The Wild Photographer

Talking with Will Patino: The 4 Pillars of Landscape Photography, Simple Editing Techniques, and Why he Ditched the Tripod

• Court Whelan • Episode 62

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Will Patino is a landscape photographer extraordinaire and excellent photography teacher. In this conversation, the New Zealand–based landscape photographer shares oh-so-many valuable tips for nature photography. 

During our time together, he breaks down his Four Pillars of Landscape Photography (location, composition, light, and processing) into a field-ready mindset, how he uses balance for composition vs. solely following compositional rules, how he reliably shoots handheld at 1/8s without a tripod, and the simple local-dodge/burn workflow he uses to keep post-processing effective and artistic. We also get into topics like flow state when photographing, why he only edits on small screens, intentional motion blur, and the his sage advice to budding photographers.

Lots of excellent pieces of advice in this fun conversation!

Will Patino on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WilliamPatinoPhotography

Will Patino on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/williampatino_photography/
 

Workshops & Gallery:  https://williampatino.com/ || William Patino Photography

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Court Whelan (00:00)
Hey friends, welcome back to the wild photographer. I've got a great conversation today with Will Patino, an incredible photographer who is, I would say quite famous on YouTube, has incredible photo tutorials. That's really how I got turned on to him. He is a masterclass in simple, authentic, but highly skilled landscape photography. In today's episode, we go over a lot of really great stuff.

Some of my biggest takeaways things like his four pillars of landscape photography distilled into a really easy takeaway that is kind of game changing for landscape photographers out there when thinking in this way. He talks about why he always zooms out of the photo when editing in Lightroom or Camera Raw. And also how he gets away with a really slow shutter speed without a tripod. He's kind of famous for never using a tripod, even though he's

the upper echelon of landscape photography in spoiler alert, he's able to do so at like one eighth of a second. So in this episode, it's chock full of those goodies a lot more. And I'm really looking forward to having you take a listen to what I thought was a really fun conversation with Will.

Before we get into the episode, I wanted to thank our key sponsor, Art Storefronts. Artstorefronts.com is an incredible photo selling website. It's really an art selling website, but we photographers, it's

prime for the way we want to display our artwork, organize it, showcase it in the best of all ways. There are multiple reasons why I love Art Storefronts and I am a customer. do have an Art Storefronts website. If you want to see what the format looks like, it's just at shop.courtwhelan.com It's a great example of one of their really, really great website builds. So not only do they have an incredible art selling engine, things like great mockups where you can have images of really chic

⁓ You know living rooms and dining rooms and conference centers with your art on the wall. Obviously, it's kind of all done with AI, but also it's an incredible website building tool and they do the whole thing for you, which is again for a busy guy like myself. I needed to outsource all this. I wanted someone to take over. I wanted to hit the easy button and not only did I hit the easy button in a really effective way, I got probably the best looking photo website and the best art selling tool I've ever had so.

I'm a huge fan of Art Storefronts. If you mention this podcast when signing up, you will get that website build completely for free. We're getting into Q4 photo sales. So whether you have a photo website or you're looking to get into a photo website, this is a really, really great time. It's going to launch you into one of the better photo selling seasons of the year. And again, if you mention this podcast, when you contact Art Storefronts, you're going to get that website build completely free, which is almost a $2,000 value.

So highly recommend checking them out. At very least check out what the websites look like. shop.courtwhelan.com is a great way to see, I think, a prime example. And then their main website is artstorefronts.com. All right, without further ado, let's get into our conversation with Will.

Court Whelan (03:05)
Will, welcome to the podcast. great to have you here.

Will (03:09)
Thanks a lot, man. It's a real pleasure. Thank you.

Court Whelan (03:11)
Yeah, well, I'm just going to launch into it as I always do. OK, so you are a tried and true landscape photographer kind of first and foremost. And I'm just curious, like in your words, you you've dedicated your career to landscape photography. What makes you tick about taking landscape photos? What's the what's the special sauce there?

