Capturing Vignettes
When I started out in landscape photography, I always wanted to grab the super wide angle shots of sweeping vistas, to just fit as much of what my eyes could see into my images. I still like to do that, for sure, but what I’ve actually come to enjoy more is what I like to call capturing vignettes. It requires taking a longer telephoto lens and picking out the scenes beyond. Let yourself be wow’d by the sweeping vista (that’s what will keep you going out for more hikes), and then start to look for the small details I’ll start with an example:
The photo above is one of my favorite photos that I’ve ever taken. At the end of a long day of hiking (9 hours!) with my wife and daughter in the Thorsmork region of Iceland, after dinner and shortly before I headed back into our little hut to put my daughter to sleep for the night, I decided to explore the area immediately around our accommodations with my 70mm-350mm lens. I wasn’t expecting to get any amazing photos, especially after the day-long hike with amazing views that I had just photographed. But the lighting was good and I wanted to see what I could find.
The photo has some distracting elements - some shadows that are too dark, there are a few elements I would have preferred to crop out of the shot; it’s not a “perfect” picture. But what I love about it is the proportion of the scene and that stark separation from foreground and background. I love that the small peak in the center right is clearly the subject of the photo, despite being set against a much higher peak. Below is the same scene but zoomed out. It’s a nice image, but zooming in on the ‘vignette’ just makes for a much more successful shot, in my opinion.
While shooting zoomed out at 70mm, the geometry of the light hitting the sides of these peaks is what originally drew me in, and I wanted to get a sort of “big brother, little brother” type of shot. The whole view doesn’t have the best lighting (the upper left of the image is kind of meh), but when you zoom in on the vignette, you can dial in on a composition that has great lighting throughout.
Here’s another ‘vignette’ from that Iceland trip that I’m really happy with:
This was shot at a full 350mm zoom. Nature and whoever built this little farmhouse did most of the work for me - this person lives in an amazing location. But this was a tiny part of a much larger view that I could see form the top of a low mountain with a 360 view. The white house in the field of brown and green originally caught my eye, and when I zoomed in and was able to compose this image that shows such immense scale towering over the house, I was elated.
Lastly, below is an image I was able to capture in the White Mountains in New Hampshire on our first family trip after my daughter was born. We hiked a quick trail up to a viewpoint called Artist’s Bluff, and while the view and the weather was amazing (see my other post about photographing the weather), I was having trouble composing an image that I was happy with. Out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed some movement and discovered a cablecar in operation that served a ski resort, and watched as it disappeared into the clouds. A lot of shots and patience for just the right cloud conditions later, and I captured my favorite image from the trip:
And below is the original sweeping view I was trying my best to capture, with the red box showing what I ended up zooming into with my 350mm lens. By the way, the weather was crazy and those clouds were moving FAST because everything was so windy. I can’t emphasize enough how important having a tripod is when trying to capture those telephoto shots!
So, after taking in an amazing view (and take your time! Enjoy it!), look for the smaller scenes within it. Here are the things I’ve trained my eye to see:
Areas of great lighting. Perhaps the view as a whole doesn’t have the best light, but a certain part of it does.
Areas of great composition. Look for small areas of repeating elements, parallel lines or balanced weight.
Look at those built elements! Sometimes we get upset that our beautiful view of nature is blocked by something humans made, but often if you zoom into them and treat them as a subject, you can get some great shots of manmade structures surrounded by nature..
