Marianne Lim and Dylan Toh have photographed landscapes in Australia and around the world, and their experience in the field has helped them create evocative images. Here they explain which items of kit can really improve your shots.
Photographing landscapes successfully involves planning, preparation, patience and some help from a few key pieces of equipment. One of the things you can do to improve your images is to experiment with different tools in the field, when they’re appropriate to your subject matter. Over the years we’ve found some pieces of kit are absolutely essential to our shooting style – the tripod, for example – while others aren’t absolutely necessary, but really add something unique to our images, helping us to create our individual style. Here’s a selection of our own practical kit items which have improved our technique.
Use A Tripod
One of the essential pieces of equipment for our landscape photography, the tripod is necessary for capturing sharp, crisp images, especially if we’re making long exposures. The process of setting up the tripod also gives us time to compose the image and really look at our scene. This gives us an opportunity to ‘de-clutter’ the scene (removing distractions like branches) or to refine the composition. A tripod with individually adjustable legs is more useful as a greater range of angles and heights can be used to give our images a more unique perspective. Choosing a tripod can be difficult with such a large range available. We use Gitzo carbon-fibre tripods because we like to hike on multi-day treks - so the lightest gear is important. We haven’t noticed a significant difference in set-up time between a three- or four-segment tripod, but a three-segment unit takes less time to clean! There are also a number of ball-head types on the market – it really is a personal preference, but we use a Gitzo centre ball head with the quick-release plate permanently attached to the camera body. These nifty plates (which are bought with a base which screws onto your tripod) are an absolute bonus and can save you lots of time if you’re shooting in rapidly changing light early or late in the day...
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: Making DSLR Movies; Profile - Philip Quirk; Interviewing Ken Duncan and Andrew Chapman; Locations - Great Lakes, NSW; How to correct any colour casts and adjust the balance of your JPEG images; Sony a65v
