Untether Yourself from the Weather: Finding Photographic Opportunity in "Uninteresting" Light
Hello friends.
As landscape and nature photographers, we have all experienced the scenario where we show up to shoot expecting one set of conditions, only to be presented with an entirely different set of conditions… and the original plan is no longer the plan! It can be disappointing to say the least. But if you show up armed with an open mindset, and the knowledge/tool set to go along with your open mindset, you can turn these sorts of scenarios into productive, even rewarding shoots with images you can feel really good about. Today, I want to talk to you about this and share a couple of my own experiences…
I recently took two photography road trips - one down to the highlands of western North Carolina, the southern-most extent of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the other all the way up to Maine. Both trip schedules were governed by a number of things beyond photography - visiting with friends and family, inflexible, pre-arranged campground bookings, scheduled business meetings - and so when it came to photography and making new images, there was really no flexibility in terms of timing. So when the weather gods decided to challenge me, I had to roll with it.
Both trips were good examples of the critical importance of being able to adapt to the conditions we are presented with when we show up to make new work. Had I chosen to just not shoot, I would have missed out on these amazing opportunities. Here, I want to share with you the results of my own experiences so you too can see the value of letting nature guide you toward subjects that you may not have initially targeted.
Shoot 1, North Carolina, Sunny Conditions
On the North Carolina trip, one place I had set my sights on was Boone Fork, a high elevation, steeply graded creek filled with many waterfalls and massive boulders. According to my forecasts, fog was likely on the morning I visited, and I had visions of a gushing mountain stream shrouded in fog and surrounded by the greens of summer. What I found that day was quite different - the stream was very low flow, a trickle really, not a lick of fog at all, and eventually strong sunshine! Such are the vagaries of mountain weather forecasting. I don’t even know why I bother checking, since reality rarely aligns with the forecast!
Even though I know better, sometimes it is hard to choose an opportunity-centric mindset over disappointment… but I did my best. I tried shooting some of the little falls and pools, but those images were underwhelming to say the least. But as I worked, I began to notice that the pools, though low, offered up some beauty all their own. Once I noticed this, I trained my lens just on the water - its surface and its depths - rather than the small forested waterfall scenes I had originally envisioned. In and on the water I found some magical little worlds, filled with palletes of color and dancing points of light. Below is a small collection of work I made that day, perhaps not all successful, but some certainly are and I learned an awful lot about the relationship between shutter speed and these dancing points of light.
Shoot 2, Maine, Overcast Conditions
The weather gods really messed with my head in Maine! I visited Acadia National Park during July, precisely because it is one of the foggier months there. So I was giddy when my trip got off to a very foggy start. But I certainly did not expect almost constant fog, day after day after day. I am delighted by any sort of fog, so I revelled in it and made a lot of foggy work. But when it wasn’t foggy, it was mostly completely, heavily overcast, which is generally not great for grander scenes. So in those moments, I turned to the abstract.
The geology in this park is incredible, and there is an impressively large variety of rocks, due to a very complex geological history. One particular evening, I was at a rocky point by the ocean. The tide was low, and there was not a lot of wave action. The skies were heavily overcast. I wandered around the point, looking for potential images I could return to shoot under different conditions. Then I began noticing how much variety there was underneath my feet - rocks of every color and texture imaginable, with amazing striations and patterns, too. They looked lovely under the flat light, and so I spent the remainder of my evening there shooting only abstracted rock textures. It was fascinating and completely absorbing, too, and I came away with what I was calling my “Otter Point Rock Collection.” Over the coming weeks, though, I would explore this very same subject matter in multiple locations in the park due to the ongoing overcast conditions, so ultimately this became a small body of work entitled “Acadian Elements.” Below is a preliminary gallery of that work, along with an experimental presentation in video form. You will see a couple of images that were made in direct light - the sun peeked its head out very occasionally!
As landscape and nature photographers, our process is uniquely and inextricably linked to the weather conditions that are offered to us at any particular time. Traditionally, “good light” is perceived to be available only at the edges of the day when the sun is low on the horizon. Personally, I want to photograph more than just the morning and evening, and I love being out in nature frequently. I’d prefer not to limit either my experience or my creativity based upon the time of day and/or weather. Instead, I go out in any weather and at any time with my suite of back-pocket techniques, approaches, and subjects, knowing that I can make creative, artistic, fulfilling work in any given set of conditions. I wander, wait, experiment, notice, and as I do so, I allow the conditions to gently guide me to my subject. And this is one of the loveliest aspects of my work… this process of collaborating with nature. It’s as though we are communicating, back and forth. I may be looking for something specific initially, but come away with something entirely different, in this case a small body of work that is richly satisfying to me visually, and is also the source of a deepened connection to a place… That’s a win-win in my world.
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