Moody Sandias
The Sandias are a mountain range that lay to the east of Alberquerque, and I just happen to have an amazing view of them from my roof. “Sandia” means watermelon, so named because they turn a bright pink/orange color just before sunset.
On this evening, the clouds and the light mixed to create this spectacular view.
Landscape photography is a very broad term that is open to personal interpretation. Most people will agree that a landscape photograph shows an outdoor scene with no humans or animals in view. There are several types of landscapes: sunrises, sunsets, forests, deserts. Then there are the -scapes: nightscapes, seascapes, cityscapes, streetscapes. “Scape” means “an extensive view”, which could basically mean anything.
The original landscapes were paintings, but the first landscape photograph was taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1826, and because of technical restraints, this photo took him 8 hours. Photographers were forced to work with non-moving subjects. Because of long exposure times, any movement would be blurry. This was over a decade before Louis-Jaques-Mandé Daguerre developed the *Daguerreotype.
Landscape photographers face a few challenges when it comes to exposure. Our eyes can sense a large dynamic range, which is the measurement between maximum and minimum values (or whitest whites and blackest blacks). Even with the incredible cameras that we have today, their sensors still don’t have the range that our eyes do. This creates a problem when photographing a landscape against a sky. A choice is made, exposing for one or the other. You might capture the stunning blue of the sky, but your foreground will be too dark. Or you can expose for the foreground and see only white for the sky. This is where HDR comes to play. This is actually combining 2 different exposures into one image, correctly exposing both the foreground and the sky. Some photographers also use an ND (neutral density) filter, which darkens the top of the lens so you can expose for both.
Most photographers use wide angle lenses for landscape photography. I typically prefer to use a longer focal length for mine. Landscapes are some of my very favorite photographs. They are a fun challenge for me and I love the final images that I can create.