Will (03:30)
⁓ That's a deep question to be honest. Photography for me, I picked up a camera initially because of skateboarding, ⁓ to cut a long story short basically. So I skated all through my teenage years and into my early 20s. And then when I picked up a camera, it was for the skateboarding and I saw around that same time,

on Instagram, this is back in 2011, a couple of landscape photos, know, sunrise, sunsets. And it just spoke to me straight away. Something inside of me just was compelled to go and try it. It just looked fun to me and I was captivated by that type of photography. I never was prior, but once I just suddenly saw these landscape photos around that same time that I was starting to play with the camera.

I just felt something inside say, man, I wanna try that. So I remember, you know, initially just in the backyard, literally photographing flowers in the garden and probably the sky. And then I went down the beach where I used to live in Australia on the coast. And I still have that photo. It's on my desktop. I can see it right now, but yeah, my first sunrise that I photographed and a terrible photo, obviously. But what I felt in that moment is what I still feel these days that... ⁓

you know, deep connection with something bigger than us. ⁓

I feel like photography and being out in nature, the landscape for me brings me closer to him. I, and even if you put that aside, it's just the fact that where, you we are, you get in a flow state with photography, doesn't matter what genre you're doing, you do get in that flow state. So I just really love the way that in nature, you get in this rhythm, this flow state where you just disengage from anything else that might be going on in your life and your mind. And you know, it's, it felt good. It felt like the right thing to be doing. So it's just

been rinsed in repeat ever since but yeah first and foremost it's just that connection there connecting with something much bigger than ourselves.

Court Whelan (05:30)
I know exactly what you mean. I had to think about this question recently for a little interview I was doing of kind of the, so I'm a wildlife photographer and you obviously love landscapes, but you know, two thirds is going to be critters. And the question was, you know, don't you ever just want to sit and observe the moment and does photography take away anything from those moments? Cause when the lion jumps on top of the rock at sunset with the young cubs playing underneath, like in a way, like I'm

consumed by my camera, but I started really thinking about it. Cause like, feel so strongly personally that no, I that that's what I need to be doing. And I kind of distilled it down. And maybe you feel this on kind of a landscape level as well as is for that brief moment in time, I'm sort of connected with that animal for a common goal. Sounds kind of cheesy, but it's like, I'm working with this animal. It doesn't know it. I don't know how sentient it is to figure that out, but we're working together to showcase this thing and it's utmost beauty or rawness or

Splendor wherever it might be and I feel like that's kind of something that we might have in common there with landscapes like you're uniting with that that force

Will (06:38)
Yeah, I remember before I got into photography thinking like, you don't know live life through a lens, you know, because I'd see people out with cameras and not much not really our smartphones back in those days. But and I remember thinking like, it's better to, you know, enjoy it through your own eyes. But yes, once I got into photography, and to this day, I'd say no, that the lens and looking through the lens and the camera itself.

Yeah, it brings me a closer connection with the subject and with that moment you are and that's that flow state when you're right there in that moment, you know, you could have you commonly will get discomfort in the landscape as you were doing wildlife photography, you get cold, you're hungry, you're maybe kneeling down on sharp rocks or something, but your body can just switch all that off when you're right in those moments. And yeah, I feel like

that's when you're, like you say, you're almost one with the subject matter, it's incredible. And when you put the camera down, that's when you're like, man, I'm freezing, I'm cold, I'm bleeding or whatever it may be. But that shows how powerful it is. And I wouldn't have those connections with nature and with the subject and the landscape itself if it wasn't for photography. Now every now and then I do enjoy once I finish getting, creating the image and I feel like the creative process is finished for sure. I'll just take a minute to just sit.

and just kind of reflect on what's just happened and what I've observed. But even that is just so different to what just happened prior, you know, with the camera. So, yeah, I think it all ties together. But if it wasn't for...

photography, I just don't think I'd be an outdoors person. Now, now I could be but in those early years, you know, I just wasn't an outdoors guy. Like I said, I grew up skateboarding and, you know, I did go out in nature a little as a child. And now I can look back and go, yeah, that's right. I remember having some really fun times, but it just wasn't something we did regularly where I lived, you know, because we're on the coast. So there wasn't much mountains or rainforest. But the times we did go into the rainforest ⁓ that left an impression on me for sure. But photography is what's really helped

bring me into this deeper connection with nature and the landscape.

