{"id":145,"date":"2013-02-28T18:00:28","date_gmt":"2013-03-01T00:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mikemacdonald.com\/blog\/?p=145"},"modified":"2014-02-26T14:25:30","modified_gmt":"2014-02-26T20:25:30","slug":"digital-landscape-photography-and-digital-capture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/index.php\/nature\/digital-landscape-photography-and-digital-capture\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital Landscape Photography: New Possibilities in Storytelling"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Bluff

This is the story of a savanna, its towering bur oaks and an August fog that envelops the distant fen. The wide tonal range of this scene was recorded by first digitally capturing a range of exposures, followed by the use of HDR software to combine all of them into one realistic image, emulating how humans experience the world.
Location: Bluff Spring Fen\u2014Elgin, Illinois
Forest Preserve District of Cook County<\/p><\/div>\n

Not\u00a0until\u00a0recently, did I begin to photograph the landscape with a digital camera, leaving behind the beauty of transparency film and the process of leaning over a light table, one eye to the loupe, to immerse\u00a0myself in the colorful world\u00a0living within.<\/p>\n

During my film capture days, I developed\u00a0a sense of what I could shoot and what I couldn’t, based on the lighting conditions. For instance, there are times when what you see is not even close to what you’ll get. So,\u00a0it’s best to just walk on by and forget about it. The scene and the story pictured here is one of those moments that could not be accurately represented\u00a0with film. Luckily, this image was captured digitally.<\/p>\n

Though I’ve been shooting with a digital camera for several years, film remained my choice for landscape photography until June of 2012, when I made the full transition to digital capture.<\/p>\n

Up until that point, I used a 12-megapixel Nikon D300\u00a0digital camera\u00a0to photograph\u00a0individual\u00a0subject matter\u00a0such as\u00a0flowers, insects, people, etc., but for landscape photography,\u00a0I\u00a0relied on a Pentax 645NII\u00a0camera loaded with\u00a0Fuji Velvia medium format color transparency film.<\/p>\n

I chose medium format film (2.7 times larger than 35mm film)\u00a0because the\u00a0innumerable elements that comprise\u00a0a landscape\u00a0are rendered so small that a\u00a0large print is required to savor the details. That’s why my standard print size is 24×36″, though I’ve\u00a0made\u00a0prints as large as 43×56″. A high-resolution\u00a0digital scan of\u00a0medium format film delivers up to 105 megapixels of\u00a0information, allowing for 24×36″ prints with little or no interpolation (inventing new\u00a0pixels\u00a0based on existing pixels).<\/p>\n

But, transparency\u00a0film\u00a0can be hard to work with, especially when there’s a large\u00a0amount of contrast between the brightest and darkest portions of a scene, a.k.a., a\u00a0high dynamic range (HDR) scene. In\u00a0cases where a fairly straight\u00a0line divides\u00a0the opposing areas,\u00a0like a sunlit sky and the\u00a0low lit land separated by the horizon, a\u00a0split graduated filter (split grad) can be positioned\u00a0over the lens to\u00a0cut down the\u00a0light from\u00a0the sky.<\/p>\n

A split grad\u00a0is rectangular and resembles the top of a car’s windshield, gradually fading from, say, dark gray down to clear.\u00a0With a little know-how and finesse, lining up the dark portion of the filter over the brighter\u00a0sky\u00a0and the clear portion over\u00a0the dark\u00a0land, the image will look\u00a0very much\u00a0like you experienced it.\u00a0However, the HDR image, pictured here, would have been impossible to record\u00a0on film. Because there’s no\u00a0straight line dividing the areas of contrast, a split grad can’t be used.<\/p>\n

More and more, I\u00a0found myself\u00a0needing to photograph high contrast situations like this, so\u00a0in June, I stopped capturing images\u00a0on film and began photographing the landscape digitally with the new Nikon D800E, a 36-megapixel 35mm DSLR. Remarkably, I rarely require a\u00a0split grad filter with this camera.<\/p>\n

(NOTE: “Digital capture” is not the same as “digital photography.” I’ve been a digital photographer for many years, even when I was exclusively shooting film. That’s because film is just a scan away from a digital image. After the film is\u00a0converted into a digital file, the steps are the pretty much the same, just a\u00a0little more challenging.)<\/p>\n

The exposure range of this\u00a0HDR\u00a0scene even\u00a0exceeds the capability of the very forgiving Nikon D800E. However,\u00a0if the wind is\u00a0calm, it’s\u00a0possible to make\u00a0two or more shots at different exposures\u00a0and blend them into\u00a0a\u00a0single image using specialized HDR\u00a0software like Photomatix. With film, it’s theoretically<\/em>\u00a0possible to\u00a0make two\u00a0exposures and merge them, but, in practice, scanning multiple images is time-consuming and\u00a0the scans don’t align\u00a0very well.<\/p>\n

