I spent ten days on the big island in Hawaii recently and came back with a new focus on my photography I hadn’t had in a while. Riding this wave of new energy, I’ve decided to expand my efforts to build my photography following and exposure. The other day I revamped my website, sent out invites to follow my Facebook page, and decided that spending time writing a blog about my work would be something fun and different to add to my page. My goal is to take an image that I personally find to be special in some way and expand upon how that shot came to be. Photography is an art form that is so personal, and it is often overlooked as just taking pictures of beautiful places. A good photographer can take a shot of the same place that hundreds of people have shot in the past and turn it into something never seen before. They do this by creating a new perspective, using the right lighting, going back to the same spot ten, twenty, thirty times; waiting for that one time where all the pieces come together to create a once in a lifetime shot.
Now, unfortunately most of us don’t have the time or the resources of these professionals. So, when it comes to getting the best shot we have to hope for the best on the day that we’re there. Especially, those of us who consider ourselves travel photographers. Meaning we primarly take pictures while on vacation, and often there’s a lot of places we’d like to shoot before our trip is done. We often don’t get a second chance at a location, so it’s important for us to get the most out of the one time we’re there. Most of my shots are like this, I don’t get many second chances for most of these images. I sure do wish I did sometimes, because many of these places are beautiful enough to be shot daily for years, while waiting for the perfect conditions to arrive.
The image above is a perfect example my shoot of the day. I decided to use this shot as my first to talk about because it was taken on a beach in Hawaii, but if I didn’t tell you that it probably wouldn’t have been your first guess. This shot was from a night that overall was probably the least interesting of sunsets during my ten days in Hawaii. The cloud cover was more than ideal, the colors were less than breathtaking, and the location was busier than a lot of places I choose to shoot. However, because of this I had to be creative finding the place to shoot, I looked a little harder for interesting objects and vantage points. The fact that I had to work around a lot of people and a reasonably boring sky is what led me to find this shot. Sometimes the lack of interesting natural coloring leads us to our most interesting subjects.
As Erin (my wife) and I walked the coastline and across nearby paths searching for the location I would shoot, we realized that this crowded location was going to provide a tricky place to set up the usual sweeping landscape image. There were several interesting places as we walked that had promise (most of them would have been made more interesting by a dynamic sunset). I got my camera gear and set up along some lava rocks thinking I’d move down the beach as the sunset got into full swing. My first location was constantly interrupted by two girls doing a photoshoot on the rocks, not realizing they were invading my shot as they walked out onto the rocks.
It was fine, the sunset hadn’t really gotten too interesting yet, so we moved on. As we traveled back along the beach stopping at a couple of the spots that I had marked on the first pass through, we reached a fallen tree, which is part of the picture above. The tree as a whole was a super interesting piece, but people had decided it was also a good place to sit and watch the sunset, so shooting the whole tree was out without asking people to move out of the shot for a second. I wasn’t ready to do this just yet. So instead I examined the tree further, picking parts of it to shoot, as I worked around the tree, and after several shots of various parts of the tree I found this unique perspective.
I set up the shot, the rocks lining the bottom as the tree twisted it’s way up across the frame. A small portion of the land curved around from the left along the coast, and the sun glowed through the clouds in the distance. There was a small glow of pink in the clouds providing just enough of a softness and color to the sky to add some intrigue. I snapped several shots as the waves caressed the rocks creating different swirls in the water. This was the image I chose, mostly because the water movement in it makes it feel alive. I took twenty shots of this same subject as the waves crashed in. Interestingly enough, the one that I ended up liking the most was my very first shot.
It’s important in today’s era of digital photography to take advantage of the freedom to snap multiple shots of the same subject without wasting film. The world around us is constantly changing, the freedom that digital photography gives us is that we don’t have to wait and hold our breath for that one moment anymore. We have the ability to snap shot after shot as the conditions change around us. Use this to your advantage because nothing is worse than only having one shot of a subject and then getting back to your office to find it wasn’t fully in focus, or something got in the frame, or any number of things that could ruin a picture. Be patient in the process, but then snap like wildfire, sort out the damage later! Happy shooting.
The image above was shot at 24mm, with 1/4 sec exposure at f14, and ISO 100. The image was captured on December 24, 2016 with a Canon EOS 6D and a 24-105mm f4L IS USM lens.
CS Photography 