Court Whelan (08:40)
It's beautiful. Yeah. And flow state. We're early on in the conversation, but I can tell that's going to be one of the big takeaways is folks find your flow estate at all costs. Because when you do find that you find a real deep seated passion in everything that you do. And I'm very fortunate like you are well to have found that through photography as well. So yeah, great stuff there. Okay. So folks, if you haven't seen Will's photography, it's really remarkable. And this is coming from a 2030 year.

Will (08:46)
Yeah, that's true.

Court Whelan (09:08)
career photographer myself and it is next level. ⁓ And so, you you've honed a very, special skill. What, like, how do you hone that skill or how do you walk up on it? Like what, what's your, you know, like in the medical world, for instance, there's continuing education. Like, what do you do to stay kind of on the up and up to hone your skill where clearly with every new photograph, every year that goes by, you're getting better and better. What, what might be the ingredients there?

Will (09:36)
It's a good question. You know, I teach and I run workshops and sometimes I have clients ask a similar question. So I have thought about this before. When I first started, I was excited. I was excited to get out with the camera. I was excited to see what I could find. So I was exploring a lot and just looking at the area I lived in in a fresh way. So there was a lot of this childlike curiosity. Like, what am going to find here? What's going to happen? And then there was the aspect of being a little bit discontented

I was excited to create the images and you'd have a brief moment of... ⁓

like a positive feedback loop, like, yes, I tried this idea and I think I've achieved it. But then very quickly, I've always just had this upper part of me that's been like, it could be better. And it's not like a dissatisfaction. It's hard to explain because I don't want to put a negative twist on it, but it's just never quite 100 % satisfied in my work. And somehow, and that was the early years, but somehow I've just still carried that onto this day. I have this excitement to get out there and I'm getting out in the field as much as I can, as I did when I first picked up a camera, I was going out.

out every single day, literally. in a short amount of time, I felt like I gathered a lot of experience, even within 12 months, I had people that had been shooting for years, start to consult me for ideas and how I was doing things. And it was because yeah, the love for it, the enjoyment.

getting out as much as I could and then not quite being 100 % satisfied with the result, which actually instead of driving me away and discouraging me, it just made me hungry to actually do a better job. And yeah, I just still have that to this day. And obviously as time goes on, the success rate, you know, gets a little higher and you're not taking as much garbage, but I still just have that same excitement, curiosity, what am I gonna find out here? Cause I love exploring and photographing.

aspects of the landscape here in NZ, which, you know, it's kind of unexplored from a photography standpoint. So that drives me. And then, yeah, just look back at the work and I'm like, yeah, it's good. But imagine if that was there or what about these? So what if there was fresh snow or what if there was light in that area? So then I'd use that as fuel to go cool. All right, I'm gonna really try to get something like that next time. I'll keep it in the memory bank. And as the years go on, you just kind of accumulate more and more of those little ideas. And then it's about going to execute them. So if you're gonna summarize that long answer,

it would just be getting out in the field as much as you can, I think is the key. If you want to learn guitar, you got to pick up the instrument and play every day. Every single day, ⁓ every day is going to be different. But if you can do that across a certain amount of time, obviously you're going to see results. So I think the key is doing it as much as you can, enjoying the process and never quite settling, know, just realising that, it could always be a better photograph.

I think the day you settle is the day you stop learning and you stop progressing. So it's getting that kind of happy medium balance here. And like I said, it's not a discontentment, but it's just this kind of objective look at your work and being like, yeah, cool. Like I'm proud of that, but I feel like I could probably get a little bit better. ⁓ I feel like I've just naturally had that within me for whatever reason. And it's probably allowed me to make it a career because I've never quite been a hundred percent satisfied with what I was creating.

