Award winning photographer, Satish Menon, selling fine-art prints and sharing photography insights with other photography enthusiasts.
I went to Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge to photograph birds. However, after dusk, when this warm/cool contrast landscape presented itself to me, I couldn’t resist. You will notice how the warm orange light enveloping the horizon, contrasts the cool blue tones in the foreground water.
During a recent road trip, I spent a dusk session and a dawn session at the White Sands National Park in New Mexico. The unique feature of this national park, as you know, is the large gypsum dunefield.
This is one of my first keepers from my first visit to the park, one dusk. A very standard shot. Extremely wide angle lens, close the foreground. The width of the lens allows for inclusion of the distant peak. Adjust the lens position every so slightly to see big differences in the composition. Keep adjusting until you see a perfect composition through the eyepiece, corner to corner. Focus on the foreground area of the composition, about 1/3rd of the composition from the bottom. Set the aperture to f/22. Using the aperture priority exposure mode, auto-bracket several exposures. Pick the one exposed far to the right (histogram) without blowing the highlights.
During a recent road trip, I spent a dusk session and a dawn session at the White Sands National Park in New Mexico.
What you see is not snow. It is white gypsum sand. Truly one of the world’s natural wonders. White Sands National Park preserves a major portion of the world’s largest gypsum dunefield.
As I was wrapping up my first visit to this park one dusk, I hung around a little longer to observe the color changes in the sky. I was rewarded with this pink sky to complement the white sands.
During a recent road trip, I spent a day and a half at the Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico. By far, it is one of the best places I have photographed birds.
A day and a half usually means one dawn session, one dusk session and another dawn session the following day. No photography is done in the middle of the day, between dawn and dusk.
When I visit a place for the first time ever, I rarely make any good photographs. I am so unfamiliar with the place that most of my mental energy is dissipated in just figuring out the roads or the points to stop at, or simply getting an overview of the place. Consequently, during my very first dawn session, I made some frames, but no keepers.
In my second visit, the dusk session of day 1, I made this photograph. I discovered the location from which I could get close to the sandhill cranes. However, in this session, the whole landscape was more important to me, than the birds themselves,. The post sunset pink in the sky and its reflection in the water, brackets the birds. Furthermore, the bluish cast of the distant hills nicely complements the bluish gray on the birds themselves.
This is my first ever pano photograph made with my 200-500mm lens at the 500mm end. Several vertical frames were shot overlapping each other and this panoramic frame was stitched together in Lightroom. The final file is 85 megapixels, suitable for a large fine art print.
Is this a landscape photograph or wildlife photograph? Email me at info@pixgaga.com on your thoughts.
Although the pandemic has dampened our air travel, I have not slowed down on my weekend road trips. Winter is a special time offering unique spectacles. In Northern California, it is easy to get to snow, as you go towards the Sierra Nevada mountains.
Last month, as I was passing through Groveland, California, I came across this hillside forest. It had fresh snow, perfect side-lighting and a great pattern of the vertical tree trunks. I loved the pattern, the contrast and the texture. A great representation of California’s winter.
This scene was a bit away from me and therefore I used the Nikkor 70-200mm f2.8 lens and framed this at about 180mm. Since the nearest part of the image is already far away, I knew that an aperture of f/11 is enough to meet the depth of field needs. I bracketed several exposures to finally picked the capture with the right leaning histogram.
Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe, California, 2016, 2017.
I have visited the Lake Tahoe area several times. Here are two images of the exact same location, Emerald Bay, shot in 2016 and 2017 respectively. The light is the differentiator.
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Burj Al Arab, Dubai, 2015.
I visited Dubai for a few days and knew before going, that I had to get a shot of the Burj Al Arab. As a photographer, it is never a good idea to drive straight to the building or monument, it’s gate, to make a good photograph. Since I didn’t have several days to revisit Burj Al Arab, to conceive a good composition while on location, I had to do a bit of homework beforehand. Based on quick research, I became aware of a good outdoor mall near Burj Al Arab, the Souk Madinat Jumeirah. My imagination led me to conceive an image of Burj Al Arab, with parts of Souk Madinat Jumeirah as the context. This is the image I ended up making. A good unplanned outcome is the cool blue lighting on the building, contrasting with the warm lighting of the foreground buildings from Souk Madinat Jumeirah. Most travel photographers, like to be free of the burden of a tripod, but given my landscape photography background, I carry a light tripod for such occasions. Using a tripod ensured the high quality and sharpness of this 2 minute exposure.
Buy a print – Link
Register for my next webinar or ask a question for potential inclusion in my upcoming ebook, “101 tips for Digital Travel Photography” – Link
Moving Rock, Racetrack Playa, Death Valley NP, CA, USA, 2014.
Death Valley is one of my most favorite national parks. Of the various locations within this park, I love the Racetrack Playa. I have been there twice and this image came about during my second visit. From a paved road, it is a hard 2+ hours of rough unpaved road to get there. A serious workout for your car’s suspension. The rewards are well worth it. As a landscape photographer, although we reached there in the afternoon, I insisted that we wait until the sun sets, so that I can get some cool photographs. The hard part is that once the sun sets, the return journey becomes all the more difficult, given that it turns pitch dark. Along the way, we stopped a few times to enjoy the starry night with no light pollution.
Buy a print – Link
Register for my next webinar or ask a question for potential inclusion in my upcoming ebook, “101 tips for Digital Travel Photography” – Link
Pigeon Point Lighthouse, Pescadero, CA, USA, 2014.
Some weekends, I drive locally near my home. This was shot in Pescadero, on US-1. This lighthouse has been photographed a lot. My version of it involves wading and climbing onto one of the sea stacks followed by photographing it with a 10 stop neutral density filter on, to average the waves over time to give this snowy effect.
My friend, Wesley Chen, challenged me on facebook to present my top ten travel photograph favorites. Since I am sharing these on facebook, one per day, I decided to share them here as well. So, here they are, continuing on my top ten, in no particular order.
Number Six.
Waterfall and Fall leaves, Uvas Canyon, Morgan Hill, CA, USA, 2015.
Some weekends, I drive locally near my home. This was shot in Morgan Hill, CA. Uvas Canyon is not a famous destination, but for me, during late fall, it is very pretty and the small waterfalls offer great opportunities to photograph. Yes, I placed the two foreground fall leaves in this image.
