7 Photography Lessons in 1 Day
It's not even 7 in the morning yet and somehow I've already managed to have my pants and boots completely soaked It was a beautiful and very productive day for photography it had a little bit of everything: fog, plenty of Sun, beautiful coast, thermal plants, windmills, cemeteries, horses and cows… and stunning cliffs It was such a complete day that I learned 7 lessons on that trip that I wanted to share with you today Let's start from the beginning: on my way to the coast, I ran into some thick fog so I decided to leave the highway and look for something to photograph I found this field with cool trees and powerlines I knew I was going to get wet getting onto that field, but I'd feel bad if I didn't try at least, so I went for it I don't know if you could tell, but the grass was pretty tall and all wet from the morning mist I didn't know at the time if the images that I had made there were worth the wet pants and boots just bear in mind that I had the whole day ahead of me luckily, it was pretty sunny and windy, so everything dried up really quick Anyway, the first lesson is one that I should have learned a long time ago, but I keep making the same mistake you should always have spare clothes with you, especially if you have a car At least, spare socks, t-shirt and shoes so my idea for that morning was to be at a specific viewpoint for sunrise, but I didn't make it in time I didn't make it because I stopped quite a few times on my way there I stopped to photograph the fog first, then the windmills, the forests waking up and even a thermal plant that looked pretty beautiful in those pastel colors This is a lesson I learned very early on in my photography journey: always, always, always stop and take the photograph while you have the chance In the past, I'd tell myself: "I'll take the photo on my way back, I'll take it tomorrow" that never, ever happened, or the
conditions were completely different I missed a ton of shots because of this so now, when I see something that I believe it might be worth photographing, I always take the shot I give full priority to the image that I have in front of me, even over the images that I might have had planned for that day For example, this day I didn't want to get to the coast to that viewpoint and find
mediocre conditions and think that I had missed shots on that foggy field Eventually, I made it to the spot I had planned to be at for sunrise One funny thing about this bench: people
around here call it the best bench in the world which, I don't know, sure, why not? the thing is that "bench" in Spanish is "banco", and it's the same word for bank so someone, I guess thinking that it'd be the same in English wrote "the best bank in the world" here a few years ago Actually, that was not the one, this one is "the best bank of the world" I have to say, I'd deposit my money here, for sure The best light was long gone at that point, so I did the only thing I could do sit back, relax and enjoy the landscape That's the third lesson of the day: sometimes it's better to put the camera away and just take it all in That being said, I did record some footage, let's play it with some epic music I'm tired! I told you it was a long day, I didn't get much sleep the night before I woke up at 4am, I had to drive over 2 hours to get to the coast so I was pretty tired by noon I had some food and a couple of coffees which really helped me a lot: I was very awake after those coffees sometimes, if I'm really tired I just take a nap in the car After all, a well-rested mind is worth several tired minds There's no point in doing all the effort of driving really far away, or going on a long hike if when we do get there we are too tired to see any images So get your sleep and eat your vegetables! After a quick break, I went to a lighthouse that I had visited a couple of years ago At this point, the day was totally sunny and the clouds were not moving much at all I made some low exposures but they were quite a fail Despite having better equipment and more experience, I wasn't able to make images as good as the ones I did make there 2 years before Conditions are everything, so this is the fifth lesson: revisit places, as much as you can so this is going to be footage from 2020 and the images are going to be from 2018 back when global pandemics weren't a thing After several hours without making any good images, I was more than ready to call it a day But since I had done all that driving, I decided to visit one last spot some beautiful cliffs, where I was expecting to take a quick walk, maybe a couple photos and then just head back home right after that I was wrong, very, very wrong I found incredible conditions, with a fog that kept rolling in and out, creating different images every second this was, no doubt, the most fun I had
photographing this year so far I completely lost track of time, I was there for more than 3 hours, it felt like 15-20 minutes but it was more than 3 hours of me photographing a barren landscape of just rocks, grass and some cliffs All this fog is really cool and pretty amazing, but I can't find anything to photograph here, just rocks! That's right, as beautiful as it was, I struggle to make images because I wasn't able to find any subjects don't get me wrong, I still love some of them, but I would've loved to have some structures buildings, powerlines, paths…
Something! There were cows and horses, but they were scary cats, and I didn't want to disturb them too much This leads us to the seventh lesson, the last one for today an image needs to tell a story unless you are going for an abstract, of course an image has to show something, and the more clear it does it, the better that is hard to achieve when all you have is rocks, grass and cliffs I try to capture some cool rocks, I even tried to capture myself with a self-timer I tried to run all the way to the other side of the cliff, but I didn't get there in time, that's all I got but anyway so try to find a clear subject anyway, this camera keeps shutting down, it's very hot… 97F (36C) out there that's why I'm sweating so much if you made it all the way here, thank you so much for watching yet another video and see you in the next one!
