Landscapes - Be Prepared for the Worst
Landscape photography is what you make it. It can be enjoyable or, it can be a beast that is tough to conquer. One thing that Landscape photography almost requires is time. Some may say, “But you’re just going out and taking a photo of an area of space? Why does anyone think its hard?” Well, in some circumstances, that may be correct. You can have no plan at all and just go somewhere and take a landscape photo. It may turn out great, it may not. As many of us know, that opinion falls on the eyes of the beholder. Personally, I don’t think there’s a photographer on the planet who hasn’t just gone out somewhere at random and taken some photos. I mean, that is photography. Part of the fun is being somewhere new, doing something that you love to share an experience.
With or without a plan, things can go wrong in a heartbeat. Living where I do, south of Houston and a 20 minute drive from Galveston, I love to go and take sunrise landscapes over the water of the Gulf of Mexico. Of course, when you’re shooting landscapes, you aren’t going to be standing indoors, at least majority of the time, so you have to somewhat expect what kind of weather you’re going to be shooting in.
In the little spot that I like to shoot from, you are on the farthest east point of the island, on a little outcrop of beach. If you live on or near a coast line, you probably already know, but weather can change in a heartbeat. I went out one day, nice and early in the morning (a little too early honestly) to this favorite spot of mine. I watched the weather report pretty closely and somewhat knew what to expect, or so I thought. I got out onto the beach while it was still basically pitch black. Like I said, little too early. There was some cloud cover but, that is exactly what I wanted; some high clouds to bounce a bit of that nice, soft, blue light back down onto the water. I got my gear set up, set up my tripod, and got my Canon EOS R with a 70-200mm f/2.8 from Sigma and I sat and waited. Some ships were coming into the bay so I decided while I waited for the sun to rise, I wanted to get some long exposure shots of the ships coming in to get some nice light streaks. I went ahead and opened up my aperture as wide as I could and set the shutter for a full 30 seconds. I grabbed around 10 shots and then, as I was looking through the pictures, I noticed that there was a fog rolling in with the ship I was shooting. At least, I thought it was just fog. Aside from what was in my camera, I couldn’t really see the fog with just my eyes. I switched over to my 24-105mm f/4 as a small amount of light started coming up at this point. As soon as I started grabbing some frames, I felt some sprinkling rain start falling, immediately, I started to worry. I had read that some people were experiencing problems with the weather sealing on their Canon EOS R’s and the R Mount lenses but, with how little was falling and how light it was, I figured it would be fine. I packed some camera rain covers anyways right? I’ll just put them on if I need them.
Suddenly, you could hear a noise coming from the water that wasn’t just waves breaking. There was a roar coming from the water and getting closer. Without blinking an eye, it started to downpour. The moment I felt a large drop hit me, I went to my bag to grab the rain cover… It wasn’t there. Without taking my camera off of the tripod, I grabbed my gear, zipped up my bag, and sprinted to the car that was about 150 yards away, all while trying to keep my camera as dry as possible. I got to the car and, as gently as physically possible, tossed my camera and tripod in the back seat along with my bag. I got into the front seat soaked from the rain, my lower half covered in wet sand. I sat and just got angry. How could I possibly forget the rain covers? And then I realized, I had cleared out my bag for this short trip and, since the weather report showed no chance of rain, I left out my rain covers and left it to chance. I sat and waited for the rain to pass, all the while, the sun was slowly starting to rise. Finally, the rain stopped completely and I watched the clouds for any sign of more. It started to dry out and so I grabbed my gear once again and went back to the same spot that I was in before. I set back up and go to start taking some photos. I look in my camera to check the shots and they seemed a bit foggy so I checked the front element, grabbed my lens rag and wiped it off. Take another frame, still fogged. I grab the rag and wipe off the view finder since it was also fogged up a bit on the outside. I take another few frames, and they are all fogged so, I decided to look into the lens. Sure enough, one of my inner elements are completely fogged up.
Shooting landscapes seem easy enough at first, and some times they are. The biggest part of it is being prepared. Don’t hike into the mountains with nothing but a camera and expect that nothing will go wrong. Take time, watch the weather, check your gear, and check your gear again. Just because you’ve done it before, doesn’t mean you cant fail. Research where you want to go, where you’ll park the car, how far you’ll have to walk to get to your spot, how long will you be there. Take your time in planning if you can. If you do just want to go somewhere at random to see what there is, just think ahead of time, “Do I have everything I may need for this?” You may not think of absolutely everything, but at least you know you tried at the end of the day. Just be prepared to be uncomfortable.