This is just routine

This is a photo of Flat Rock, a prominent piece of rocky debris that fell down from the cliffs at Torrey Pines in San Diego. In the past couple of days since I uploaded this photo to the three photo sharing sites that I'm using (500px, Flickr, Picasa) it received more attention than I thought it was worth it. And since I know how I made that photo, I want to try and explain why I think this is more a piece of an eye-catcher than actual photographic art.

First about the "success" of the photo: it went into the "Popular" section on 500px for a while when it crossed the 85 points mark; on Flickr it was in the Explore selection and as a result got more views than any other photo I have on Flickr so far :P ...and on Picasa, a good number of my followers left a comment and some even clicked the "Like" button. (which is still anonymous. I'm just saying.)


"Before the Storm" // Nikon D700 with 16-35mm lens @ 17mm, f/11, 13s @ ISO200, ND64x filter

Let me first explain the technical side of it. I hope it's not too confusing when I go rather quickly through all that. I just want to illustrate the photographic routine that is involved.

This is a wide angle shot at 17mm (with the distortion and tilt correction what's left might be some18 or 19mm - still pretty wide). Now, it's somewhat common knowledge that you better include a foreground feature with wide angle shots. I picked the surface of the rock (smoothed by thousands of people who climbed and walked on it) for that because obviously, I didn't have much choice. :) Where I was with my tripod was about the only spot I could choose as I wanted to have both Flat Rock and the storm cloud with the falling rain in the frame.

Here's a "making of" shot taken by Shuwen (from her album). I'm that tiny spot on the cliff to the right:



(in case you're wondering about the very different appearance: her photo is with a standard daylight white balance; I chose to use warmer tones and the ND filter - see below - also causes a slight color shift.)

Next, it's a long exposure with milky water. Oh yeah. I'm a sucker for that, I admit it. To get the long exposure times necessary for that effect, I use a neutral density filter. After framing the scene, I picked a reasonable focus point and set the camera to fully manual mode. Because I was mainly looking at the darker foreground, I set the exposure 1 stop shorter than what the camera suggested (that's simply some experience everyone will gain at some point, I assume). Then I closed the viewfinder - one of the benefits of the D700 - and attached my ND64 filter to the lens. I added the necessary 6 stops to the exposure time. I released the shutter with a cable and manual mirror pre-release to minimize camera shake caused by the mirror.

The reason for attaching the filter only as the last step before making the actual photo is that an ND64 is already pretty dark: it's impossible to properly choose a framing with the filter attached.

The photo was made around sunset (the sun is outside of the frame, on the right) and thus has the benefit of nice light and color. I would say that everyone realizes at some point that dawn and dusk are the best time for most colored landscape photos. If you want these colors and this light, you have to be on location at the right time. And I admit that for the above photo, it wasn't really planned.

And yes, the weather added a nice bonus with the rain coming down from the stormclouds over the sea in the background. As I mentioned at least twice here on my blog: bad weather - good photos. :) For the above photo, the weather was pure luck.

It was even more luck that we made it to the car all dry before it started to rain. :) And with the approaching rain, I didn't allow myself the time to explore the scene any further and try different angles, viewpoints, and so on.

So... now that I explained the technical aspects and the background, I hope it's understandable why I'm a little perplexed about the attention the photo got. I was just doing what can be done in that situation. And of course it requires practice. Know your stuff, know your gear. You can't play the piano if you can't play the piano. It requires routine, and it's important to be able to execute that program when the opportunity for a great photo strikes. But besides that, let's be honest: there's nothing very artistic involved in making a photo like this.

I've been thinking about this for a while, and I've also been thinking about the hundreds of photos that I show online on which I definitely spent much more consideration on framing and composition, where I explored a scene from all kinds of different angles, with different camera settings and whatnot, to really really get the best out of it. But still, the above combination of some luck and exercising a routine gets the most attention. I must admit: that's a bit depressing.

So here is the basic formula for the eye-catching razzmatazz landscape photos that will be popularity-wise successful if you practice a little: be on location at dusk or dawn; bring your wide angle lens and filters; get down low and find a nice foreground feature; if there's water, make a long exposure of it; if there's color, crank up the saturation. Hey presto!

Don't get me wrong: I'm not blaming the audience that makes these photos popular. But despite the fear of sounding arrogant: I'm blaming the photographers that practice this routine all the time, and set standards like this. The internet is full of these eye-catchers.

There's got to be more than this, right?