Adventure photography

Quite some people asked me what kind of camera I use while on our outings. Quite often thinking that I must have great gear to take my pics.

The reality is far from that. As I already wrote about before in the adventure tech post, my main camera is a Samsung s10e. A three-year-old phone with a decent camera but nothing more. The main reason why the pics look kinda good is usually that I seldom just take the phone, click, and it’s done. There is a bit of knowledge and a process behind it.

If you are looking for point-and-shoot AI is here to help you. Smartphones are getting smarter and smarter and they can help… Or maybe cheat you? A good video from Marques Brownlee explaining a bit of this.

As he mentions, a “real photographer” would be looking for something different. Instead of the most flashy, slightly over-saturated Instagram-ready pic, one more neutral and with more information that allows better editing later. I’m extremely lazy editing, compared with my photographer friends, that can spend hours on just one pic. But I do at least a bit. Everything within the phone. Here I will try to explain the basics and then you can check a lot more on the internet. Tons of tutorials on Youtube and others, several directly linked in the post. All pics, but those mentioned otherwise, were taken in the last two decades, with my phones or some with old & (for today’s standards) 💩y compact cameras.

Composition

No. You don’t need to put the subjects of your pic, hiking buddies, in the center of the pic. It might work with some compositions, but you should try other options and learn some basics. Jungle pic in Laos.

The group is in front of me and you can “see” them walking toward the landscape. The trees above help framing the pic and give you a sense of how big an environment we were hiking through. The colors and lighting are far from ideal, but we will talk about that later. Each picture is just only to explain a concept.

Let’s go to waterfalls. I thought that it would be obvious how to best frame them. But, seeing pics taken by friends, might not be. The important thing is the waterfall. Show the size. So this pic by Pedro of me climbing a waterfall is not bad, but…

He should have pointed way lower. With me almost atop and no zooming. 1/3 of the waterfall or more is missing in his pic. Same waterfall another day, from the same spot, definitely with more water, but showing the full height of it.

Even with Tyler in the pic (who is a lot taller than me and makes everything look smaller), you have a more accurate view of how high it is + dangerous without the rope 😅. Usually when the hiker is on top of the pic is when the waterfall looks the biggest.

Talking about angles. Play with them. You can make a waterfall look higher, or smaller depending if you go lower or higher yourself. You can even make puppies look cuter.

I was laying on the floor. Really close to it. That made its face look even bigger = cutter for our brain. This links with the concept of Perspective. We are showing three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional surface. The brain, therefore, needs to make assumptions. Without clear reference points, we are not really able to guess how small or big some landscapes are. For example this one. Big, small, really high, or not so much?

Take your time to think about it and then go down.
↓
↓
↓
↓
↓
↓
↓
↓
↓
↓
↓
↓
↓
↓

With Diana in the pic and the little boat far away suddenly the brain looks at this picture in a completely different way. Pretty high cliff and really long traverse.

So one person in a picture makes it more interesting. What about two? Usually provides further depth and perspective to the pic. So sometimes you can see me with the phone focused on the composition I like and waiting for the “models” to put themselves in the “correct” place = waiting for them to be far enough and separated enough. The more the better? Not really. Actually, the Rule of Odds tends to work in streams & coasteering. I will not write about them all, but there are certain basic composition rules (or they should better be called guidelines) that I use conscious or unconsciously: Rule of thirds, Leading lines, Symmetry, Frame within the frame, keep the horizon straight, etc. There are tons written about it. Just read and practice till your compositions improve.

Light

Photography is just capturing light. The higher the exposure differences within the same picture the trickier it will be to capture correctly with just a handheld phone in a rush mode. Here Ina at the bottom of the really big waterfall just shown above.

I called her so that she turned to look at me. I composed the picture and reduced the exposure set automatically by the camera. In my case, this is easy, as I have a slider to do so as soon as I tap on the screen.

I could go fully manual, but that would require me too much time. If you do not have the slider or any kind of lighting control on your phone (iPhones come to mind…) tap on the brightest spot in the picture so that the camera focuses there and usually decreases a bit the light. The goal is to avoid having too many over-exposed areas. Underexposed parts of the image usually are easier to fix.

