Recently, I went on a week long camping trip with my family to the Black Hills National Forest in South Dakota. I have been to the Black Hills a number of times throughout my life, but this time was different. I was armed with a new camera, and the new goal of capturing a landscape. Landscape photography is far and away my favorite form. My favorite part of traveling is the natural beauty of the world that we live in, and landscapes provide a method to capture that. I have never been able to capture a landscape in quite as much detail and intrigue as a first hand encounter, but that wasn’t going to stop me from trying!
Landscapes
No visit to the Black Hills is complete without a trip to Mount Rushmore. I was fortunate in that my visit to Rushmore took place during a light rain storm, placing some excellent clouds that I really feel add to the picture. This is my favorite photo from my visit to Rushmore, and one of the best from the whole trip. Landscapes are really fun, but it was nice to have a sure subject for this photo. To me, the hardest part of a landscape is the balance between capturing the whole and focusing on a subject. When you are present in person, you are able to take it all in by moving your eyes, looking around, and enjoying the view. In a photograph, however, all of the details are present at one glance and it seems to me that often the beauty of the landscape is lost by too wide a focus.
Macro
Although my main goal on the trip was take landscape photographs, I spent lots of time looking for opportunities on the opposite end of the spectrum. I took lots of macro shots on my trip. In fact, while hiking, I almost exclusively used my 35mm prime lens. That lens has a f/1.8 aperture, meaning it’s very good at taking close pictures with a tight focus.
Jeep
Finally, one of the most exciting opportunities of the trip was taking my Jeep on some back country Black Hill trails. There were lots of trails to choose from, and they offered some great views of the landscape that one could not find from the highway. Naturally, I took lots of pictures of my Jeep. Some of the best Jeep pictures were taken alongside a dam near a treacherous looking shale rock cliff. The cliff had a small path leading up at a very steep angle, and I couldn’t help myself but park the Jeep and use the angle to create some great group photos.
I was so excited to take this picture that when I opened to tailgate to my car all my emergency/recovery equipment spilled out due to the angle. I set it off to the side, and promptly forgot about it’s existence in the shot. You can see a yellow tow strap just below my feet in the image.
The cliff really offered some fantastic views, and looked great in a wide angle shot. I am particularly happy in how this image turned out. Holding the camera low and pointing up really gave a cool angle and interesting perspective.
Besides the cliff, we also discovered an old, abandoned gold mine. This location also offered some cool shots. In this shot, I experimented a bit with color correction in capture one. I really wish I had noticed the glare on the windshield when I took the photo. In the future, I’ll try to prevent distracting artifacts like that.
Family
And of course, there were plenty of opportunities to take great family pictures! While I was hiking I saw the perfect opportunity for an awesome landscape-family picture combo! On this particular image, I found the HDR tool in Capture One helpful. Using that tool, I was able to add back a lot of the blue that was lost in exposure.
I really enjoyed my trip to the Black Hills. It was a great place to start my photography journey, and has hopefully made for an interesting first “real” post!