Anyone into Landscape Photography???

[Sturgeon_Catcher 0]

I built this garden 7 years ago immediately after I graduated from college in "99. Hard work for not having done any labor for almost 4 years. I employed right at 10 tons for the initial garden and have approx. 2 tons to complete the addition. The addition has been in the works for almost 3 years as I started on it in the winter.

 

It is primarily a shade garden and remains in almost total shade the entire day. Serious shade. I created the garden to hide the foundations of the two buildings. My goal was to make it appear as the foundations pushed the rock in position and or the flow of lava was as a real flow. Smooth in places but cooling causing ridges and drop offs (planting areas). The garden is fantastic in winter. The crown rock as I call them (uppermost rocks) describe beautiful miniature mountains and little valleys. Bad about gardening.

 

The problem is that I have never successfully created on film that which I wish to see. The light is horrible. These photos I snapped to show Collman the garden and thought I would see if I might derive some suggestions on lighting and or filling with multi-colors.

 

Fun garden and the wife really loves it. A little tricky to build and see in my mind as I created it. It is not possible to remove a rock. I put it together so tight whole sections have to be removed to allow just one to be removed. Rule #1: All rocks must touch in at least 3 places or it doesn't fit the opening.

 

The garden lies on a north - south axis. The photos were taken about 3:00 pm yesterday. Bright sunny day, temps in low 90's - yet cool in the garden. Uphill slope provides a little draft of air movement. Really cool temps. if I water it first. Cools all of that rock down just a little. 5 kinds of mosses etc etc

 

Foundation on right = almost 5' Foundation on left just 4' or thereabouts.

You can't even see the tree well. It has a great deal of detail in the rock selection. Lost all in shadow.

The addition wraps this corner and continues. There are rocks missing along the top and the pipe is exposed. Very difficult facet and am having trouble selecting rocks for this location. Hard part.

 

I studied rock flows for hours at a time and over a period of many years prior to attempting gardens of this nature. I have done several gardens like this over the years for clients on a pay basis but this is in my opinion the best. I once built a 4level tiered waterfall in a horshoe shape that then contined on around the house to hypothetically fill a very large pond. All of my learning was employed on this final garden of this nature. Built it special for the wife and worked almost 3 mos. every day to complete it. The top corner was once filled in but remodeling is he.. and timely.

 

These pictures are horrible!!!! Yet, that is the dilemma. All of the molding and fitting are lost. There is no detail. The problem is obviously and has to be in lighting. I have about everything you can conceive of in lighting available just not sure how to setup for something this large yet finite!!

 

Any suggestions?

later

Fred

 

[madkasel 0]

Very very cool. Never seen anything like it. Looks like a lot of work!

 

Not that I'm a camera expert in any sense of the word, but I would think that the easiest way to get light in there would be to have a partner holding a big piece of sheet metal (or something) to reflect light into the area from a nearby sunny spot.

[Graham 0]

I'm wondering if the garden gets more sun in the middle of winter when its lower on the horizon. Is the garden still green in the middle of winter in central Oregon?

 

I have been practicing a technique from a photography book, finally getting some decent pics of my back yard, using a fairly wide angle lens, set the camera to manual focus, set the focus on the lens, not in the view finder...set if for 5 feet, and a f/22 stop, place the camera on a tripod so that what’s visible in the viewfinder is about five feet out. Looking through the viewfinder shows everything out of focus, but the pic turns out focused.

 

I would probably try metering the gray rocks, and bracket 5 different exposure values, then layer them in Photoshop, and use a layer mask to combine the best sections of each pic into one shot. Hopefully there is an easier way?

[Sturgeon_Catcher 0]

I had a thought a little earlier after posting. To try the multiple flash and start the fire with the digital. Would need a lot of wire and hide the flashes. Ciphering....Ciphering....That's the part I like!!!

later

Fred

[kargen 0]

When photographing gardens a bright sunny day is not your friend. A slightly overcast day would probably better fit with what you are trying to show. If it is really overcast you end up with no shadows at all and that will make the photo look flat. With just a slight overcast you get some shadow and that gives your photo the feeling of depth.

If you have a flash you can use it to add some shadow on cloudy or overcast days. You want your flash to be 2/3s to one stop brighter than the rest of the light.

 

 

You might also try later in the day when the light is a little better for photography. With the buildings around it will be tough to handle the bright areas and shadows that sunlight provides. THe camera just can't handle the contrast between the two. You can bounce light in off a white surface to fill some of the shadow spaces, but the area you are photographing would take a good sized surface to reflect off of.

 

Also use a tripod, and set your f-stop as high as you can to get as much depth of field as you can.

 

[Isonychia 0]

Photoshop CS2 has a terrific feature would help in this situation.

 

It allows you to take up to seven exposures (off a tripod) and digitally "stack" them into a composite image. In other words, you can combine images exposed for highlight detail, shadow detail and midtone detail into a single image properly exposed throughout the dynamic range of the scene being photographed.

 

Check out the High Dynamic Range feature on Adobe's Photoshop website: http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/newfeatures.html#nf8

 

John

 

 

[Graham 0]

Many of the new digital SLR's have wirelss flash built in. My D200 can be switched to comander mode, and fire several groups of slave flashes, and each flash unit can be programed for desired EV, from the internal camera custom settings menu. Cool stuff. My camera uses the built in flash to operate and control the remote flashes, but the SU-800 comander that Isonichia has doesnt even need line of sight to the remotes, it uses IR technology, even cooler....

