Getting the Shot: The Crappy Truth

Last weekend we drove over to our old stomping grounds in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.  My Raleigh was in dire need of a drive train replacement and we decided that our old shop in Lux was the best place to do it for us.  My husband had a business trip there the previous Tuesday so he dropped the bike off and it was finished by the weekend.  We decided we might as well stay the weekend, meet up with some friends, and do a little hiking with The Dog.  One of the things we do miss about our old home is the hiking trails.  Luxembourg may be super small, but it does have some fabulous hiking.  The Mullerthal region is the premier hiking district in the country and there's a reason for that.  The Mullerthal is easily accessible from Belgium, Germany, and The Netherlands.  It's not the Alps or Scandinavia, but it's a good stand-in for a weekend getaway.  On the trail we met some Dutch, some Germans, some Belgians, and some French.  Clearly, the Mullerthal is the place to be.

I've done a lot of shooting on Luxembourg's trails, but not for about two years.  Also, the last time I was there I was shooting with my old DSLR set up.  I wanted another go with my Fuji, 3 Legged Thing, and the ND filters.  There was one spot in particular I really wanted to revisit.

The Schiessentümpel waterfall is the Mullerthal's most well known sight.  It's not the most impressive waterfall in Europe, but it has a bit of a fairytale feel about it.  I shot it with a Canon Powershot the first year we were there and we hadn't been back.  This time I wanted to spend some more time and craft with the location to capture not only the waterfall, but also to be able to create a scene that conveys the magic of the place.  Little did I know that this was going to be one of the most difficult projects of the year.

I had a conversation a while back about the different types of challenges that photographers deal with depending on their focus.  The person I was talking with seemed to be of the opinion that those of us who focus on scenery have it a little bit easier than those who shoot portraits or special events because our subjects don't move.  Well, my opinion is that every type of photography has its unique challenges and none of them are easier or harder than another- except photojournalism and combat photography, of course.  That's at a whole different level.

When you see a photograph of some natural space, it often looks like a pristine, secluded, nearly untouched place.  I've learned while shooting places like this in Europe (with a high tourist population and lack of definable wilderness) that these images don't tell the truth about their locations.  There are a lot of uncontrollable variables to take into account, the most common and difficult to work around is the human factor.  Our eyes are especially attracted to the human form, which is way people find the Virgin Mary in their bagels.  Unless the goal is to capture a particular individual (like a model) in a place like this, usually the focal point of the photograph is an object in the scene (in this case it is the waterfall) or an entire vista. If there is a person in the shot it immediately distracts the eye.  I wanted the waterfall as my focal point, but I also wanted the eye to take in the entire scene.  A photobomb by a portly tourist in fluorescent pink would, in my opinion, completely ruin the shot.

We came to the falls around 2:30pm on Saturday.  Normally I would try to get to a location early in the morning or later in the evening, but our schedule wouldn't allow that.  Plus, it would be almost totally dark at those times in this location (a deep valley with heavy tree cover).  There were a handful of hikers and tourists milling around, but no more than I usually have to deal with.  However, the falls' proximity to the roadside meant that more people could show up at any time.  I wanted to shoot the waterfall from two vantage points, straight on from a distance and from a large rock directly in front of the falls.  With the amount of people around we were probably looking at about an hour shoot.  It ended up being close to two, and we returned the next day for a second round.  Of the two views I wanted, I ended up with only one acceptable exposure from one of them (on right).  To get this I climbed down the wall (visible on the left) to a large boulder.  This position got me to a place where other tourists couldn't access easily.  The focal length and the tree coverage meant I could probably paint any bombers out.  Thankfully, there was a break in the traffic long enough that I could get a clean 52 secs to take the shot.  Only one person stepped in towards the end of the exposure and painting them out wasn't a problem at all.  In this case, the most difficult part of this shot was the climb down to the vantage point.  But that was fun, so no complaint.  Next, after climbing back up the wall, we crossed the footbridge to get to the other spot I was after.  That's when it got really challenging.

