Capturing Beautiful Landscapes in Difficult Weather

If you are an outdoor photographer of any kind, bad weather is something that will eventually affect you. In his latest video, landscape photographer Thomas Heaton ventures out to the coast of Northern Ireland in rough conditions. He shares the benefits of shooting in bad weather, some tips for dealing with the outdoors, as well as the joy he finds in journeying through the wind and rain to get the image he wants.

The weather has a tendency to scare off photographers, but in this video, you can see how Heaton embraces it. For him, as a landscape photographer, the increased drama of the sky and the stormy sea can be worth the trade-off of dealing with the conditions. For his first shot, Heaton was capturing a shot of a castle, but the glare off of the water covering the black rocks in the foreground was an issue. He then talks about how he uses a polarizer to reduce the glare on the rocks, as well as a three-stop graduated filter to handle the bright sky. One last technical point that he made in this video was that he needed to keep his shutter speed at close to half a second to get the proper look that he wanted for the waves. This caused him to raise his ISO higher than he would normally like, but you can see in this video how all of these factors and adjustments came together to capture a beautiful image.

My biggest takeaway, though, was how Heaton truly finds joy in the process of braving the rough conditions, exploring to find the perfect shot, and going home with the satisfaction of the adventure. For the first shot in this video, Heaton says he took over an hour to choose the correct composition, mostly spending time exploring. This was done in wind, rain, and cold, yet he somehow finds a way to share his experience in a positive way. This video is worth watching and will give you a different outlook on approaching difficult situations to get the photos you want.