Landscape photography in harsh light

Y'all might want to check out a iPhone app called Photo Pills. It can load a satellite image and overlay the direction of the sun, moon, and Milky Way. Great for planning landscape shoots. Can also do augmented reality of your surroundings.

Not sure if it available for Android but it is awesome on iOS.

djr81 wrote in post #18448490
Jim Jim was the Hardest, bright sun one side, deep shade the other and only a small amount of water going over the falls.

This is Tolmer Falls in Litchfield NP, not dissimilar to Jim Jim, taken just before midday a few days ago. Not great but with the shadow side lifted a bit you can see some detail in there. More than you could make out with the naked eye. You do get a sense of the area's harsh ruggedness, though, and that's just what northern Australia is like at this time of year. Very different in the wet season, when there's often cloud to soften things and water thunders over the falls creating a rainbow from its spray.

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Shooting with a good tripod, try a series of images at -1/2, -1, and -1½ stops and then combine them in HDR. Sometimes it works well.

Well Jim Jim was as harsh a subject as any. Oddly enough the walk in (From the car park, not from 60kms out) produced better shots than the falls themselves. Havent done any pp on any of these.

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Last month, on vacation, it was harsh sun for most of the time we were hiking in the mountains. I still shot because I didn't want to not have any photos and then worked on the RAW files as best as I could when I got home to try and salvage some of them. I also used a CP filter to try and cut down on some of the glare and to help with haze in the sky near the mountains.

The last few months I've mainly been shooting landscape so since getting back from vacation I've decided that I wanted to shoot more at sunrise and sunset. The problem is that a lot of the locations I want to shoot around my province are a few hour drive from my house. My solution was to convert my Impreza hatchback into a mini sleeper so I can go the day before, location scout, be there for sunset and then sleep there for the night and be ready to shoot again in the morning. I attached a few pics below. On top of the rubber anti fatigue mat I will have my camping pad and sleeping bag so it should be plenty comfortable for the night. I also added air deflectors on the side windows so I can put them down at night for ventilation.

I was supposed to go last weekend for my first trip but had a family emergency and had to call it off. I'm hoping to reschedule soon.

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I would look for shapes and lines and shoot in b&w.
Shooting seascapes in b&w is also nice when you have a rough sea. But it's better to have a ND filter in order to get 1/2 to 4 s exposure times...


And if i would shot in color i would look for interesting skies and good looking clouds.

I tried sleeping in my car last month (as shown above) to be at a beach for sunrise. It worked out very nicely. The only modification I'm going to make is the addition of a twin blowup mattress. Apparently it will fit with no issues so I may as well be more comfortable.