landscapes | Dan Bailey's Adventure Photography Blog

June Special – Save 20% On My BEHIND THE LANDSCAPE eBook

Posted on June 3, 2019 by DanJune 3, 2019

Now that June is finally here, we can pretty much count summer as being officially underway. For us Northern Hemisphere photographers, summer means bountiful landscape photography sessions and long days exploring outdoors with our cameras.

For you Southern Hemisphere people, you’re certainly not left out of the fun, it’s just that your days are much shorter and cooler right now. However, that’s hardly an excuse to shy away from landscape photography, there are endless opportunities for photographic creativity no matter where you live.

To celebrate the arrival of June and inspire you to get out and shoot your best work, I’m running a month-long special on my BEHIND THE LANDSCAPE eBook.

When you purchase the book, simply use discount code BTLJUNE in your shopping cart and you’ll get this comprehensive how-to guide at a special price.

In BEHIND THE LANDSCAPE, I take you behind-the-scenes during the creation of sixteen of my favorite landscape images I’ve made in the past five years. For each example, I walk you through the entire process. I let you look over my shoulder as I outline the exact gear I had with me, the specific concept I had in mind, my creative approach, potential problems I faced, and how I solved them.

I describe my compositional techniques, my lens choice, how I used the light, specific exposure information and any other details that went into the process of bringing the image to life. I also highlight the types of challenges that you might face when shooting a similar style of imagery, and I show you how to overcome them so that you can walk away with a great photograph.

For every single image, I walk you through my own creative and technical process as I work through each of these steps. I evaluate each scene, describe the camera gear I had with me, analyze the color, quality and direction of the light, and tell you my specific approach for how I plan to capture each scene. Then I describe in detail my exact method of execution for turning my creative ideas into a successful image.

At the end of each example, I give you my final analysis for the image and describe the specific elements that I feel give the shot exceptional visual power. In addition, I share my final thoughts, reflecting on the personal, creative or introspective journey that led to the image.

Finally, I leave you with three takeaways. These are specific tips, techniques, compositional methods and ideas that directly contributed to the success of the image. The idea is that you can identify the methods that worked worked, so that you can apply to your own photography.

Years of Professional Insight at Your Disposal

Not only does BEHIND THE LANDSCAPE teach you the essential steps towards creating stronger images, it provides real-world inspiration that will motivate you to get out and try these techniques on your own.

Most of the photos in the book were shot in locations that are accessible to anyone with a basic level of fitness, and none of them required any special camera gear aside from what would be considered a normal outdoor photography kit. This means you can use these tips with your own subjects.

I’m confident that you’ll get a lot out of BEHIND THE LANDSCAPE. It’s packed full full of useful information and and inspiration and written so that you can start applying these techniques right away in your own photography.

You can download the eBook here, and remember to use discount code BTLJUNE to get your special 20% discount.

Terry Bourk

I have read you new book “Behind the Landscape.” I could not “put it down” meaning that I kept at it because each photo you presented/analyzed was interesting and informative. I am trying to develop an eye for composition (both the scene and the light).

Thank you! The examples you present and the suggestions are very helpful. Purple Mountains, McKinley River and Wonder Lake are fascinating.

I loved Behind the Landscape!

Callum Rankine

Much like Dan’s images, this book can be enjoyed on a variety of levels. Dan shows a series of landscapes and takes us behind the scenes to see how he created them.

Now you could just simply follow suite and create similar images - but where would be the fun in that? Instead I saw the book more as a jumping off point for further exploration in landscape photography. This is a book that will make you *think* about your photography and that is never a bad thing. One to read, think about, and read again. Highly recommended!

Follow @Danbaileyphoto

Why I Love Shooting with the Fujifilm XF35mm f/2 Lens

Posted on May 28, 2019 by DanJune 18, 2019

My first lens was a manual focus 50mm f/1.4, and from day one, it was true love. It went everywhere with me, attached to my shiny, chrome body Nikon FM2. We shot everything together, mostly because that was the only lens I had.

Then I bought a 28mm wide angle, and shortly after, a 70-210mm. I was drawn to those lenses because they showed the world in very different ways than my eye saw it. As my style developed with action and adventure photography, this “normal lens” view fell out of favor and my poor 50mm got shoved into my camera bag where it sat, neglected and rarely used for a long time.

However, as the years have passed and my style continues to evolve, my excitement for the “normal lens” has been rekindled, and I’ve come to see just what a versatile tool the regular old normal lens is. Today, my normal lens of choice is the little tiny Fujifilm XF35mm f/2. If you look inside my camera bag, you’ll see that my 35 f/2 is fixed to my main X Series camera body much of the time.

I’m just wild about the form factor of this sexy little lens, and I’ve fallen in love with that “normal view” once again. Over time, I’ve learned how to use it to its full potential.

Normal lenses are called normal because they see he world in a similar perspective and angle of view as the human eye. The beauty of this kind of lens is that if you get in close, it will blur the background and make your subjects stand out beautifully against a soft wash of color. This makes it an amazing choice for shooting portraits or details out in the world.