If you’ve seen HDR images, especially those of nature, many look unnatural, like half the people in\u00a0Alabama.\u00a0Some look weird\u00a0because the lighting doesn’t match what humans are used to seeing. Others appear\u00a0surreal or grainy or whatever<\/em>. Anyone can use HDR software.\u00a0Just\u00a0drop in\u00a0two or three\u00a0image files\u00a0at different exposures (usually separated by 2 stops) and it’ll spit out a picture. It’s\u00a0a breeze, as long as you\u00a0don’t care about reality.\u00a0It’s more\u00a0challenging if you want\u00a0to make an image that closely\u00a0approximates\u00a0what you saw.<\/p>\n

Now, how can blending two or more images create a\u00a0photograph that’s more truthful than a single shot?\u00a0It’s\u00a0obvious. Any time you look at anything, your pupils change their size to adjust\u00a0for the light. Therefore, you’re taking multiple exposures and blending them together,\u00a0too, just like the\u00a0HDR\u00a0process. If\u00a0done correctly, an HDR photograph should appear true to\u00a0your experience.<\/p>\n

Of course,\u00a0I could have recorded this scene with a single shot,\u00a0setting the camera to properly\u00a0expose the blue sky and letting everything else\u00a0turn into black silhouettes, but that\u00a0wouldn’t have represented what I saw. That would be\u00a0my only choice with film. However,\u00a0with digital capture,\u00a0it’s sometimes possible\u00a0to\u00a0have it all\u2014at least when the wind\u00a0is perfectly\u00a0still. Luckily, it was. So, I\u00a0took\u00a0five exposures separated by 1 stop and merged them. Photomatix recommends three\u00a0exposures\u00a0in 2-stop increments, but that was before I read the instructions!<\/p>\n

