Landscapes at Sunrise
As I was recently going through my archives to put together a portfolio of my best/favorite images, it occurred to me that even though I have lived in some amazing places, I don’t have a lot good landscape shots … especially recent ones.
I set out to rectify that I a little bit this morning. In addition to two phones (Pixel 9 Pro XL and OnePlus 12), I also had my Canon 80D with a 70-200 F2.8L lens. The image at the top of this post was captured with the Canon, and while it may just be recency bias, this may have already vaulted towards the top of my favorite landscape shots I’ve ever taken. I did also have a wide angle lens (17mm Tokina) with me to this morning, but never took it out.
I’m not sure if I’d call this one a classic “landscape” photo, but it definitely came out pretty close to what I had envisioned when I initially clicked the shutter. I liked the silhouettes of the tree on the left and the agave plants in the center.
I’m not sure exactly what to make of this image. I was trying to show the depth of the hills, and the plants in the foreground being out of focus was done on purpose. Not sure I was planning for the extra this grass though. I think I want to like the final photograph though.
My original primary plan for the morning was actually to try to get some B&W landscape photos using the XPAN mode on my OnePlus 12. I did capture a couple right after sunrise that are kind of cool. But if I’m honest, I liked most of the color images better. B&W XPAN may end up being mostly for “people” pictures.
Part of the reason I don’t have a lot of recent landscape images that I’m really proud of is that I take many of them with my Pixel phone. Don’t get me wrong, the Pixel is very capable, especially for stuff I’m going to share on social media. It just doesn’t really have the resolution for “keepers” that I might be tempted to print out and put on the wall. I’ve recently started making sure I have it in RAW and 50mp modes, which does give me some more options editing in Lightroom. But I’d still like to work on taking more scenery images with my Canon.
I did still capture one Pixel image this morning that I kind of liked:
But the sky kind of gives away that it’s from a phone. Same with this puddle reflection shot from before we even got up on the mountain.
Kind of cool. But obviously from a phone. That said, I don’t know if I have the patience to carry a tripod, capture multiple exposures, then blend them in post processing. Probably easier to just keep letting the Google chip in my phone take care of that.
Even if I hadn’t gotten any photos this morning, we were still outside for almost two hours, and technically made it to the top our first mountain peak of the year.
Your Turn:
(Do you have any landscape photo tips for us?)
Til next time,
Todd
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There are some intensely beautiful images here (especially – for me – that sequence of three monochrome panoramas); and I know what you mean about the phone images, but I still love them (and I’m sure they’ll bring back some great memories when you’re 92)!