4. Lighting in the Field

Using flash on this wake surfer adds drama and tension to the image.

Lighting is key to the success of any image. Without light, there would be no photographs. My life revolves around light. I wake up early for it. I plan vacations around it. I buy special gear to capture it. My career depends on it. Photographers are joined at the hip with light.

Adventure sports photography relies on good light to make compelling images. Photographing mountaineers on a glacier on an overcast day is like shooting flies in pea soup. Everything is flat and murky with no contrast. The viewer can’t see any detail in the snow; it’s a featureless, foggy mess. If the climbers are wearing drab clothes, they look like brown boulders in a snowfield. Not good.

But then the sun comes out, and this mountaineering scene is transformed. Detail emerges in the snow, and steep ridges and deep crevasses are revealed. The climber’s Gortex jacket brightens, and his skin tones rosy up. Nature just turned on the light switch.

I speak from experience. Once I shot a new clothing line for Columbia Sportswear in Alaska. We had decided mountaineering would be a great way to illustrate what the new clothes could do. I had hired climbers to be the models since they would actually be climbing in serious situations. The climbers had climbed up a ridge for a shot, and I had set up a quarter-mile away with a telephoto lens to compress the scene. There was no scene; only dull shapes on featureless white. I was sweating bullets since the shoot depended on good light. But then the sun broke through a hole in the clouds and perfectly illuminated the climbers. I squeezed off a few shots, and then the clouds pinched the sun out. But I had my shot (FIGURE 4.1).

4.1 Climbers roping up on a ridge on the Matanuska Glacier, Alaska.