Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2018 i Outdoor Photographer

Keeping Your Photos Safe Learn the essential strategies and storage solutions to protect your photo library. Assignments Sharpen your skills and share your best shots in our weekly “Assignments” photo challenges. Submit your images that fit the week’s theme—you may be our next Assignment winner. Nature’s Colors Photo Contest Submit your best images that showcase the beautiful colors of the natural world. Prize packages include generous cash awards, photo gear and publication of your image. Deadline is December 1. Tip of the Week Available on our website—or delivered directly to your inbox—our free “Tip of the Week” provides shooting and processing techniques to sharpen your photography skills. Sign up today. Connect With Us Get the latest news and be inspired by great photos from the Outdoor Photographer community. Newsletter Subscribe…

In the months before announcing its new Z series full-frame mirrorless system, Nikon put the Z 7 camera and Mount Adapter FTZ in the hands of select Nikon Ambassadors to test pre-production models. At the time of this writing, the final production models have yet to ship, but we talked to two of the Ambassadors who had advance access to the camera—wildlife photographer Michelle Valberg and landscape and night photographer Adam Woodworth—about their experiences and initial impressions working with the Z 7 and Mount Adapter FTZ with their F mount lenses. NIKON Z 7 FOR WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHY For Valberg, one of the biggest advantages is the silent shooting that’s possible with mirrorless systems. The Z 7 can shoot silently at up to 9 fps. “This is a whole different experience…

Nearly every October, I journey into the San Juan Mountains of southwest Colorado to bask in the warm days and crisp, cool nights of fall, and to find that quiet inner peace that a moment of high country autumn light and shimmering aspen gold can provide to the soul. While the San Juan Mountains offer some of the most famous fall vistas in all of photography, I now look more for lesser-known scenes than the iconic autumn locations that draw so many photographers to these mountains. On a cold, rainy Friday evening in mid-October, I drove up to Molas Pass near Silverton, Colorado, parked along a forest road and slept in the back of my truck. As the rain continued all night heavily, I slept restlessly, wondering if the Saturday…

“Winters in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, are typically cold, wet and cloudy,” says Connor Stefanison. “To escape the gloomy weather, my family often heads up into the local mountains in search of bright, snowy conditions. Vancouver has three local mountains with ski resorts and snowshoe trails, each offering a different experience. “On this day, my family and I went snowshoeing on Mt. Hollyburn. I always bring my camera when I go snowshoeing because there are often nice opportunities for landscapes and images of common ravens and gray jays. This image was made at the top of Hollyburn as one of the ravens walked along in front of a row of mountain hemlock trees. What I like about this image is that it would still hold up fairly well as a…

“At the most basic artistic level,” James Kay confesses, “I’ve always preferred black-and-white compositions to color.” In his article “The Bridge To Black & White,” Kay explores what makes a great black-and-white photograph, how he identifies images in his own library as candidates for conversion, and the creative concepts that are part of his conversion process. “By eliminating color,” he observes, “the image is distilled to its elemental components of line, shape, form and tonality, with only black, white, gray and the contrast between them.” While Kay provides the basics of converting to black-and-white, Jason Bradley takes a deeper dive into the process in his article “Converting To Black & White In Lightroom Classic.” Adobe made changes to Lightroom Classic CC earlier this year that rearranged key black-and-white tools. “I…

Polar Bear In Black And White By Elissa Title “Our captain had already turned the ship around from Karl XII Oya when our guide came knocking on our cabin doors—there was a polar bear. Standing on the bow of the ship, my hopes of getting a good photograph were diminishing. Suddenly, our guide said, ‘OK, let’s try with the zodiacs now.’ Just like that, the entire crew lowered the zodiacs, and less than five minutes later, we were racing into the wind. For nearly an hour, we crouched low in the zodiacs photographing the bear from a distance I never imagined possible.” See more of Elissa Title’s work at elissatitle.myportfolio.com. Breaking Light By Joshua Moore “My wife and I were visiting Mt. Mitchell in western North Carolina when a storm…

Owing to an inherently mechanical nature, a camera (be it film or digital) essentially produces raw images that, on their own, are rarely able to adequately communicate the enigmatic complexities and expressive nuances of a subsequently crafted fine art photograph. Post-camera image manipulation has always been a basic tenant of the photography process. And for me personally, a particularly illuminating and memorable demonstration of that reality helped to reinforce my basic understanding of, and approach to, the concept of photographic visualization. Several years ago, through the generosity of my dear friend Kim Weston, I was afforded a rare opportunity to actually hold (in my own two hands while visually inspecting) an original 8- x 10-inch negative that his grandfather Edward Weston had produced. And, by the way, it was no…

Location Encompassing over 17,000 acres, Dolly Sods is located within the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia’s Grant, Randolph and Tucker Counties. The area is divided into the Dolly Sods Wilderness Area and, in the northeast corner, the Dolly Sods Scenic Area. One of the most frequently photographed areas in the northern section is next to the Bear Rocks Preserve, managed by the Nature Conservancy. Forest Service Road 75 runs through the heart of this area along the Allegheny Front and the Eastern Continental Divide. Access to this area can be made using Forest Service Road 19 from either Tucker County (western side) at Linville or from Grant County (eastern side) just south of Petersburg. These roads are unpaved and rough in many spots. They’re not plowed in the winter,…

I still remember the moment, many years ago, when Photoshop first introduced Black & White adjustment layers. Prior to its release, I read all about this feature and found it amazing that I would soon have the ability to create new black-and-white images from my existing color files without affecting the original image. I had dabbled in black-and-white film photography before the days of Photoshop, but never to a serious degree because I always preferred to capture my landscape images in full color. As soon as I installed the new version of Photoshop, I immediately dove in. Since I was already familiar with adjustment layers, it didn’t take long to get up to speed. Once I became proficient at making these new black-and-white conversions, I created a folder of my…

Looking at black-and-white imagery means viewing the world around us through a different prism. When color is absent, we’re left with the opportunity to experience attributes of a subject or the details of a setting more intimately. Shapes, tones, patterns and textures become the central focus of a photograph, and we’re unburdened by how colors blend, contrast or enhance the experience. Things become simpler, or, as I like to think of it, being biased toward the style: black-and-white is more to the point. Of course, seeing images through this “different prism” is quite another thing than crafting them. When crafting black-and-white files—more specifically, when we’re developing RAW files—we need to think about color. Wait! What? Shouldn’t we just move our Saturation slider to the left to remove the color and…