Move in even closer and your depth of field becomes extremely shallow. This gives you an ideal effect for closeup photography and shooting still life subjects. It won’t get you as close a macro lens, just close enough to isolate your subject matter against a very soft background.

Back up a little bit and you’ll show more of the environment. Not too much, just enough to help flesh out the story of your subject. I love shooting landscapes with my little 35 lens, because it allows me to narrow down the world and create a nice, concise and focused scene.

Normal lenses do have one big limitation, they’re not always the best choice at medium and longer distances. They simply can’t bring distant subject in very close. Also, since depth of field begins to widen out, you end up with what I call the classic “postcard look,” where the subject matter is all presented in the same, flat perspective.

For this reason, when shooting subjects that are far away, normal lenses tend to produce rather amateur looking imagery. This makes them tricky to use for shooting adventure, sports and events, because further than about 20-30 feet, you can’t isolate your subjects from the background anymore. Everything ends up being in focus.

However, if you’re able to move in relatively close, you start to get those shallow depth of field benefits back. And you can always shot how they relate inside the bigger world. This is how I use them for landscapes and adventure; as I said, I try to create a nice focused scene that tells an abbreviated story of the greater environment.

The ease of shooting with a lens like this is that it shows the world in a very familiar view. It sees the scene as your own eyes see it, without distracting you with all that stuff in the peripheral areas of your vision. Your approach with normal lenses is pretty much “look, see and shoot.”

In today’s photography world, fixed lenses are often cast aside in favor of zoom lenses, which obviously allow you to change your focal length and adjust your framing without moving your feet.

However, I like moving my feet. I also love the simplicity of having one look with prime lenses like the Fujifilm XF35mm f/2, and I believe that it forces you to work your creative muscles a bit more. By removing any possibilities for changing focal length, your compositional and framing skills get a better workout, and you limit the number of choices you have to make when you’re shooting.

In addition, I feel that if you use a fixed lens on a regular basis, you’ll really get to know how it sees the world. This can dramatically increase your confidence and efficiency with composition. In the end, there’s something really cool about having a tried and true piece of photography gear that you know so well.

The Fuji system in general perfectly matches my fundamental “fast and light” approach to photography, and the little 35 f/2 fits right into the kit. For a guy who often depends so much on wide angles and zooms, I’m sometimes a little surprised at how much I love this little normal prime, but I guess that’s how love works.

Even if you don’t shoot Fuji, I encourage you to embrace the challenge of using normal lenses and explore the creative benefits they can offer you.

Follow @Danbaileyphoto

A Magical Photography Evening with Incredible Light

Posted on April 29, 2019 by DanApril 29, 2019

This past Saturday was a total bluebird day. We’re talking sunup to sundown, with not a single cloud in the sky. No haze, no moisture, none of those thin, whispy feathers that sometimes creep into the atmosphere during the afternoon. Nope. Nothing but solid blue across the entire expanse above.

After soaking up a few hours of sunshine on my bike, I came home, grabbed my flying stuff and went up to shoot some evening aerials. With the almost certain promise of incredible light on the mountains, I was quite optimistic that I was going to get at least a few worthy shots.

As it turned out, Saturday night ended up being one of the most magical evenings for aerial photography I’ve had in months.

I went wheels-up at around 8:45 pm and climbed straight east towards the Chugach Mountains, specifically to the area around Whiteout Glacier. I knew that some friends of mine were skiing the Eklutna Traverse, which crosses this area, so I figured I’d go see if I could find them.

After photographing a few of the taller peaks at the end of Eagle River Valley for about fifteen minutes, turned east and reached the confluence of Eagle and Whiteout Glaciers. It was right around this point when the light started getting really good, splashing bold pink light on the peaks and west facing snow fields.

I spotted ski tracks pretty quickly, and eventually saw a tent that was set up in one of the high bowls. I circled around the area for a good half hour, snapping about a hundred frames before the sun finally dropped below the horizon and the pink light faded.

Between the gorgeous contrast of pink against shadowed blue, the pillowy, snow-covered mountain faces and the massive cracks and crevasse fields, I had plenty of compositional options to work with. I shot with my XF50mm f/2 lens on my X-T3 the entire time, cranking out frame after frame of saturated, Veliva goodness, all the while, being amazed by the quality of the light.

The only thing I wished I had was warmer gloves. Although it had been 50 degrees in town, up here at 8,000 feet, the outside air temperature was only 10 degrees F, which seeped pretty quickly into my lightweight, Pearl Izumi cycling gloves, which are my favorite cool weather glove.

They’re awesome for 35-45 degrees in the wind. Not so much at 10 degrees. By the end of the evening, my right had was pretty cold and it took awhile for the screaming barfies to finally go away. Oh well. Live and learn. At least I got some pretty pictures.

I hope you had a great weekend as well. What did you shoot?