS BH-55, and I couldn't be more pleased with the ease of use and steadiness.
2. camera that has decent high ISO results. I'm currently using a Nikon D800E.
3. Cable release is most helpful, although a timer or shutter delay will work for photos that have less than a 30 second duration.
4. Headlamp. It is really helpful to set up and take down and check your level and get back to your car without tripping.
Settings:
1. f-stop of 2.8 allows shutter speeds of 20 seconds. Longer times will result in obvious star movement. If you want pinpoints, stay under 20 seconds. And, that varies with focal length.
2. Wide angles give a more expansive sky and show less movement. I'm using 14mm currently.
Lenses are not created equal. Some expensive lenses still show a distorted star. This is known as coma. It is an optical imperfection related to certain lens designs. I'm using a Rokinon 14mm manual focus lens, which is quite inexpensive. Nikon makes a 14-24mm f2.8 lens that is widely felt to be the best wide angle lens available for the 35mm format. Neither of these lenses demonstrate coma.
3. ISO of at least 3200 and up to 6400 is needed generally to get the dimmer stars without movement blur. This is why the good high ISO performance of the camera matters. There is a way of getting around this, which is another subject, but it involves the use of a tracker which electronically moves the camera with the stars, allowing much longer exposures.

Here's a look at the sky on September 20th around 10 p.m. in McCall, Idaho.

And, here's a link to the gallery with more night shots:
http://www.bearbasinphotography.com/Recent-Work/Night-Sky/i-MCFp54R

Polarizing

Polarizing filters are used routinely in landscape photography. There are many examples of how much they can contribute to a scene, by removing reflections, intensifying colors, and darkening skies.
Light coming from the sun is vibrating in multiple directions. The filter basically blocks light in one direction, allowing parallel beams of light to get through in the other direction. This is called "polarization by transmission," and is described further here: http://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/light/u12l1e.cfm
To complicate matters, light is actually polarized by reflecting off water, and the interaction of the two kinds of polarization can be interesting. By rotating the circular polarizing filter, one can see the different effects of the light altering characteristics of the filter in any given direction. Some of the most dramatic variations can be seen by rotating the filter while pointing the camera at a rainbow. It can become much more intense or almost invisible. Here, we're again dealing with light polarized by more than one factor.

Sometimes, the polarizing effects can negate some of the benefit of the scene.
Example: After a long hot hike to a mountain lake, facing about 90  degrees from the sun, I might assume that a polarized photo is the one I want, particularly if I'm wearing my own polarizing filters in the form of sunglasses when I make that decision.
One problem with that thought is that it is usually wise to consider all options when making a landscape composition. The view isn't likely to fly away after all.
Here's the photo without a polarizing filter:

and with the filter:

The critical difference here is the lack of reflections of the partially snow-covered mountains and the trees in the water, making a photo that has much less impact. Same location, camera and lens.

Is Memory Cheap?

There is a lot of talk among photographers that "memory is cheap," referring to the ever decreasing cost   of memory cards and hard drives. The thought being, since memory is so cheap, photograph anything and everything and keep it forever. Sometimes we find that a long overlooked photo is really good, and, years later, uncover its true potential. OK. That happens. But, much more commonly, good photos never get discovered in the morass of all those unedited files kept because we made too many photos in the first place and then didn't delete them when we had the time and energy.
Memory may be cheap, but our creativity isn't. For me, choosing to work on a few really good photos is much more likely to happen if they aren't buried in hundreds that should have been deleted months or years ago. If I cannot bring myself to search through thousands of files to find what inspires me to move ahead, then I'm seriously impeding my own progress.
There are limits to how messy a desk can be before we just give up trying to find anything. Even well organized piles become obstructive when they get too high. Same with photos. I am much more productive when I can look through a few good images to find the one that I want to process than when I try to plow through hundreds. I just lose the motivation. Motivation and creativity are not cheap. To me, that's what matters.

Thoughts on Photographing Wildlife

Much has been written already, and I’m not sure I can add greatly to points previously made about certain approaches to wildlife. Unbelievably dramatic photos of action are so striking, it’s certainly hard to argue against impact. There are good points on both sides of the argument for using captive animals as subjects, and in between the whole captive vs wild discussion, and then there’s the baiting issue. It’s much easier to get exactly what you want when you arrange for the raptor to come to you.

