Outdoor Photography. Chiz Dakin

the pictures don’t work out, and dilutes the satisfaction when they do.

      With most things in the outdoor life, the most interesting place is around the edge of the comfort zone. You don’t improve your rock-climbing grade by trying to jump straight from VS to E6, but by testing yourself on a few HVS routes, consolidating at that grade, and then progressing again to E1. It’s the same with photography. Think about what you’re trying to achieve with your shots and where you’d particularly like them to improve. Then think about moderate, manageable steps that you might take to bring about these improvements.

      A decent automatic camera will give you good results most of the time, but some understanding of the process helps you recognise when you need to take charge. This book will focus on understanding rather than ‘technique’. It will use as little technical language as possible, but won’t shy away from it when it is necessary. Essential concepts will be explained as clearly as possible. The basics of photography are not complicated, and certainly not rocket science.

      To be an integrated part of your outdoor activity, photography must be light, fast and simple. This does not mean being casual or sloppy. Like the rest of your outdoor life, the more you put in, the more you get back. In photography, much of this input requires an investment of nothing more than time and thought. And much of this can be done when you’re indoors.

      In the end, it’s your outdoor life and they’re your photographs. What you want from your pictures isn’t necessarily what we want, or anyone else wants. Everything in this book is based on experience, and it works for us, but that doesn’t always mean it will work for you. This much we can say: it will be worth trying.

      1 BEYOND POINT AND SHOOT

      Alpine paraglider, Chamonix (Chiz) Being able to react quickly to changing light or unpredictable action is great, but this still requires a bit more than just ‘point and shoot’

      First Thoughts

      What’s wrong with point and shoot?

      It sounds like such a great idea. You point, you shoot, you get the picture. It sounds like exactly what we want – light, fast and simple.

      The first thing wrong is that ‘point and shoot’ misses out one essential first step. It really should be ‘see, point and shoot’. This may seem obvious, but it does no harm to state it. Seeing is a vital part of photography. Seeing is the main reason why we want to take pictures in the first place. And there’s more to seeing than just going around with your eyes open. You need your mind open too.

      So something you see makes you want to take a picture … But what, exactly? Maybe you come around a corner on a trail and a wonderful view suddenly opens up before you. The natural impulse is to grab the camera and get a picture. But if you take a second to think about a few possibilities, you’ll almost certainly get a better picture.

      What is it that makes the view so wonderful anyway? If you’ve been walking through a gloomy forest for five hours, almost any open view might seem pretty wonderful, but the photograph can’t directly convey your state of mind. A series of photographs might tell the story, but a single shot can only show the view you saw (and it doesn’t always manage that!).

      Fell End and Pendle Hill, Lancashire (Jon) It’s often helpful to ask why you are taking a particular shot

      What you could do is use the last few trees to frame the view, which will at least give an impression of the way the view opened up. However, it may be obvious that by going on a bit further, you’ll open it up even more. Of course, if you then decide that the framed view would have been better, you might have to backtrack.

      There may be a fabulous array of peaks filling the skyline while the foreground is pretty boring. In this case you might frame the picture so it concentrates just on the peaks. On the other hand, there could be a deep green valley drawing the eye towards those peaks, in which case you might frame the shot quite differently.

      At any moment there’s a huge range of possibilities. You can give a group of people identical, totally automatic, cameras and send them on the same walk and you will never get two pictures exactly alike. Even if you never think about focusing or exposure – assuming that the camera can handle all that – every photograph you take is the result of a choice. Thinking about that choice, rather than just reacting and letting it happen, will make your photos a lot stronger. Why are you taking this shot? What is it you want to say? What kind of picture do you want it to be?

      No doubt someone, somewhere, has estimated how many photographs have been taken since the very first one in the 1840s. Undoubtedly the number is many billions. And in every single instance, there was a reason for taking the shot. However, all too often, it’s far from obvious afterwards what that reason was. And one of the principal reasons for this is that, all too often, the photographer was none too clear about it in the first place.

      Another basic problem is that ‘point and shoot’ seems to promise that what you see is what you will get. In fact it never is. This is not an exaggeration but the simple truth. What you see through the viewfinder, or on the LCD screen, is not the same as what you see when you look directly at your scene or subject. The real world hardly ever packages itself in neat little rectangles.

      Reality has four dimensions and a photograph has only two. The third and fourth dimensions – depth and time – can only be suggested in a photograph. This might seem to be a limitation, but in fact it may be a strength. 3D movies may be almost commonplace and 3D TV might just catch on, but 3D photography has been around a lot longer without ever really getting anywhere; it was more popular a hundred years ago than it is now. Similarly, movies and video have taken their place alongside still photography without ever threatening to replace it. Photography is irreplaceable; in its ability to crystallise an instant, it appeals to something deep within us.

      So photography still matters – and isn’t that why you’ve bought this book? But to get the best from our photography, we need to think photographically. That doesn’t necessarily mean becoming obsessed with shutter speeds and f-stops. Suppose that the camera is clever enough to get that side of things right; much of the time, it probably is. But the camera can’t decide what to point at or when to shoot. Far from being trivial, these are absolute fundamentals of photography.

      What to Point at

      Knowing why you’re taking the shot is the first step. Knowing what you actually want in the shot is the next. What you leave out is just as important as what you keep in. This is where you really have to use your eyes properly, whether you’re looking at the scene directly or through the viewfinder.

      Wadi Rum, Jordan (Jon) Very different results from two views of the same tree taken less than four minutes apart (timing recorded by the camera)

      Seeing is something most of us take for granted. That’s part of the problem. Seeing is more complex than we realise; 20:20 vision doesn’t mean you see everything. It’s well worth thinking a little more deeply about how we see.

      Our eyes work in a dynamic way. In fact what we ‘see’ is controlled by the brain as much as by the eyes. This gives us the ability to see ‘wide-angle’ and ‘telephoto’ views almost simultaneously. When you spot a friend in a crowded room, your eye does not physically zoom in on them. It’s your brain that does the zooming. We all have a ‘mental zoom lens’ that – most of the time – operates without our even being aware of it.

      Wave, Isle of Harris (Chiz) What you leave out is just as important as what you keep in; simplicity is often the key