Tips for Outdoor Photography
Taking pictures in the great outdoors is as fun as it is challenging sometimes. I have spent a lot of time hiking mountains and forests in the recent past and it inspired me to write this article about the ins and outs of this type of photography. Preparation and planning has become something of a mantra for me recently, not only in photography but in traveling and life as well. Shooting outdoors, you don’t really get a second chance if you forget something, so it is better to be prepared for all kinds of unexpected events.
Usually, my first task in preparation for photographing a hike is to make sure I have enough space on my SD cards. I have a camera with dual SD card slots and I find that extremely helpful for various reasons. First of all, it increases the space for the pictures I can store while shooting. However, recently I found an even more useful property of this setting: I set up in-camera for each exposure to be stored on each of the SD cards, in this way I have a back-up copy right in the camera while outside and it lessens my worry about losing pictures due to SD card failure. On my Nikon d7200 I find this setting by going Menu - Photo Shooting Menu - Role played by card in Slot 2 and choose Backup.
I make sure to charge the batteries the day before and I usually take two extra batteries with me, just in case. I prefer to travel light, so I usually use one lens on these outings. At the moment it is my Sigma 17-70mm 1:2.8-4 lens, which I love and is perfect for the purpose as it has a satisfying range of wide angle and zoom. And last, but not least, I take a waterproof cover for my camera case and a bag cover to prepare for any unexpected weather events.
As I mentioned in a previous article, I prefer to get in an early morning start with hikes and it is especially true if I am shooting, whether for myself or for someone else. For one, I love the morning lights and it’s one of my favorites to work with in post-production as well. And secondly, if there is any unexpected bad weather, it still gives me time to wait it out and get in more shots later on.
Once I am out and shooting, I usually have a shot-list in mind of all the details I want to photograph. This generally includes shots of the people I am with, wide angle and cropped shots of the surroundings, detail shots of the environment and any kind of atmospheric shots the scene lends itself to. I always use manual settings on my camera, but if you are not 100% confident with your ability to manipulate the settings or just want more time for composing and taking in the surroundings, I recommend choosing aperture priority. In this setting you decide how much blur you want in the background and the camera will take care of the shutter speed and ISO by itself. The drawback of this setting is that you may end up with unintentional effects in the picture, and sometimes the camera overcompensates for lack of light with a rather high ISO, making the picture extremely grainy. I would recommend that you experiment with the settings beforehand and see what you feel comfortable with and how you can achieve the effects that you want. Once outdoors, you might have to constantly change the settings based on whether you are out in the open, in the woods, shooting straight or upwards, landscapes or details etc. Be prepared that even if you have all these in mind, you will still end up some accidentally burnt out pictures, and that it okay. It happens to me too.
All in all, shooting outdoors can be an extremely satisfying and educational process. You learn to be prepared for the unexpected at every turn and use your camera in a way that it does what you want it to do. It will take some trial and error and probably many unusable pictures, but each of them will be a lesson learned along the way. I hope you get out there and take those shots and make sure to share the results in the comments.