After I used Pixlr app. It is my main editing app. But you could use others with similar capabilities. In this case, I did the following. Adjustments, increase the contrast and saturation 4%. I tend to increase those very little. Brushes/darken (usually I leave the default 50%) to adjust the over-exposed areas on top of the pic. Brushes/brighten (I tend to go lower, 20-40%) to bring back the original waterfall whiteness. Total editing time below 1 min.

Can you do it a lot better? Of course. Different ways for that. If you would have time and a tripod you could take pics like these.

Or this.

The above pictures have no edits. JPG directly from the camera. But I took it with a full frame camera with an ND filter on top of a professional tripod. All this allowed me to take a long exposure pic that brings that silky water effect. The guys needed to hold completely still. So not good for real action pics + a pain to set the tripod every time + heavy on the backpack. Not an option for my regular fun, therefore.

Instead, I learned how my phone camera works (each one is slightly different), its strength and weaknesses, and improve the pics I could take with it. The 10e has a dual camera, but I soon realized that the pictures with the ultra wide-angle (12mm) look way sharper and is my main option. By default most of the smartphones, for sure all the Samsung phones I have used, like to over-expose the picture. This can make it more “flashy” for easier compositions but tend to make them look far from reality in our outdoor activities. High contrast between the waterfalls and lower parts of the rocks, or even coasteering when the sun is not behind you illuminating all the landscape. That is why almost always I use the aforementioned slider. In some cases, it is not an option. For example, when taking a panorama on Port Island the upper pic was the outcome.

Too much light. I was able to fix it somehow. I decreased all the highlights, a bit the exposure, increased a bit the contrast and the saturation and finally I got something similar to what we were seeing at that moment. Far from perfect, but at least a bit better.

My phone in low-light environments tends to go blueish, instead of the true color. In this case, the editing goal is again to bring what I was seeing with my naked eye.

I did something more 😅 The ultra wide-angle lens and my finger tend to have some problems. Editing it out was easy, see further down. Going back to lighting there are specific apps for its editing. For example Dive+ for blue color correction underwater.

The app is a bit intrusive. But if after snorkeling or diving you are looking for a super simple editing tool it is a good option.

The time of the day, how many clouds there are, etc will also change the feeling of the pics. This is something that you will not be able to change in most of the cases (adventure first, pics are secondary). But just knowing the basics could help you a bit with your settings and photo shooting plans. For example to know what the Golden hour is or that the more central hours, when the sun is highest, will create harder shadows.

Caving or low light “indoor” pics. Use a decent torch. High enough lumen. In my case, for photo-taking I like a wider more diffused beam. Everything explained in the tech>torch section. If with time enough AI is here to help you. Set up the Night mode and hold the phone still. One of the few occasions when I like to have iPhones and/or newer phones around, as they tend to take better pics in low light.

“Tricks”

The more time you spend with the camera the more options that you will realize that you have for your pics. Some can be just a little fun. For example, playing with the panorama mode

I was able to take a picture with Summer in triplicate. I was “panoraming” right to left very very slowly and as soon as she was out of frame I let her know and she was running behind me to set still in a new spot. This picture is not especially good, but just to give you an idea of the possibilities.

What about vertical panoramas? Yes, it works! In what situations is interesting?

I use this most frequently in places where the wall behind or else does not allow me to have a wide enough angle to take the picture in mind. Above within a shallow cave that has a hole above letting the tree go through. Not the best pic, as the brain is not able to “understand” it (too wide angle) unless you have been on the spot. A better example.

A huge boulder balanced atop Tyler. This pic looks pretty normal. How it looks from almost the same place even with the decent ultra wide-angle lens I have in the phone, or even worse in landscape mode of Paul.

Completely different feeling and without most of the information of size and others that you had in the previous pic. Remember to start “panoraming” from the brightest area. If going slow enough my phone is able to change the exposure a bit and show the darker areas too.

Editing out parts of the pic. As I already mentioned, quite frequently my finger gets in the pics taken with the ultra-wide-angle lens. I usually remove it by cropping or using the Eraser feature of editing apps. Very few times I use it also for removing people or things I do not like from the pic. For example, in the A-Team post I have this one.

In the original pic, Tyler was there too. It looks better without him.

For that, I used Meitu app. It has an Eraser function. You can find quite some other apps that do so too. By the way here the three main apps I use these days.

InShot mainly to cut pics to Instagram standards.

I will keep adding more information in this post. Most of the above came from conversations with buddies while/after hiking. So I guess that more tricks and basics will come to mind little by little.

Enjoy your photography journey!