Digital landscape photography now allows me to more accurately tell my nature stories, in this case,\u00a0the foggy prairie-fen habitat as viewed from under the dark\u00a0canopy of the oak savanna. For years, I’ve been waiting to make this kind of image, one that conveys my experience, not\u00a0a\u00a0silhouette of it. And now I can. With a digital camera (and sometimes with the help of\u00a0software), telling the\u00a0story of the landscape\u00a0is easier than ever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not\u00a0until\u00a0recently, did I begin to photograph the landscape with a digital camera, leaving behind the beauty of transparency film and the process of leaning over a light table, one eye to the loupe, to immerse\u00a0myself in the colorful world\u00a0living within. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[68,231,71,72,212,73,67,79,70],"tags":[34,35,228,89,54,116,239,118,233],"class_list":["post-145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chicago-nature","category-illinois-cook-county-nature","category-digital-photography-lessons-tips","category-film-photography-lessons","category-illinois-nature-photography","category-landscape-photography-lessons-tips","category-nature","category-nature-photography-lessons","category-photography-lessons-tips","tag-bluff-spring-fen","tag-elgin","tag-fen-photography","tag-photographic-filters","tag-forest-preserve-district-of-cook-county","tag-hdr-high-dynamic-range-photography","tag-hdr-software","tag-photomatix","tag-split-grad-filters"],"yoast_head":"\nNew 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I call it: The Heart of Nature. The purpose of this blog\u00a0is to share my insights about photography and my\u00a0explorations in the wilds of Chicago. It's a celebration\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Biodiversity"","block_context":{"text":"Biodiversity","link":"https:\/\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/index.php\/category\/nature\/biodiversity-nature\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"The morning sun peaks above the horizon to illuminate a large display of Foxglove Beardtongue at Bluff Spring Fen in Elgin, Illinois. \u00a92007 Mike MacDonald Photography\u2014All Rights Reserved","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Tender-Kiss-of-Light-600px-Copyright.jpg?fit=600%2C439&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Tender-Kiss-of-Light-600px-Copyright.jpg?fit=600%2C439&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Tender-Kiss-of-Light-600px-Copyright.jpg?fit=600%2C439&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1071,"url":"https:\/\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/index.php\/nature\/the-extraordinary-in-the-ordinary\/","url_meta":{"origin":145,"position":1},"title":"The Extraordinary in the “Ordinary”","author":"Mike MacDonald","date":"February 3, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"The Extraordinary in the \"Ordinary\" I am both haunted and fascinated by a phrase that's often used to praise and describe my work. It all came to a head one day after I performed my one-man show about Chicago nature. Three audience members separately visited me at my book-signing table\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Chicago Nature"","block_context":{"text":"Chicago Nature","link":"https:\/\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/index.php\/category\/illinois-nature-photography\/chicago-nature\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"The winter sun warms the oak savanna on the kame at Bluff Spring Fen in Elgin, Illinois.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Bluff-Spring-Fen-Snow_Ice-220125-0010-FS-FINAL-800px-copyright-sRGB.jpg?fit=582%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Bluff-Spring-Fen-Snow_Ice-220125-0010-FS-FINAL-800px-copyright-sRGB.jpg?fit=582%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Bluff-Spring-Fen-Snow_Ice-220125-0010-FS-FINAL-800px-copyright-sRGB.jpg?fit=582%2C800&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1181,"url":"https:\/\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/index.php\/illinois-nature-photography\/it-can-take-decades\/","url_meta":{"origin":145,"position":2},"title":"It Can Take Decades","author":"Mike MacDonald","date":"September 22, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"The image here showcases a hanging fen and a sedge meadow, two unique wetland habitats Mike has been trying to photograph for over twenty years. The fen, fed by a gravel hill's seep, features rare plants like Ohio goldenrod and sphynx lady tresses orchid, adapted to its alkaline water conditions.","rel":"","context":"In "Chicago Nature"","block_context":{"text":"Chicago Nature","link":"https:\/\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/index.php\/category\/illinois-nature-photography\/chicago-nature\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"At Lake in the Hills Fen, late-summer flowers decorate the seep of one of its hanging fens.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Lake-in-the-Hills-Fen-220908-0010-FS-2000px-copyright-sRGB.jpg?fit=982%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Lake-in-the-Hills-Fen-220908-0010-FS-2000px-copyright-sRGB.jpg?fit=982%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Lake-in-the-Hills-Fen-220908-0010-FS-2000px-copyright-sRGB.jpg?fit=982%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Lake-in-the-Hills-Fen-220908-0010-FS-2000px-copyright-sRGB.jpg?fit=982%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":900,"url":"https:\/\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/index.php\/photography-lessons-tips\/landscape-photography-no-hdr\/","url_meta":{"origin":145,"position":3},"title":"Landscape Photography: Sometimes It Just Takes Two","author":"Mike MacDonald","date":"May 13, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Landscape photography sometimes\u00a0requires two shots to capture the drama of a single scene. Here in the woodlands of Will County, this afternoon landscape of bluebells along the stream would have been impossible to convey with just one photograph. Those who are familiar with HDR (High Dynamic Range) will take several\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Digital Photography"","block_context":{"text":"Digital Photography","link":"https:\/\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/index.php\/category\/photography-lessons-tips\/digital-photography-lessons-tips\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Landscape photography may seem tough when there's a wide range of light, and a lot of photographers turn to HDR software. But, in most cases, HDR doesn't work for landscape photography because of artifacts caused by the wind. Here, this springtime image of a Will County woodland would not have been possible without merging two consecutive shots taken at different exposures: one for the land and the other for the sky. But, HDR was not required.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/RaccoonGrove-140507-0010-FINAL-copyright-600px.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":83,"url":"https:\/\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/index.php\/nature\/landscape-photography-transcendental-light\/","url_meta":{"origin":145,"position":4},"title":"Transcendental Light & The Art of Landscape Photography","author":"Mike MacDonald","date":"February 6, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"On this typical May morning, along a bluff at Black Partridge Woods, transcendental rays of new-day light\u00a0fleck the verdant floor and streak across serpentine waves of woodland phlox, casting\u00a0the divine onto this springtime panorama. Thirty\u00a0minutes earlier, though, only flat blue\u00a0shade from the open sky illuminated the landscape. Editorially and visually,\u00a0the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Chicago Nature"","block_context":{"text":"Chicago Nature","link":"https:\/\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/index.php\/category\/illinois-nature-photography\/chicago-nature\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"In the art of landscape photography, light can have a transcendental effect. Here at Black Partridge Woods, woodland phlox spread in a serpentine wave across the bluff, as streaks of morning light dramatically and ethereally transform matter. \u00a92013 Mike MacDonald Photography, Inc.\u2014ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please contact Mike MacDonald for permission to use this or any image.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Black-Partridge-Woods-0370-600px-Copyright1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":627,"url":"https:\/\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/index.php\/nature\/skunk-cabbage-facts-and-poetry\/","url_meta":{"origin":145,"position":5},"title":"Searching for Spring (and Skunk Cabbage)","author":"Mike MacDonald","date":"March 10, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Today, March 10, 2013, spring officially began in the Chicago area. For me, the beginning of spring does not arrive in a fanfare of color. Rather, it begins subtly, when sometime in March, speckled maroon and yellow spathes\u00a0of skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) quietly emerge from beneath a layer of snow\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Biodiversity"","block_context":{"text":"Biodiversity","link":"https:\/\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/index.php\/category\/nature\/biodiversity-nature\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Frazil ice formed during the frigid night on the surface of Sawmill Creek at Waterfall Glen Forest Preserve in DuPage County, Illinois. \u00a92013 Mike MacDonald Photography\u2014All Rights Reserved. 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