7 Ways to Improve Your Outdoor Photography with Ian Shive, Chris Burkard, and John Greengo

Hey, I'm Kyle. Today. I want to share a bit of what I've learned from three legendary photographers to hopefully help you improve your adventure photography. Mistake number one, lack of preparedness. Despite all of these projects, all of these assignments, I have a warmup period. That first day, I feel rusty. I'm not thinking about the right things. I'm missing the technical notes. Maybe I'm not too pleased in my compositions. I've got a filter in the shot. Even on the creative live shoot when we were out in North Cascades, I looked at some of my images when I got back and I hadn't even noticed that I had some vignetting happening in my lens. Mistakes happen to everyone. They're normal and they're a natural part of the process. It's a lot easier when you make most of them closer to home. All right, mistake number two is feeling discouraged that everything's already been shot. Here's John Greengo explaining why this isn't as big of a hurdle as you think it is, and that your perspective is unique. The way that you see the world, what you pick up on is different than everyone else. It was really, really fun working on the number of the tours and workshops that I've been on seeing what other people take, because it opens my mind. I didn't see that. Where did you go and get that photo? This is something that you get to bring to the table, your personal vision. All right, mistake number three is those awkward or inauthentic images. We've all done it where you're standing and looking at a beautiful view like this. Both Ian and Chris have a tip for how to handle this. One of the things I typically do is avoid eye level photography. I'm never shooting like this. You're never going to see me like that, because that's how most people experience the world, especially me because I'm average height. Average, a few person is seeing the world exactly like this. You want to show a new angle, a new perspective. The second you get a new perspective, people are going to be like, "Oh, that's a new way of seeing it. " It's the little subtle subconscious changes in your images that really can make them sing. I'm going to work from 16 to 35, get a sense of it, and I'm going to get higher up. I'm looking at the shape and the line. I love the fact that the lake is here and what it does is because it's a lighter color, it really separates the outline of her head, which is where most people will naturally look. They usually make eye contact or look sort of at where other people's head or their faces. If she turns her face a little more to the left, that's going to be one of the areas that you first connect with. Personally, I loved having people in my images, but having people, it's specific. If this person was wearing a very brightly colored jacket with a big swoosh on it, it might not feel as timeless, right? How do you do that? Shooting a lot of silhouettes, shooting in strong lighting scenarios. Where you see a photograph of a surfer and a green barrel and they're totally a silhouette, what does that do for the viewer? You're like, "I know that feeling. I know what it's like to be in that scenario, that warm California evening sun, offshores blowing. " You can relate to it, right? A lot of people can relate to this because they don't see a boy or a girl with like blonde hair or this or that or logos. They just see a subject there. It's easier for the viewer to put themselves into that person's shoes and emotionally relate to your images if the subject is not easily identifiable. All right. Tip number four, rushing. What I'm trying to do right now is shoot, figure out the different compositions, layers, and then I'm going to commit by bringing out my filters, bring out the tripod, and slow my process down. One of the great analogies that I think really describes the role of a landscape photographer is that of a painter. A painter has an empty blank canvas that they constantly add to. A landscape photographer doesn't have that luxury of picking and choosing what elements you have. As I'm moving around shooting and taking different frames, I'm taking elements out. I'm taking out a branch or a rock that might be distracting. I'm looking at all four corners of my frame, looking to see what different pieces I might want to remove because they're taking away from the symmetry or the overall look and feel of the composition that I'm trying to create. When you set up your shots, when you're setting up your landscape photos, you want to think about, what don't I need, unlike the painter who's trying to figure out what is it that I do need to make this the type of painting or the type of creation that I want to have.

The next mistake is not having a strategy for the scene that you're shooting. I've done it one of two ways, either over committing to something that I have in my head and walking past a handful of great opportunities for shots, or two, getting a little bit too bogged down in a specific shot that I come across and realizing that I'm not actually executing the actual creative vision that I went out with. CRISPR Card has some excellent advice, which is think editorially. We're not just thinking about square crops here, you guys. We're thinking about photographs that could be split down the middle as a spread, photographs that have enough room for sky. This is the editorial process, okay? This is understanding what it is magazines need and want, and also sending them variations. When I'd go to a place like this, I would shoot this as many ways and as many variations and as many crops as I can. Although you might be seeing this one photograph, that doesn't mean there's not a thousand others that are usable, right? Now, the concept there is just to siphon down the important ones to what you want to send and what ideally like give the best image of the place. Number six is a bonus. It's not really a mistake. It's really not knowing how to shoot in a specific environment. John Greengo's class has actually specific lessons for how to shoot with rivers and waterfalls, mountains, forests, different types of lighting environments, cloudy days versus bluebirds. Knowing ahead of time the different tools that you can apply to get the best shots out of the circumstances that you have. Each river kind of has its own unique character to it. Maybe it's a slow moving river. Maybe it's a fast. Maybe it's wide, narrow. It's going over waterfalls. Just kind of look for what's unique about those rivers, because there are so many different characteristics to them. Using those shutter speeds longer than one second, in many cases, to get that blur. And then look for surrounding elements that help frame the river in its place. I have a bit of a theory on what shutter speeds to use depending on the power of the waterfall. I found that in general, the more powerful the waterfall, the faster the shutter speed. I'm not as big a fan of huge waterfalls with really long shutter speeds. I mean, I like them to some degree, but I think in some cases to really show their power, you want a little bit faster of a shutter speed. Something like Niagara Falls, yes, it can look really good on a long shutter speed, but I think potentially a faster shutter speed might be a little bit better for it. It's one of those little tricks. When the water's not flowing very much, you can use a really long shutter speed and that kind of adds another element to it. Was shooting down in Mount Hood in Oregon. This was just fantastic because the sun was going down over the Pacific and there was these clouds over the mountain and over me, but there was this opening to the west. I knew that's where the sun could cut in and start bouncing the light off the bottom of the clouds. Those clouds, they not only look good in the photo, because they're adding another layer of texture, but they are a natural reflector bouncing light down onto the mountain. That's one of the reasons that we want some clouds in there, they are perfect natural reflectors. The last mistake that many adventure photographers, including myself, have made is not having a natural element that's easily identifiable. When I started to shoot a lot of stuff for magazines, I realized something pretty quickly, and it was a great piece of advice that one of my photo editors told me. He said, "I have photographs of every surfer and all the best waves in the world doing every maneuver," because they have a tour that goes to all these amazing waves. He's like, "I have those images. " He said, "When you send me a story or an article of a place, you traveled somewhere, maybe you traveled to Big Sur," wherever I went, he said, "If I can't identify that it's that location, why would I run it? Why would I print it? " I've had a ton of fun making this video. I hope you've enjoyed it. If you do provide some feedback, let me know which of these tips you like the most, which resonated with you, which maybe weren't that valuable. I'll see you guys next time.