The large rock is visible in the previous shot in front of the falls.  It's a really common vantage point for this location.  By the time we got over to the bridge three other photographers had lined up to do the shot from the rock.  One specific hurdle that scenic photographers have to deal with is each other.  In a spot like this there's always going to be people taking photos.  In this case there was only a few places to set up.  So, there we all stood, waiting for the first guy to take his shot, so the next guy could go.  The trouble was, the first guy was waiting for someone else to move- either to get in the shot or out of it.  Then, he wanted a shot with his friend in it.  Then they wanted to switch to repeat the whole process.  Meanwhile, of course, there were lots of other people moving in and out of the scene trying to get their photos and selfies.  I was the only one using a tripod, so I figured that I would wait because everyone else would, theoretically, be much faster.  It became clear that the other guys must be trying out new cameras because a lot of their time was spent messing with settings and not taking pictures.  Then, some other guy with a steadicam began walking back and forth across the bridge, down the steps near the falls, then back over the bridge to the wall above.  That would have been fine for me since he was moving enough to be blurred out in a long exposure, but he was wearing a bright pink hat that would create an unsightly blur across the entire scene.  Plus, no one else wanted this guy in their shot so all the other photographers were just sitting there on the rock not doing anything but taking up space.  I was positioned down below by the pool at the base of the falls waiting and waiting for everyone else to clear the boulder so I could climb up.  But they weren't.  The clock was ticking and we had an appointment to get to.  Even though it was a dinner, we still had to hike out another 3km to get back to our car and then drive 45 minutes to our hotel and clean up.  As I was standing there wondering what the heck was taking everyone so long, I discovered that I really liked the angle from the pool.  So, I set up my tripod quickly and began shooting.  When I was done, more people began showing up, filling the entire space and the other guys weren't making any sign of moving on.  I was really frustrated and out of time, but I thought I had something good.  We hiked out, passing a lot of stunning samples of trailside fungi and this really cool tunnel through the trees.

I had my waterfall shot from a distance and, I thought, an interesting angle from below the falls.  But, when we got back to the hotel and I uploaded everything to my iPad I discovered that, to my dismay, I didn't have a satisfactory exposure from the pool.  Every single one had a large blur on the left from the elbow of one of the other photographers.  The other guy thought he was out of my shot, but didn't realize I was shooting so wide.  I hadn't seen it on my view screen because of the darkness caused by the ND filter.  It was too large of a distortion to paint out.  I had one clean exposure, but to my complete disappointment the foreground was out of focus.  I was really bummed.  Really bummed.

I decided I wanted, needed to go back out there the next morning.  It meant another 45 minute drive out of our way before a lunch appointment on Sunday, but this time we would just drive up to the falls without hiking in.  We had breakfast at the hotel as soon as we could and ended up at the falls at 9:00am.  It was much darker than it was in the afternoon, but, mercifully, no one else was around.  I immediately set up down at the pool again and started shooting.  We were alone there about 10 minutes before other people started showing up.  I wanted to get a couple of exposures to blend and this took awhile.  Several times I had to stop mid-exposure because someone (always wearing a garish color) stepped into frame.  Because I had to raise the ISO level for the really dark location, I had to wait for the failed exposure to write to the card, which takes the same amount of time as the length of the exposure.  A minute exposure takes a minute to write.  It was definitely a lesson in patience. It took much longer than usual to get the shot, but I finally finished down at the pool and this is the end result of two days and a lot of waiting.

Multiple exposure blend

Then, I immediately moved up to the rock directly in front of the falls.  It took about a half of a minute to get my tripod in a stable position, but when I looked up the previous somewhat empty location was filled, positively filled with people.  Since I didn't even get one shot in before they showed up, there was no painting them out.

