Landscape photography is an art that requires creativity, patience, and the right equipment. While cameras, lenses, and tripods are essential, there are some unexpected items that can serve as game changers in the world of landscape photography. In this article, we will explore five unconventional tools and accessories that can enhance your landscape photography experience. Plus, unlike your main gear, these won’t cost an arm and a leg. 

The Shower Cap

When you think of landscape photography accessories, a shower cap may not be the first thing that comes to mind. However, this simple item can be a game-changer when it comes to protecting your camera and lens from rain, mist, and other environmental hazards.

Unexpected rain can be a nightmare for landscape photographers. Carrying a shower cap in your camera bag allows you to quickly cover your camera and lens, providing instant protection from moisture. When photographing waterfalls, the mist generated by cascading water can be challenging to manage. A shower cap can act as a shield, allowing you to capture long exposure shots without worrying about water droplets on your lens. In snowy or dusty conditions, a shower cap can keep your camera clean and free from debris. It’s a simple yet effective way to maintain the quality of your shots. Shower caps are lightweight and take up minimal space in your bag, making them a convenient addition to your photography gear. Finally, they aren’t hard to come by. The next time you stay in a hotel, pick one up, pop it in your bag, and it’s there for when you need it.

Long hours of standing and waiting for the perfect shot can be physically demanding. A small three-legged stool can provide much-needed comfort and stability during your landscape photography outings. Setting up your stool in a picturesque location allows you to sit and relax while you wait for the right lighting conditions or the perfect moment to capture your shot. This reduces fatigue and allows you to stay focused on your creative vision. It’s better than sitting on wet grass and can also help you ergonomically. Having one doesn’t take up too much space and can fit in the often neglected side pocket of your bag or even in the top section should you have that option. 

Duct Tape: The Photographer’s Best Friend

Duck tape is a versatile tool that should never be underestimated in landscape photography. Its adhesive properties and durability can be invaluable in various situations and can end up being your best friend. The number of photographers that I have interviewed on my podcast that mention this as being their V.S.P. (very solid product) is huge, so take their advice.

If a tripod leg becomes loose or a part breaks during your photography expedition, duck tape can provide a temporary fix to keep your tripod operational until proper repairs can be made. Duck tape can be used to secure cables and wires, preventing them from tangling or getting in the way while shooting. You can use duck tape to label your camera gear, making it easy to identify your equipment in a crowded or shared photography space. In wet conditions, duck tape can seal the seams of your camera bag or protect vulnerable parts of your camera and lens from moisture.

Lightweight Poncho

As we know, weather can be unpredictable, and being caught in the rain during a landscape shoot can be disastrous for your camera equipment. Carrying a lightweight poncho can help protect both you and your gear from unexpected rain showers. A poncho not only keeps you dry, but can also be used to cover your camera and tripod in a pinch. It’s an excellent tool for shielding your gear from rain and moisture. Modern lightweight ponchos are compact and easy to carry, making them a convenient addition to your photography gear. They can be folded and stored in your camera bag. When the weather takes an unexpected turn, a poncho can be quickly draped over your camera and tripod, providing instant protection without the need for elaborate setups.

5-Cent Coin

And finally, this very unlikely hero arrives. I have many times been out with my camera, and I need to tighten or loosen my tripod plate. When this happens, it is always very handy to have a 5-cent coin ( or your local equivent ) in my bag, ready to make that adjustment or tighten the plate to remove the fear of it falling off. This makeshift tool can be especially handy when you’re on the go and don’t have time to search for a screwdriver or purchase a replacement. It’s a budget-friendly solution that requires no additional investment, as most photographers have spare coins lying around.

Conclusion

In landscape photography, thinking outside the box and utilizing unconventional tools and accessories can be a game changer. The shower cap offers protection from the elements, the small three-legged stool provides comfort and stability, duct tape becomes your best friend, a lightweight poncho weatherproofs your gear, and a 5-cent coin serves as an improvised tripod tool. These seemingly ordinary items can enhance your photography experience, solve unexpected challenges, and ensure that you’re always prepared to capture the beauty of the natural world. They have, on many occasions, come in handy for me and for people that I have shared them with. I hope that they will end up being equally as helpful to you. Feel free to also share these with your friends as not only are they useful, they are also inexpensive, unlike all the other gear we end up having, most of which is rarely used. 

Have you any other unlikely photography heroes to add to my list, or have you used these exact items for the reasons I’ve mentioned above yourself? I’d love to see your additions in the comments below. Let’s chat. 

