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Front Light

so often people can go to great locations. They're traveling around the world. Maybe they're on their vacation or they're on a photo shoot. But it really there's nothing. Nothing that makes up for using good light. You can have the greatest camera, the latest camera. You have spent a lot of money getting to a location, and I am actually stunned. Quite honestly. When I look into nature magazines or magazines that are often published around the world and see how awful the light is being used, it's like they must be on a dime that they've got to get the shot now and get out. But I am going to spend the time and a lot of my top colleagues are the same. They're gonna make sure they're using the best light possible. Often I work out of helicopters I've worked out of fixed wing aircraft and ultralights. Sometimes I climb high and look down anything to afford a different angle to the son and to the subject. And so what I've boiled down the following 30 40 minutes of dialogue is just showing yo...

u how various types of light work with subject and these air my own definitions. Many of my colleagues might come up with a different set of explanations, but I call this for one of a better term. Front lighting is when the sun is coming over my shoulder and aiming directly towards my subject and on in from an aerial perspective gives a beautiful layout of the subject, plus the shadow being cast. And I should say that I'm usually working in the margins of the day the from sunrise, probably from an hour before sunrise to an hour after sunrise and then again in the Conversely at sunset. It's an hour before sunset, all the way, its crew to an hour after sunset. So I'm using tripods. I'm using cable releases. I'm making sure my camera stable so I can get these beautiful, low light situations. So here's an aerial view of six shooters peak in Utah, and it's a very dynamic land formation, very unique land formation. And you can see the shadow really emphasizes that pyramidal shape of this beautiful monument, or butte. They should say this is one of the classic landscapes of all Patagonia. In fact, it is the mountain range that the Patagonian label was kind of uh, of modeled after this is Mount Fitzroy was named after the captain of the Beagle Darwin ship. It's a very beautiful, uh, upward thrust of, Ah, rock. It's around 12,000 feet. It's thesis. Other earn flank of the Andes and is a very difficult mountain to photograph, because most of the time it's surrounded in clouds directly to the west. Over an ice cap is 2000 miles of open ocean. So all of the trade winds come across the southern al Antic and slam into this beautiful mountain, actually, southern Pacific. Slam into this mountain. So on a very unusual calm day, I found a little tarn, a little mountain lake, and I'm reflecting it. But the light is coming over my shadow and, you know, bathing everything for just a few ephemeral moments in very soft pink light. Ah, half hour later, 20 minutes later, it became very contrast, e and flat. So it's really getting yourself in a situation and anticipating what's gonna happen. This is a sunset shot of Druid. This is a classic mountain in the French Alps, and again, at the other end of the day, it's the same way, using soft light, Direct light, very symmetrical mountain. Very calm conditions. You know, these air? You're seeing the best of 30 years of shooting quite honestly. And ah, I hope people appreciate the fact that most people that decide to go out and shoot landscapes aren't going to get this kind of light every day. Often you have tow work around what you're given in this next shot taken up at around 12,000 feet up in the California and ease this is called Dusty Basin. And that's Ah, beautiful mountain again. Light is coming down over my shoulder. I've lost view of where the sun is. You know, the sun is being, ah, obliterated by a ridge to the west, and I can only react to what the sun is doing. And I can't really predict how long that light is going to be up. So these air last few moments of the sunset. Beautiful summer conditions, and moments later, everything descended into twilight. I got a few shots of pastel colors and it went faded too dark. And then later that night, I photographed stars as they moved across sky. But I love this kind of light front lighting rarely am I actually photographing landscapes with this kind of light? I'm usually photographing, um, poor traits of animals or people as you'll see in a few moments. But from that aerial perspective, you can see how each ridge is casting a shadow, which distinguishes it from one ridge to the next throughout that composition, and this is a part of the Alaska Range in central Alaska again, aerial perspective allows that front lighting to really play out that overlapping ridge effect. This is a shot that I shot for the book migrations I worked on that at least 13 years ago. 14 years ago, I pre visualized what this shot would look like. Prior to leaving Seattle, I flew down to Jackson, Wyoming. I rented a helicopter. I took a biologist that worked on the National Elk Range with me to monitor the Elks behavior and up we went over the herd in the last half hour of direct winter sun, and it was a photograph. Obviously, as you look at this about shadows, not so much about the very animals themselves, and it's interesting how the long shadows actually create the effect that you're looking at llamas from South America rather than help themselves because the shadows become exaggerated. But this is the shot that I previews allies. I wasn't just flying around and just happened to get lucky. It was all orchestrated in my mind, and I knew is long as I had the right platform, which was, in this case, a helicopter and the right atmosphere conditions, which was winter and bright sunshine. I could execute the photo but front lighting while working on that book migrations. It was really an abstraction of the beautiful patterns of nature and how and patterns are simply the replication of similar shape. So in this aerial view, it looks at first glance to be a flock of the ordinary white duck that is commonly seen throughout Asia and Europe. But as you look at the shadows of the birds, the shadows actually revealed the true identity being flamingos. And it's again front lighting, the shadows air rising above the subjects as the sun is setting behind me. And so is again being aware of the light. And what the light will do to the subject is key for most of the photos that was photographing for that book migration. So it's it's partly taking advantage of the moment, and a lot of it is pre planning, pre visualizing what would happen to a Joshua tree at sunset versus middle of the day versus at sunrise? And it's, you know, after a while you get a feel for it. It's certainly an important element of the way I work because I want my work to be known for the power of the moment and the power of how the light is taking that moment. And I think a lot of people have the view that, oh, I want to become a nature or wildlife photographer or purchase just and think. It's got to be easy as long as you have the right equipment and you got the