If I was shooting an album cover for the band "Dutch Tour Bus" this would have been perfect.  But, it wasn't what I was here for.  Several members of the group joined me on the rock.  The rest seemed to just be hanging out on the bridge.  It's a beautiful place and I certainly don't blame them for wanting to soak it all in.  One of the guys that joined me on the rock asked if I was waiting for something special to happen.  "Yep," I answered, "I'm waiting for this group to move."  He apologized and we laughed about it.  I stood on that rock for about 30 minutes.  I was certain that any minute the bus would head out, but they didn't and more and more people kept showing up.  It must have been a field trip day because these huge groups of people just kept appearing.  I realized that the chances of getting this angle were next to impossible.  I had missed my window.  Again.  When there was a break in the traffic on the rock, I tore down and left it.  We climbed up a short side trail as I reassessed the situation.  We had to get to lunch and once again the clock was ticking.  As we were standing there my husband noticed the view from our vantage point might make a good shot.  It's not the first time he found a good location.  I set up and then, once again, we were playing the waiting game as yet another group of people bombed the shot just as I hit the shutter button.  For some reason, everyone that morning seemed to be wearing pink, so there was no way they would blur out in a long exposure.  I had to wait for a break in the crowds.  One or two people in shot were workable, but a group of 20 couldn't be photoshopped.  "Dutch Tour Bus" had hit the road, but there still wasn't an ebb in the flow of people.  The distance this time meant I didn't need to use the filter, just lower the ISO, use a small aperture, and take a 1-2 second exposure.  On paper this should have been much easier to take, but the crowds of people were still preventing me from getting what I was after.  It was another 30 minutes or so before I had enough unpolluted exposures to create this final result.

The crowds had died a bit, but when I thought I could finally get the angle from the boulder a small group of people showed up and laid out a picnic lunch on it.  We had to get going.  The boulder shot wasn't going to be mine, but I was ok with that.  The shots I did have were ones I was pretty pleased with.

But, this year's most frustrating location had one more parting gift for us.  And, fittingly, it would be caused by humans.  On the way back to the car we headed down a rarely used path and I felt my boot squish into something.  It took a half a second to realize with total horror what I had walked through.  There was no mistaking the smell.  The feces stuck to the bottom of my boot weren't from a woodland creature or someone's dog.  It was from a person.  A person.  Stranger things have happened to me in Luxembourg, but nothing quite this disgusting.  And people back home think all we do is travel to glamorous locations and have fun.

While at first scenic photography may seem pretty straight forward or easy because you don't have anything to direct, the truth is that it is actually very challenging because you can't direct anything.  Besides weather, light, and other uncontrollable variables, hands down the most difficult thing to work around are other people and, sometimes, other photographers (or I should say other people with cameras). You either want the person in the shot or you don't in scenic photography.  Most of the time you don't because they are just too distracting in the scene.  A lot of really scenic places attract tourists, especially in Europe.  Tourists generally dress really brightly and their presence completely diffuses the ambiance of a location, whether in a city or the forest.  Most tourists (no matter where they come from) don't understand or respect a photographer's goals because they're too focused on what they want pictures of.  If you're set up with a tripod, you immediately become interesting.  Instead of moving along, a lot of people tend to stop and watch, completely clueless to the fact they are standing right in front of you, ruining the shot.  Others think it is ok for them to encroach on your space while you're shooting to see what you're doing or they think it must be the best place for them to take a picture from too.  I actually had a guy stand right over my shoulder with his face next to mine while I was in Hallstatt to see what I was looking at in my LCD screen.  Over the weekend when I was taking a macro shot of a mushroom, a woman came up behind me, leaned over me, put her smartphone next to my camera and took her picture- disrespecting my space and the fact her shadow totally blocked the light I was using.  Unless I'm going someplace remote or I time it before people are up and moving, the human factor is always going to come into play.  I totally understand why people are where they are and I don't begrudge their desire for their own photographs, but sometimes it can cause me a lot of problems.  I love creating calm and atmospheric images of places that convey that vibe while I'm there.  It isn't easy; it takes a lot of time and extra equipment.  A lot goes on behind the scenes.  Sometimes I have to climb down a retaining wall.  Sometimes I have to wait 30 minutes to get a 50 second exposure.  I really hope, though, that stepping in human waste is a one time thing.

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