Busy scenes are common in many genres of photography, and while that business can often be a nice feature, knowing how to cut through it in order to prioritize your subject is an important skill. This excellent video tutorial discusses a range of ways to simplify images to make them more direct and impactful. 

Coming to you from James Popsys, this great video tutorial discusses various ways to simplify busy scenes. The classic and perhaps most obvious approach to this is using a longer focal length to exclude elements from the frame. This is certainly effective, but it is far from the only method, and it is worthwhile knowing the many different ways to accomplish this simply to widen your creative palette. Perhaps one of the trickiest but most compelling ways of doing this is through the use of light. This is something that street photography is excellent practice for. If you look at the work of many of the best street photographers, you will notice that not only do they capture interesting moments of life, they often play with light in ways that add a lot of visual interest to the frame and spotlight the subject. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Popsys. 

Building a new career from scratch

You’re going to have to make some sacrifices. But often times, it’s just a necessary part of building something up.

Sean Audet

Freelance food photographer

Breaking down his photography budget

Calculating risks without fear of the future

Sean Audet, 30, lives in Winnipeg, Canada, and earns around $134,000 a year as a food photographer. He has worked with over 200 clients, including McDonald’s and Campbell’s. Sean was a cook and chef for several years before transitioning to photography.

Tamron – Need lightweight, compact mirrorless lenses? Tamron has you covered, with superior optics perfect for any situation. With weather sealing and advanced image stabilization, you’ll open up your creative possibilities.

Radiant Photo – Radiant Photo superior quality finished photos with perfect color rendition, delivered in record time. Your photos — simply RADIANT. The way they are meant to be.

AfterShoot – AfterShoot helps photographers cull their photos faster, leaving them more time to spend on creative tasks. Save $10 with the code PHOTOFOCUS10.

Mylio Photos – Access your photos from anywhere, without the cloud! Easily showcase your photos on-the-go, resolve duplicates, find faces and look for those stunning locations.

Skylum – Your photos, more beautiful in minutes. Skylum adapts to your style and skill level. Check out Luminar Neo’s unique sky replacement and portrait editing tools, now available.

B&H – B&H is a world renowned supplier of all the gear photographers, videographers, and cinematographers need and want to create their very best work.

MPB – Grab used but perfectly working cameras and lenses for less, or turn your old gear into cash by trading and selling them on MPB!

The Senegalese village of Sare Soukande is home to fewer than 500 people. Ten-year-old Moussa, pictured here, is one of them. Attentive, passionate and a great football player, Moussa is one of the boys enrolled in an educational project Quim Fàbregas works on beside his professional photography. That day in the village, Moussa was the muse.

“Photography is one of the activities we teach – art is very important for children. In this case, we did a portrait exercise, then analysed the photos we took together,” says Fàbregas, who had been thinking about this shot for a long time. “The hands belong to Moussa’s friends. I wanted to send the message that human suffering is not only of one, but of those around us, too.”

He has no qualms about using an iPhone for work: “Phones are good for connecting with social media while travelling, while a camera is useful if I want to publish a book or hold an exhibition. But what I use doesn’t really matter. A photographer is known by his images, not by his camera.”

WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH) – Friends, family and the Wichita Northwest Grizzles came together under Friday night lights to honor a beloved local photographer who died Friday at a Wichita hospital from injuries sustained Monday in a sideline collision.

Friday afternoon, Linda Gregory’s husband, Mel, announced his wife’s death at the hospital where she’d been on life support since suffering a traumatic brain injury early this week. The injury happened while she was shooting photos at a junior varsity football game for Wichita Northwest. Linda was a staple on the sidelines of Wichita Northwest games. Among the school and in her community, it’s an understatement to say Linda Gregory was well-known and loved. For years, Linda and Mel Gregory spent many hours shooting photos of Wichita Northwest High School athletes.

Friday night, the varsity football team honored Linda with “L-G” stickers on their helmets. The game at Wichita Heights also included a moment of silence for her before kickoff.

At Friday’s game, Northwest students remembered Linda as a talented photographer who always had a smile on her face.

A fellow photographer recalled meeting her at a game featuring Wichita Heights and Wichita Northwest. He said he asked her questions about how she was shooting the game and recalled how she graciously shared information.

“She was always a source of information for me,” he said.

Earlier this week, Joanna Chadwick, a longtime journalist and teacher who’s dedicated much of her career to covering high school sports and whose husband used to coach at Northwest, recalled how a follow on Twitter and a chance meeting at a store led to a cherished friendship with Linda and Mel Gregory.

