People add depth and scale - Photo by Chris Walker
I'm very visually oriented so one of the main attractions of hiking for me is the visual feast I can enjoy on a trail. I like to take a camera with me, but for a variety of reasons it's challenging to come up with photos that come close to looking as beautiful as what I see with my eyes on a hike. Of course even the best photos can't fully capture the vivid, 3D, razor-sharp, super-wide-angle view you get with your eyes, but here are some tips for how you can at least come closer.
Tips for beginning photographers:
1. If possible, take your pictures in the late afternoon or early morning. Just about everything in nature looks better with the sun at a low angle, making your colors warmer and bringing out textures. Next time you look at a National Geographic pay attention to how many of the pictures are shot in this kind of light.
2. Try to include people, at different distances, in your shots of features you see on the trail or of distant landscapes. People can give more depth to the picture and add variety and a sense of scale.
The moon in a frame - Photo by Chris Walker
3. Use framing devices like tree branches to guide the viewer's eye to the most interesting part of the photo.
4. Take super close-up pictures of things like ferns and tree bark and flowers. Often the small things you see from close up are among the most beautiful sights on a hike.
Tips for more advanced photographers:
1. Use fill-in flash in the many super-contrasty lighting situations you can encounter on a hike. I'm talking about situtations like in a rainforest with bright sun shining through the trees, making many splashes of sun amidst the deep shadows. This can look very pleasing to your eye but photography can't handle the extreme difference between the sun and the shadows. Either the shadows come out way too dark or the sunny areas get completely washed out. Use manual exposure, overexposing the sunny areas by about one f-stop, and manual flash that is not too bright. You don't want the flash to look too obvious. You will need to experiment with different combinations of exposure and flash power depending on the conditions.
2. On stream hikes, use a very slow shutter speed, such as one second, to blur the moving water. This is a great way to give the impression of motion in a still photo. You will need to use a lightweight tripod to avoid the unwanted blur from a moving camera, or you may be able to get away with leaning against a tree.
Rushing water - Photo by Chris Walker
3. Stitch photos together for one of those sweeping vistas that even the widest lens can't capture. You need to start in the middle and have each shot on either side overlap by about one third. Use a "normal" lens ar have you zoom lens not zoomed out to a wide angle, becaue wide angle shots have edge distortion and won't blend well together. Then, in the program Photoshop, in file>automate there is an option called photomerge which will automatically merge two or more shots together, usually with good results.
4. Use Photoshop to enhance saturation. Sparingly in shots with people so their skin tones don't look unnatural, but for closeups you can add quite a lot of saturation for a more vivid and/or abstract effect.
Coming soon: more Photoshop tips, videography tips, and a slideshow illustrating the tips given here.
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