Farmland photography: February update (2023)
As part of my pursuit to photograph Albertan farmlands for the next five years, I have photographed some images that assure my decision. I want to provide monthly updates where I have actively photographed the landscape. Ultimately, at some point in my journey, I wish to interact with the farmers and incorporate them into the photography to tell better stories.
February 12, 2023
As we come to the end of Albertan winter (no time to rejoice yet because we still have a month and a half to go), I decided to make more trips to the farmlands nearby to photograph its beauty. Lots of snow means that I must lean towards minimalism in my compositions. Also, some days, you don’t have those brilliant sunrise/sunset that landscape photographers go for, which means I need to switch to black and white, which is pretty rewarding — done right.
So, I decided to go to Devon — 30 minutes from home. It was not particularly cold (eh! It’s -8 centigrade weather), and fighting my urge to sleep off on a Sunday morning, I packed my stuff and left home an hour before sunrise (I know I must be out there earlier than that).
Listening to some podcast on Spotify (I believe it’s Danica Patrick’s podcast) and sipping on coffee, I reached the starting point of my journey 20 minutes before sunrise. It was not particularly cloudy that morning, and had snowed the previous night. However, it was not the Hoar frost or Rime Ice; hence, I looked for some simple compositions.
While driving that morning, I noticed beautiful red lights in the sky. I occasionally stopped in places to photograph some of those.
I kept the ISO to 100 most of the time (which is not the best idea — I will explain later) to ensure I captured the cleanest image and continued photographing as I drove past some good locations. I knew the sunrise was about to peak, and if I did not find something more interesting, I might not take any good shots for the trip. However, the farmlands always provide you with rusty buildings in the midst. The key is to find the right one with less obstruction around it. I finally found the composition below. I stopped the car, got out, and spent 15 minutes photographing this structure from different angles and apertures.
A rusty farm building with the sunrise backdrop
Once done, I found the below composition ten minutes from the previous spot. I am always after the Bale, and the stacked Bale in an empty land with the sunrise backdrop is perfect for photographs. I spent the next ten minutes testing different compositions and finally settled on the one below.
Bunch of bale with the sunrise backdrop
After that, I drove home since it was all bright and close to 9:00 AM on a Sunday.
Postprocessing
Postprocessing was challenging since I needed to balance showing night as night in the photograph and enough visibility to the viewers of the scene I witnessed. I used masking in capture one pro 23 to leave the clouds and the light untouched, but the structure and foreground brightened up and got close to what I saw. I still need to work on showing a dark night image to depict the night and being visible enough for the viewer to enjoy the scene. Let me know your thoughts.
February 19, 2023
I have never been so excited for snow, such as this Saturday, since I know I will get some excellent shot (or not — as I experienced later). So I packed my gear the previous night and left early morning, despite the snow, to Leduc — another usual place for photography these days. Unfortunately, I have not mastered capturing snow when it pours, and it was a struggle to get sharp pictures. It never dawned on me to focus manually and instead rely on autofocus.
Fujifilm GFX-100s' autofocus — while one of the best in the medium format realm, it is still not the same as the full frame counterparts in focusing. Although, I am not sure how a full frame would handle the same situation (something to test out at some point). So, it keeps getting confused with all the snowfall while focusing on contrasty subjects. Also, I keep falling into the trap of trusting my LCD screen to check the sharpness of the scene (I am not obsessed with sharp images, but it helps to get reasonably sharp images). Despite this, I did capture some good pictures (they will not enter my portfolio anytime soon, but they are good enough to post on social media).
Now, with regards to the autofocus, manually focusing would have made the trees more sharp and strong as compared with the autofocus. I wanted the cluster of trees, the small crumbling structure, and the lone tree to be strong. Instead, with the constantly falling snow, those subjects look like pencil art. My lesson from today's session is to use manual focus when you have many competing things to confuse your autofocus system. We are spoiled with tech advancements and have become too reliant on them.
I spent the next hour photographing some contrasty simple compositions before heading home. The following compositions stood out for me on an ordinary day of photography.
February 25, 2023
At this point, I start embracing black-and-white photography for the Alberta winter. Also, I started embracing vast empty spaces in my composition. I look for those specific contrasty subjects to make the images compelling. By now, my gear choices are standard (read my next section on my gear choice) and mostly handheld (still occasional tripod use).
This time, I decided to go in the afternoon instead of the early morning since it was cloudy, and sunrise would not make any difference to the landscape. Also, I had all three of my kids in my car — giving some free time to my wife. We got some Tim Hortons donuts, chocolate milk, and cappuccino and left for a drive. I chose township roads around "Ardrossan" for a change and reached the target starting point in the next 35 minutes.
Driving through the township roads, I focused on composition with vast empty spaces and a few contrasty subjects. Also, the bright and cloudy sky added some characteristics to my compositions. I focused on patterns of trees, building structures, and, finally, tons of space.
Finally, as I was winding up my photography for the day (it's almost two hours since I started), I saw these subtle variations in the sky. I took a few photographs with nothing but the snowy land, the sky, and the transition. It was an interesting abstract scene to photograph, and I liked it. It made me go back to my previous photographs and look for such compositions where it contained only the land and clouds. I also like this picture from today, and it will fit on the wall. Once done, I packed my gear and headed home.
An abstract image with snow foreground, cloud, and a middle ground where fog meets the snow and clouds
Let me know what you think of today's collection.
Lessons learned:
Do not be afraid of black and white, and when you do, find simple compositions with lots of contrasts
Refrain from relying on technology for all you do. Sometimes, it makes sense to focus manually.
OIS is not the solution to everything. Sometimes, especially in a situation like on February 19, a tripod would have helped more than the OIS.
Similarly, ISO 100 is not the answer to all your landscape photography. With a camera such as the Fujifilm GFX-100s, I should be brave even to use ISO 1600 (I usually go up to ISO 3200 for indoor photography. But for some reason, we tend to stick to ISO 100 for landscapes).
Thoughts on my gear choice
After spending close to three months of rural scape photography, these are my standard gear:
Fujifilm GFX-100s — an excellent camera for this work, and I enjoy using it
Fujifilm GF 100-200mmF5.6 lens — my 'workhorse' lens at this stage. I also packed the excellent Fujifilm GF 45-100mmF4 Lens, but I have not used it much (except in January). I believe I will have used it enough to write a detailed review sometime this summer.
The rest are remote release (from Fujifilm), extra batteries, extra memory cards (I use Lexar these days), the Manfrotto 055 Tripod, and the L-Bracket.
Closing thoughts
I hope to interact with people this spring and summer, and I will need something like the Fujifilm GF 45-100mmF4 lens or even the Fujifilm GF 45mmF2.8. I look forward to getting close to the farmers in the spring and summer.
Stay tuned to my blog for more updates and other articles.