Late Summer Prairie at Sugarcreek by Jim Crotty
Obtaining great images of the Ohio landscape can be fun and highly rewarding. There is so much natural beauty in the Buckeye State, from the Lake Erie shoreline to the hills surrounding the Ohio River. There’s also probably many beautiful and inspiring nature-related subjects just outside your front or back door. Sometimes all we have to do is to take the time to stop and notice. Some of the best locations in and near Dayton for both beautiful wildflower and wildlife close-ups, as well as landscapes can be easily discovered by visiting any one of the Five Rivers MetroParks. Local favorites for nature and landscape photography include Sugarcreek, Cox Arboretum and Germantown.
As we enter late summer and early autumn, now is the best time to get ready for some of the best wildflower displays, found in the open prairies of many of the MetroParks. Vibrant displays of Cone Flowers, Compass Plants and Prairie Dock provide the added benefit of attracting the most picturesque of butterflies, the Swallowtails. These tall flowers also can serve as the perfect foreground element for very striking images of a colorful, Midwestern sky at either sunrise or sunset, or perhaps even with the coming or passing of billowing storm clouds.
Keep an eye out for cooler evenings as we move through September. Often such conditions can lead to a morning mist or fog surrounding the autumn prairie. This is a wonderful opportunity to photograph natural landscapes that convey a strong sense of an almost mystical mood. Also, dew-covered spider webs can be found in abundance on such mornings, which are wonderful subjects to photograph up close, preferably with a macro lens. Remember to shoot at a wide aperture setting so as to blur as much of the background as possible, thus emphasizing the subject of the water droplets on the web.
Other tips for good nature and landscape photographs are:
1) Slow down. Look around and allow the scene to come to you. Sometimes the best images are right at your feet or behind you. So many amateur photographers are in a hurry to gather as many images as possible, snapping away with endless abandon. That’s a problem with the convenience of digital cameras. Try to remember quality rather than quantity.
2) Get up early and shoot late. The best light for landscape photography is almost always shortly prior to and during sunrise and shortly before and through sunset. The light is indirect, soft and even, unlike the harsh, direct sunlight in the middle of day, which can be particularly challenging in summer.
3) Use a tripod. Even if you’re simply using a point-and-shoot camera. A tripod will allow you to shoot a slower shutter speeds and lower film speed settings, resulting in sharper images. A tripod is also necessary when photographing waterfalls through long exposure, creating that wonderful “cotton candy” effect. Most of all a tripod will force you to take the time (see point #1) to set-up and properly frame your composition.
4) Bad weather can be your friend. Most of the best nature and landscape photographs are taken in rain, fog and/or snow. Wet weather can provide that same nice, soft even light that you’ll find early in the morning or late toward evening. You will also obtain a nice saturation in the color on leaves and flowers. But make sure you keep your camera dry and water drops away from your lens. A hotel shower cap can serve as a very affordable option.
5) Use interesting subjects for your foreground, but try not to place them in the middle of your frame. Place foreground subjects near, but not at, one of the four corners created when imagining two vertical lines intersecting two horizontal lines within the frame of the image.
6) Get low with a wide angle lens. Just by slightly changing your perspective you can have more foreground objects to work with.
7) Either make the sky a major part of your image, or just give it a slight area at the top. Try not to split the ground and sky evenly in the frame. Also, oftentimes the sky can be so bright - even on a cloudy day – that your camera will expose for it while underexposing your foreground subject.
There’s many more tips, but the most important is to have fun and experiment. Photography is a constant learning process.
As the high, bright light of mid-summer in Ohio gives way to the more pleasing, indirect light of early autumn, and the prairies of wildflowers reach their zenith, photographers in Dayton are presented with a creative canvas unlike any other, all right outside the front door and down the road.
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