[KVRNut 0]

I had a tricky lighting situation while assisting in the shooting of a training video at work. I had to even out the light coming from overhead to show detail that wouldn't be ordinarily seen and I had to do it without any glare on surfaces, causing any extra shadow, or blinding the participants in the video.

 

I ended up going to the office supply store and buying some large sheets of plastic poster board and painted one side gloss metallic silver and the other side gloss metallic gold. Another set of boards were kept plain white. I took some heavy wire and ran it up the inside of the boards on both sides to so I could mount them about 1 1/2 ft. over some halogen 1500 watt work lights. The heavy wire was good enough to support the new reflectors and still allow a bit of aiming or tilt. The other advantage is that I could change a board with the minimun of fuss or bother as it slipped off or on the wires very easily. The lights and reflectors were then mounted to the tops of some ladders. The halogen light reflected off the boards provided a powerful yet soft light that did the job quite well. The most versitile lights used were the ones that provided 2 power settings for the light so I could tailor the light to the placement. Judging by the shots, it looks like the extra lighting could be kept out of frame with no problem yet provide you with even lighting if more than one light is used.

 

Hope this helps.

[Graham 0]

Hey KVRnut,

 

I gotta tell you, that sounded like a fun project! And brilliant solutions to your challenging shoot. I have some high power halogen work lights, never thought of using those for photography before, thanks for the idea. Unlike fluorescent lights, halogens can operate with a rheostat for setting the amount of light. I’m sure getting some great ideas for the folks here on the forum, and I thank you!

 

Graham

[KVRNut 0]

You're more than welcome Graham!

 

You're not the only one learning a lot good stuff on this forum! I've had a lot of good food for thought from it and have enjoyed it thoroughly.

 

I like the sunlight quality of a halogen light and the fact that the light is constant once evereything is set up. Makes meter reading a snap. Forgot one other important factor in those reflectors and that is I made them for less than $25 Cdn as I already have 3 of those work lights. By the way, don't be afraid of painting the boards different colors. I tried deep red, dark blue and forest green. I've also experimented with different surface textures like semi gloss and flat to vary reflected light intensity.

 

Here's another way to get lots of light. I have a couple of high powered spot lights. These lights are 12.5 and 15 million candlepower respectivelyand run off an internal 12 volt sealed lead acid battery. I also used those in the shoot for trickier lighting solutions, for when I needed to light a large area, or for when the need to move the light with the shot presented itself. I had to warn people not to look at me or the reflectors when I was using them as lights that powerful are retina killers. I've also used those lights to bounce off a ceiling to kill shadow when photographing still objects and have used a puny (?) 1 million candlepower handheld spotlight along with a small reflector for other shots. Spare, fully charged batteries for the lights are a must if the shoot is going to be a long one as the duration of the batteries is only 1/2 to 3/4 of an hour.

 

One thing using halogen light, it's versitile and only limited by your imagination. Have fun with it!

 

Ernie

[kargen 0]

We use foam-core quite a bit in the studio. We buy 4'x8' sheets that are black on one side and white on the other. These can be used to bounce light into and back at the subject. We also use a plastic material that comes in rolls to make a diffusion screen for lights. We always use a kind of white plastic. THe thicker the plastic the softer the light shining though it will be. We usually make frames out of 1"x1" boards and cut them to the length we need to make rectangular difussion screens that fit our needs. For lighting entire room scenes we will use two pieces of foam-core and one of the diffusion screens to make a triangle and will put the lights inside. The white sides of the foam-core face in. Doing that we can either bounce the light off the cards and though the diffusion for really soft light or can point it at the diffusion for a little harder light. Either way setting it up like a triangle keeps unwanted light from bleeding into the shot.

 

If your lights won't adjust in intensity there is a pretty easy way to get them to be not so bright on your subject without having to back them up. You can buy some fine wire mesh sheets and cut them to size to fit in front of the light. Use how ever many of these you need to knock down the intensity of your light. The more layers you use the less light will get through. The screen can get really hot so handle with care!

 

Also be carefull placing the plastic material you use in front of lights. If you place it to close it will melt.

[Sturgeon_Catcher 0]

Now I've got some ciphering to do.

 

The sunlight was bad this I knew. I wanted to start this thread to see if I couldn't finally get that garden photographed. It is a bad spot. I like the multilple flashes and will try that first.

 

I have several spots so will try them as well and as soon as it is partially overcast will burn away.

 

The computer programs will take a little more time. Plan to go there as well.

 

I'm going to try and do a smaller portion of it this day with multilple flashes and see what I get.

 

The light in this garden is virtually constant. Almost none. That is what makes it such a cool garden in both senses. Cool to temperature but also a true shade garden. Allows planting of special plants. The mention of seasons was observed. Plenty of light in the winter as the deciduous tree that provides the shade is naked.

But, no plants in winter.

 

By the way, this is a critical element in the construction of a rock garden. The rock has to talk. The structure of the garden must have balance and symetry without plants. Most rock gardens rely upon plants for balance and in the off season is not very appealing.

Thankx for the thoughts and will post new pics shortly.

later

FRed