Court Whelan (12:46)
So you've already hit three of my favorite topics to mull over and read about and learn about in the world. Your flow state for one, ⁓ mastery, we talked about that, the whole idea of the 10,000 hours it takes and the growth mindset. Kind of always, always wishing to grow. yeah, we're up to a good start there. very, very compelling. I love those answers. So obviously the answer to my next question of ⁓ sharing the skills you have honed and have developed and where you're at now for some of your

Will (13:03)
haha

Court Whelan (13:15)
your favorite landscape photo techniques or sunset photo techniques. You know, I'd probably have to take one of your workshops and maybe I will, but I'm curious if you can distill your techniques in making great landscape images down to a handful of key factors, like the most important for you.

Will (13:34)
I reckon I could summarize that actually, because as from a teaching standpoint, I've tried to think of a way to...

break down what makes a good photograph. So I came up with a term that I called the four pillars of landscape photography and the analogy being, you know, if we've got four, it's like being in a square room and we've got a pillar in every corner. We're trying to hold up the roof essentially. Now we want all of these pillars to be of equal strength and importance in order to make the roof level or in order to make a great photograph. So what I deem as the four pillars really is location first and foremost.

When

I say location, you can think of subject matter essentially. So you've got to have a good subject, good location, and then composition. You know, could be the best spot, but if you're not composing it effectively, then it's not going to work. So location, composition, then light. We need to be there when the light is good. We want good quality light. And then the last pillar is the post-processing. Because you can nail those first three out in the field, right place, right time, right comp.

you get home and you butcher it with the processing. So location, composition, light and processing, that's what I deem the four pillars. And I think if as photographers, we really aim to get all four of those to the best standard we can, then you're going to have success. And if you've ever created an image or you're looking at one and you know, you're like, man, there's something wrong with this. A lot of the time people naturally try to use processing to save the day. But when you can really get grasp these four pillars, sometimes you can just go hang on, look, I can make

processing the strongest pillar here but if those first two or the first three are really lagging

then it's just not gonna hold the roof, know, it's not gonna work. So it's like, look, let's try to get all four to the best standard we can, location, composition, light, processing. Naturally, one of them is probably gonna let us down a little, but at least if you can have the other three really high, now you've got an image that's worth keeping. And then every now and then, once in a blue moon, you'll get all four to that high standard, but it's a constant juggling act of trying to make sure that we're getting all four to the best standard possible.

Court Whelan (15:42)
Okay, so I'm going to obviously follow up with a lot of questions because you just named things that I've wanted to cover in this talk. I love the pillar analogy. That's, that's fantastic. Yeah. Because if you have one that is wildly greater than the other, it risks like, you know, structural integrity, like the building could collapse. So you gotta do your best to get them all. So, okay. So I'm going to start with, with light, ⁓ just kind of a short, short question, but feel free to answer it you wish. What's your favorite light? Talk to me about like.

Will (15:46)
Thank you.

Yes.

Court Whelan (16:12)
You know, obviously we think early morning, blah, blah, but like, what's your favorite light? We'll just keep it at that.

Will (16:12)
man.

It depends on the subject obviously, because I photographed mountains, waterfalls, rainforests, a lot of time in the forest, seascapes. I'd say the best light, the easy answer is to say low angled light. know, any light low to the horizon, it doesn't necessarily have to be sunrise or sunset, but just that lower angle. But if I was going to maybe break it down more, I am a sucker for like dramatic more back to side light.

And when that's happening, that's where you just get a lot of shadows. I love to use shadows in my photography. know, the light becomes more evident and more critical when you have darkness. So if you can, use darkness a lot in my imagery to make the light stand out. So I'm often shooting low angled light and generally either a side light or a back light. And yeah, there's just those little moments you get in nature when the sun does get into that lower angle.

can just do some wonderful things to the landscape. It's quite critical. Now, there's no right or wrong, different lighting for different scenarios, but yeah, let's just say low angled light, especially backlight or side light.

Court Whelan (17:18)
Mm-hmm. Okay, so then now on to composition. I've been a total sucker for adhering to the rule of thirds and then came along the phi grid, which is like a little bit of pinched in rule of thirds. And you have all these leading lines and other compositional techniques, but in watching a number of your fantastic YouTube videos, tutorials on landscape photography, forest photography, you name it, you talk primarily about balance. I wonder if you could expand on that and talk about how

balance fits in describing a little bit with or without traditional compositional rules. But when you're looking for a balanced photo, what's going through your mind?