My perspective on these matters may change with time, but so far, the more I contemplate the options, the more I look at what gives me personal satisfaction and meaning as I photograph. For me, even if all the other issues were equal, I believe I would still find more delight in being out there in the moment with the wildlife and just being privileged to witness what they will show me of their world. I am not naïve enough to believe that I can be there and have no effect on the animal I’m watching, but I do think there are ways to observe relatively unobtrusively, and in that observation, I get the spontaneity of not directing my “model,” but of being allowed to see what I have never seen and couldn’t precisely have predicted.

For me, the experience is maybe more valuable than the product. I love the product, but I really love the experience. Great work is done in all sorts of studios, but my best pleasure comes from being in as close to the natural environment as possible, even if that means hours and days and weeks and months of less than I’d hoped in terms of the finished photos. This is a choice of style of work, and it seems to fit my style. It’s not the best choice for everybody, and just maybe, it won’t always be the best choice for me, but it is for now.

Here's a bird who flew by as I was observing other snowy owls in their winter location in Ocean Shores, Washington:

Here's a scene that I had visualized for months before I actually captured it with my camera. It took multiple trips and hours of waiting, but I learned so much about osprey behavior by waiting for those moments:

I watched the bird on the right from days after hatching to seeing it fight with it's nest mates over food and space. Minutes before this photo was made, it had tumbled out of the nest in a struggle with a seemingly stronger sibling, only to recover and get back at the moment dinner arrived.

In each case, I was allowed to observe the birds in as close to their natural habitat as possible. Coming to a better understanding of their behavior, to me, is more fun than setting up the exact shot I want.

Depth of Field: There will be math.


Most of us learned that one increases depth of field in a photograph by stopping down, which is the same thing as increasing the aperture of a lens. (This is one, but not the only bit of confusing terminology in photography.) That's the simple part. Actual depth of field is a function of the focal length of a lens and the lens diameter.

Focal length? Focal length is all about converging light on the plane of "film," or usually sensor. To simplify, focal length is the distance from the optical center of the lens to the point on the sensor where that light converges. If one thinks of the light from a given scene shaping into a pyramid as it converges in the aperture of the lens, and then is projected onto a sensor, it's not too hard to visualize that a long lens will narrow the field of view (the amount seen of the scene). Long focal length = narrow field of view.
For example, a 500mm lens will have a field of view that is tiny compared to a 20mm lens. That's why the 20mm is called a "wide angle lens." That angle is the field of view.

Lens diameter above really refers to the diameter of the "pupil" through which light passes. F8 in a 25mm lens produces a pupil that is much smaller than that produced by a 500mm lens at f8. The trick is that both of the f8 settings will result in the same light on the sensor. That's because in the long lens  that light travels far longer than in the short lens, and with that travel, the light's intensity decreases (actually, it decreases by the square of the distance). The light is the same as far as the sensor is concerned. The fields of view are much different.

Which brings us back to depth of field...depth of field is proportional to the aperture (f stop), the subject distance², the circle of confusion and inversely proportional to the focal length². Circle of confusion? Circle of confusion refers to the size of the sharp area projected on each pixel, or the largest blurred area that we can still see as sharp. Why is the sharp part called confusion? We're now getting back to at least the early 1800's, and it just may not be worth going there for this discussion.
What is worth considering is that for any given focal length, the smaller the aperture (the larger the f #), the greater the depth of field. The farther away the subject of focus, the larger the depth of field. The longer the focal length, there is a major decrease in depth of field (as the denominator above is squared).

So, from a practical standpoint, if I want the greatest depth of field, I use the widest angle lens available, and I focus on something that is not close to me. OK, that sounds simple enough, but it is not quite that simple. How could anything that involves a circle of confusion be simple?
Older lenses came with depth of field scales on their barrels, but this isn't the case with newer lenses made for digital cameras. Many DOF charts are available online, as are calculators, but the easiest approach may be to download an app that is a DOF calculator (simpleDOF is even free).

Here, the focal length was 25, f16, focus was on the leaves in the middle bunch of flowers. When examined at the pixel level, the rock in the foreground is tack sharp, as are the mountains in the background.

There is one more thing. Diffraction. Too much effort towards maximum depth of field, can lead to blurry images. This will be discussed as it's own topic in the near future. Nikon discusses it here for the new D800: http://www.nikonusa.com/en_US/o/Y6wrkA9OU_z04IreazIXl_22UII/PDF/D800_TechnicalGuide_En.pdf