time, let's do it. But it's really about putting the hours into it and getting the moment right. This shot of a wolf up in the Lamar Valley of Wyoming is after five days of looking for these wolves, and suddenly there's one that pops up close enough to the road that I could actually get out a long lens and photograph it. But can you imagine? This is fairly bright. Conditions is about four o'clock in the afternoon and around five o'clock in March, it set the sunsets, so it's still pretty hot light. It absolutely necessitated that I approached and photographed this animal with the sun over my shoulder. Can you imagine the same shot as a side view? Half that animals face would be in really dark shadows. So often I've watched class are students in the class I'm teaching walk up to the subject and they're so enthralled with the animal or the tree or whatever the subject would be. They're not really looking at the the way the sun is really revealing itself on that subject, and I'll often stop him and say, Look it, step back, Look at the subject. Is there not a better view if you walk 20 feet left or right rather than the way you're approaching subject and suddenly they start to take stock, all of us really reacted. We see a wolf, for instance. This may be the first time you've ever seen a wolf or a bison or whatever subject. Maybe you get so enthralled with the animal, you failed and really take stock about the light and how you could just slightly walk left or right or even around as you'll see in a few minutes and make a much more compelling image. So that shot of the wolf absolutely required having the sun right at my back, otherwise dark shadows and is no less true with these monkeys. Thes baboons in Kenya. You know, I had the ability to move all the way around these animals, and it's a complex. Seen. There's the mother baboon nursing the baby and on and is grooming the baby and blah, blah, blah blah. But it's a very complex shot. Can you imagine if now this composition is fractured by light and dark, it would really be too complex to look at. It would be a fuzzy image, so to speak, in the concept here is speaking of fuzzy, there's nothing more fuzzier than a baby king penguins. These air great, uh, subjects to photograph because quite honestly, they just walked right up to you and peck at your lens if you would let them. So this is a 16 millimeter wide angle. The sun is coming up. I got up a couple hours before got off the ship that you see in the distance with my fellow passengers worked my way around this vast rectory of King penguins on South Georgia Island. But it's about the light. That's the key element. I like the composition high horizon, but it's about the light filling the frame with that main subject right in the middle. Normally put the subject off the center, left or right, but it's such a symmetrical image. I'm accentuating that composition and the light complements the subject. This is one of my favorite memories. These are Emperor penguins, photographed at 2 30 in the morning in the month of November on the frozen Weddell Sea in Antarctica. And so, at 2 30 in the morning, the sun is starting a rise above the horizon and you get this very soft, beautiful light. And again, it's all about placement of the subject in our relationship to where I'm sitting. So, you know, with Emperor Penguins, the challenge is to get a clear shot of them because, quite honestly, they're so interested in humans, they'll walk right up in the press, their feathers right into your lens. So you gotta actually reach and kind of move them away from the front of your lands to get a clear shot of something that maybe nothing more than 10 feet away, which is what was happening is a beautiful our king motion that the Emperor penguins do imprinting their unique vocal sounds to the baby. And you imagine if there's 10,000 pairs of Emperor penguins that all look identical, that baby is going to be confused. And so there's this evolution of behavior that imprints the sound of these adults on the baby, and at that moment I'm getting the shot. It had to be right with light, and so I went from left or right and just maximize the flatness of the light so there would be no shadow detail. And all these animal portrait share the same way. Soft, direct light. I really, uh, find it difficult to look at portrait's of people when they're crossed by shadows of the nose or if they're deep set eyes. I know that Vincent talked about lighting over the weekend about how deep set eyes large features on the face often create channels. Here is to Weddell Seal pups, photographed last November in in south Georgia Island and again, direct soft light, no shadow detail So it's, you know, with, uh, subjects photographed on remote islands in the ocean or in Antarctica, or in the Arctic, where there's never been a human population that hunt the animals. They simply have no fear of humans. These little was Dale Seals were interacting just, uh, eight feet away without even reacting to my presence. So that allows me, then, to approach the subject, maximizing the softness of the like. I could have been anywhere. I could've got my feet wet and backlit these animals, and we'll talk about backlighting in a minute for right now. Front lighting. Soft, soft light. This is a captive Siberian tiger, the largest predatory cat on the earth, and it was photographed right at sunset in the Northern Hemisphere. Beautiful light. You can imagine those eyes, which are really integral in making the power of the moment, that emotional impact on the viewer, you, the audience. If there was harsh shadows, it would be all over. It just would look very, very distracting. So that's front lighting, and often, when I've worked on tribal people throughout the world, dark skin people in noonday light. It's a very difficult subject to expose for So with tribes along the Elbe River in Ethiopia. I tended to work early in the morning and late in the afternoon the sun gets lower. It would pick up the textures of the skin, the textures of the mud. That's part of the adornment in the hair. And that was the best light toe work with tribal people, as you can see here. So soft, low light, no different. Whether I was photographing a wild animal or some of these beautiful cultures along the Omo River. It's really the same source of light that I'm using. I travel light, and so I'm not using reflectors. I'm not using fill in flash. I am using the natural daylight and it's the best. Aiken Dio. I have used reflectors of reflectors before, but they're not the kind of round ones that you would purchase in camera stores. It really is maximizing the amount of equipment I can bring in and the weight that can carry in a car or ah, Land Rover. So often I'm using reflective light off the earth or white shirted assistance just to stand close to my subject. I'll make do with what I've got, but mostly I'm using the sun itself. In this particular case, uh, this gentleman and his companion were being illuminated by the direct sun, but filtered through smoke in a campfire. And so it gives it a beautiful Bettina to the skin of this gentleman. The foreground. It softens the light. And again, it was critical to be towards the sun.