“That spawned the friendship and suddenly they became part of the family,” she said.

It’s a bond that many share with the couple.

“You know, you think about how a friendship can happen like that and you think about, ‘Linda and Mel love me, they love my family,’” Chadwick said. “But it wasn’t just us.”

For those that don’t know Linda Gregory…

“I can’t even explain it enough to people that didn’t know here, how many people she touched,” Chadwick said.

Mel was among the crowd at Wichita Northwest’s game at Heights Friday night, there to honor his wife.

“She was a really good woman,” Mel said. “I was married to her for 23 years and (I) never had any hard times, never had any hard times with her. She and I were kind of like a team, always. And it’s tough to lose her.”

Copyright 2023 KWCH. All rights reserved. To report a correction or typo, please email news@kwch.com

OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) – The internationally recognized photography exhibit “Positive Exposure” is on display at Creighton University’s Lied Art Gallery.

The exhibit is by Rick Guidotti, a photographer who started out in high-end fashion in New York City, Milan, and Paris until his passion shifted. Guidotti said, “As an artist, I refused to see beauty only on covers of magazines.”

Over time, Guidotti developed an interest in people with medical conditions and began looking at medical textbooks.

“When I went to those medical textbooks, I found terrifying images,” Guidotti said. “I found images of kids in doctor’s offices usually naked or in their underwear with those black bars across their eyes, and that’s how I committed initially to ‘We’re going to change that.”

Eventually, Guidotti founded Positive Exposure, a non-profit that promotes inclusivity through photography, film, and education.

“What we’re doing is we’re creating opportunities to work with communities and individuals at risk of stigma and exclusion to celebrate the beauty and richness of human diversity,” said Guidotti.

Guidotti travels from city to city around the world, presenting exhibits that focus on people with different diseases and genetic disorders.

Hayden Sommer of Omaha is one of 17 Nebraskans featured in the exhibit at the Lied Art Gallery. Sommer has Phelan McDermid Syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that causes medical, intellectual, and behavioral challenges.

His mother, Heidi Sommer says though the disability is trying, her son is a blessing.

“I feel like he has taught us more about life than anything ever could,” Sommer said.

Her philosophy is similar to Guidotti’s: change how you see; see how you change.

“We all have the exact same needs: a need to be seen, a need to be heard, a need to be loved, a need to belong,” Guidotti said. “Simple.”

The Positive Exposure exhibit will be on display at the Lied Art Gallery through October 6th, 2023.

Copyright 2023 WOWT. All rights reserved.

The winners of the Bird Photographer of the Year award have been announced, with photos by two Australians among the top shots. 

The international competition is billed as a “celebration of avian beauty and diversity”, inviting photographers of all ages from novice hobbyists to pros to submit their most stunning bird photos in several categories. 

Jason Moore won gold in the black and white category for a close up of two ducks in Perth.

Cheng Kang picked up a bronze award for a snap of an Australasian darter on a foggy winter morning in Victoria. 

The winners were announced on the Bird Photographer of the Year website earlier this week. 

The competition first began in 2016 and attracts entries from around the world. 

About 250 of the best images are selected and printed in a coffee table book, which is now in its eighth edition.

The competition is taking entries for the 2024 contest, which closes on December 10. 

Here are the winners of the other categories, noting we left out the winner of the Conservation category, which featured an image of a dead turtle dove. 

Bird behaviour — and overall winner:

Birds in the environment:

Comedy bird photo:

Urban birds:

Birds in flight:

Best portrait:

Ages 15 to 17:

Aged 12 to 14:

Aged 11 and under:

SIDNEY — The Sidney Memorial Public Library is set to host a photography exhibit from 2 to 3 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 9.

The exhibit will be held in the Smart Community Room at 8 River St. in Sidney.

Join local naturalist and photographer Rick Bunting and discover what inspires and aides him in capturing his stunning nature photographs.

Bunting is Professor Emeritus from the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam where he served as Chair of Music Education and conductor of the renowned Crane Chorus. Previous to his work at Potsdam, he taught at the Bainbridge-Guilford Central School, SUNY Fredonia and Jacksonville University. Since his retirement from teaching, he has devoted a great deal of time to his passion as an amateur naturalist. He enjoys taking pictures of what he sees and sharing them on a regular basis with many friends and in the programs he creates.

Rick’s work will be on display through the month of September. Visitors may stop by anytime the Community Room is not in use.