It may be rewarding to shoot nature images in your backyard; however, if you’re a serious enthusiast or professional that wants to produce large, gallery-quality, fine art prints of your nature and landscape work, then you want to photograph places that are worthy of the quality of your prints. An excellent choice is any of the spectacular, pristine wilderness areas in the U.S. and around the world.
These are the places few people have seen or have never seen, or would ever believe could look the way you’ve capture them. One such place is the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, with its grand display of wild ocean, towering peaks, pristine lakes and rivers and ancient rain forests. Most of the Peninsula is preserved in the Olympic National Forest and Park, so everywhere you look are primal vistas and abundant nature that have remain unspoiled for eons.
The images that are perfect for your fine art nature prints are waiting there for you. To find them, to photograph them and to print them, join an exclusive group of advanced photographers for Visionary Wild’s Olympic Peninsula Workshop, July 8–12, 2012. Here is a rare opportunity to work with and be guided by Pat O’Hara, an award-winning photographer of the Olympic Peninsula and Justin Black, a well-respected photographer and co-founder of Visionary Wild.
Read the PhotographyTalk.com article, 10 Breathtaking Visions of the Olympic Peninsula Every Serious Photographer Should Capture, for more information, and visit http://visionarywild.com/workshops/olympic/#more-670 for workshop details.
2. Another important step toward your goal of producing fine art prints is to shoot nature and landscape images with the printing outcome in mind. Recording images with your camera is just the first step in a creative process that ends with the print; and it’s a process you should have thoroughly planned prior to shooting. Do you want to show the bold or subtle colors of nature on the Olympic Peninsula? If so, then you want to find and shoot these kinds of images. Maybe, your goal is black-and-white prints with great contrast that tend toward the surreal. Select and compose your images, accordingly.
When you frame a scene or subject matter on the Olympic Peninsula for the purpose of making a fine art print, ask yourself if it has the dynamic or subtle qualities of contrast, balance, color palette, lighting, etc. that re-produce well on a printed medium. An image may be worthy to print not because of the subject matter, but because of how you’ve combined the elements of equipment, technique and creativity to translate the subject matter into a statement, mood or symbol.
3. The middle step in the process is the digital editing of the images to be printed. Again, what adjustments you make on your computer are dependent on your goal for the end product. Some well-known nature photographers prefer to apply only “traditional” editing techniques, such as dust spotting, color correction, burning, dodging and contrast enhancements. They want the print to be an accurate representation of the photographed landscape.
Other nature photographers may use the realism of their RAW images as just a starting point, from which they apply more dramatic, or even radical, post-processing techniques to transform the real world into a fantasy or alien landscape.
4. To understand and experience this shooting-to-fine art printing process thoroughly, you can also register for Visionary Wild’s Olympic Peninsula Digital Printing Extension Workshop, July 12–14, 2012. Five of the 12 participants of the shooting workshop, the week previous, will be able to work closely with Pat O’Hara at his studio. You’ll learn how to take the RAW images you shot during the previous workshop and create final prints.
Visit http://visionarywild.com/workshops/olympic-–-digital-printing-extension/#more-1597 for all the details of digital fine art printing workshop.
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Photo by PhotographyTalk Member Tammy Page Herron