NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.
Issue link: http://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/581251
16 NEBRASKAland • NOVEMBER 2015 My Photo Tip: Searching for Gold By Eric Fowler I can't remember if he wrote it or told me, but long-time NEBRASKAland staffer Jon Farrar once said it best. When it comes to photography, "Light is everything." It is, especially when it comes to nature photography. Good light, the sweet, warm type you most often see in the minutes before or after sunrise or sunset, can make a good photo great. Some call it the golden hour, or the magic hour. When the sun is near the horizon, the light is diffused by the atmosphere. Nature's filter reduces the contrast of the scene, opening the shadows and reducing the intensity of the highlights, and often adding an orange cast to the scene. All of these factors make a photo "sing," as I like to say. Those types of photographs are what the staff here strives to capture. They are why we often see both ends of the day when we're in the field, why we ask our story subjects to get up early and stay up late. Doing so doesn't guarantee good light. There have been many times when I crawled out of bed well before dawn, driven and hiked to a location where I wanted to see the sun rise, and then wished I would've stayed in bed when I was greeted by a cloudless sky and watched the light quickly go cold. But there have been other times when the magic hour lasted for two or three. And then there are rare occasions like an evening I experienced on the Valentine National Wildlife Refuge in July. As storms rolled through, I found myself chasing rainbows, hoping the sun would peek through the scattered clouds in the western sky, light up the lush green grass and the raindrops to the east and create a colorful arch in the sky. I followed the storm, running up hilltops for a good perspective (Not the smartest move in a thunderstorm but photographers sometimes forget these things when the light is good), and twice found rainbows. Neither rainbow had the full-blown color and intensity I'd hoped for. But what happened as the sun approached the horizon and its rays began bouncing off the bottom of the clouds above me, however, made up for it, lighting up the landscape and eastern sky with the warmest light I'd ever seen. My chase that day lasted four hours, with sweet light coming and going as the clouds shifted. The last 10 minutes were indeed golden. ■ For more photography tips see our article on page 38. You can also purchase a copy of our book "Photographing Nebraska" by visiting NebraskalandMagazine. com and searching under "publications." PHOTO BY ERIC FOWLER