Landscape Photography: Washington's Olympic National Park

Course details

What are the best ways to capture lush, green, and often rainy landscapes? Find out by traveling with photographer and educator Justin Reznick to the spectacular Olympic National Park, where he explores three unique regions. First he journeys into the Sol Duc Valley, home of famous forests, creeks, and waterfalls. He brings three lenses—wide angle, telephoto, and macro—to shoot the valley from a variety of perspectives and focal lengths. Then he lands on Second Beach, experimenting with various foreground-and-background compositions. Last, Justin investigates the Hoh Rain Forest, where he shows how to shoot landscapes in the rain and introduces one more vital piece of equipment: the tilt-shift lens. In the final chapter, he reviews the selects from the shoot and the post-processed results.

Learning objectives
Defining the HIPS acronym for the shooting workflow
Taking a serene shot of a creek
Shooting waterfalls
Isolating trees in a forest
Getting a macro shot of the forest floor
Shooting reflective pools
Using a tilt-shift lens for a panorama
Shooting fall foliage
Comparing polarized shots

Concepts

Introduction to the Olympic National Forest

01 - Welcome

1. Shooting in the Sol Duc Valley

02 - Introducing the Sol Duc Valley
03 - Defining the HIPS acronym for the shooting workflow
04 - Taking a serene water shot in a flowing creek
05 - Creating a more powerful foreground-to-background relationship
06 - Setting up the shot of the falls on the bridge
07 - Taking a shot of the falls from the center of the bridge
08 - Shooting the falls wide from a different perspective
09 - Using a long lens to try to get the look of a miniature ice village
10 - Isolating the mossy trees in a busy forest
11 - Compressing the depth of the forest to get the composition
12 - Getting a macro shot on the forest floor
13 - Wrapping up the Sol Duc Valley shoot location
14 - Post-processing on the water shot from the creek
15 - Applying a recipe to the post work on an image
16 - Reviewing other post-processing tips for the Sol Duc images

2. Shooting Second Beach on the Olympic Peninsula

17 - Shooting reflective pools with a foreground-and-background relationship in mind
18 - Shooting water channels in the foreground
19 - Working with S curves and triangles in the composition
20 - Using a neutral-density filter to get a silky ocean-wave image
21 - Shooting the sea stacks from within the water
22 - Blending two images to achieve the look
23 - Finalizing the post-process image blend

3. Shooting in the Hoh Rain Forest

24 - Introducing the Hoh Rain Forest location and shoot plan
25 - Isolating elements in the Hoh Rain Forest first shot
26 - Isolating a tree as a subject in the composition
27 - Shooting trees in the Hall of Mosses with a long lens
28 - Using the pathway as a leading line
29 - Using a long lens to isolate patterns in the moss
30 - Using a tilt-shift lens to correct distortion in the forest image
31 - Using the tilt-shift lens for a panorama
32 - Finding a shot of fall-foliage color in the Hoh Rain Forest
33 - Comparing shots with polarization
34 - Stitching the tilt-shift panorama

4. Reviewing the Final Images

35 - Final image review and selects from the shoot

Landscape Photography: Washington's Olympic National Park

Authors

Justin Reznick