Will (17:55)
It's funny, as a teacher, I see there's two types of people when it comes to composition. There's people that just naturally can sense balance in the frame, and then there's ones that just don't. I feel like, if I look back at my real early photography, it's like, wow, that is so bad. But I feel like pretty quickly I started to grasp what kind of makes an image flow well. And yeah, over the years, as I've tried to summarize it, balance is probably the best term that I use, like the most simplest way to describe it. And ultimately, I think of like a seesaw.

And when we have a seesaw and it's imbalanced, it's leaning in one direction. And when we do that in a photograph, if we're leaning too heavily in a certain way, it can either make the eye just get forced to a specific point and then create this void on the opposing side. And now there's a bit of an internal conflict here. The eye either gets pushed off the image or...

You wanna look back where the void is, but there's nothing there. So you have this little conflict and it just doesn't work. And within a split second, you realize. So I try to use balance in a way to say, look, all right, we've got a rectangle that we're working with more or less. If I'm gonna.

to put a point of interest, whether it's the main subject or something else in a certain part of that rectangle, what's on the opposing side, whether it's directly across or in the corner opposing, what's there in order to just slowly balance it out. And again, if you go back to a seesaw, it's just saying, all right, I don't want the image leaning too heavily in one direction. So I've never really paid attention to rule of thirds. Coincidentally, if I bring up a rule of thirds grid, if I might be cropping in post or something, it's like, ⁓ I happen

and to always line these things up. But if you think about the rule of thirds, where those four intersects are, they're balanced around the centralized part of the image. So it's more or less the same type of thing. I feel like the rule of thirds can actually complicate it, especially for a beginner. If you strip it back and just say, hey, let's just balance this image out. If we've got something slightly off to the left, do we have something slightly off to the right to make sure that there's not an imbalance going on? And I've always just tried to...

know, stick to that. It happens more or less subconsciously for me. But when it comes to teaching and I'm kind of framing up with a student in the field, that's the main thing. It's like, all right, we've got the mountain gently off to the top right. What's going on down that bottom left? We don't have anything there. How can we fix that? So on and so forth. So I think if you just keep that in mind.

it just works, you know, and I use the centralised part of the frame, the image, as what you call the fulcrum point. So if it's a seesaw, it's just the middle of the seesaw. So now we're just playing a game of balance off that centralised part of the image or wherever the main subject is, that's the fulcrum point. What are we balancing around that main subject? And I don't know, it works for my brain, it helps me with teaching, and I think it helps other people as well, hopefully.

Court Whelan (20:44)
No, for sure. I mean, I love this idea because, no matter what rule you subscribe to or most recently have learned or employing photography, all these things are creating balance. It's all part of mathematical equations of aesthetics and, you know, the idea that our brain likes balance. also likes tension, but likes resolution to the tension. Like in musical theory, that's everything. Like you build and build and build tension and then you resolve it in some way. And so I kind of see a lot of parallels there. So if I were someone, you know,

Will (20:57)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Court Whelan (21:13)
relatively new to photography and I wanted to determine if my photos had balance or if I'm getting better at balance what I think I understand or at least what I would do is I'd start looking at my photos or start taking new photos and looking through the screen at the frame and just kind of take a journey with my eyes through the scene like where my eye is naturally drawn, where they pulled to, where do they end, where do they begin and figuring out how to structure those different elements.

into something that does look like a complete balanced story, for lack of a better word. Is that kind of what you would say?

Will (21:51)
Yeah, more or less. It's tricky because in the field, you get tunnel vision. And again, just through teaching thousands of students over the years, it's just a common thing where we will get this tunnel vision where we're staring at the main subject. And it's like people stop seeing everything else. But then I'll often say to people, look, just step back for a minute. Let's actually turn the camera off. Let's turn it back on now and review that image. And let's look at it with a fresh perspective as if we're a viewer, we're not the photographer anymore.

And when you do that, you can look a little more objectively and that's where you might see these imbalances. It's like, ⁓ right, okay. I can see now that I was so fixated on that sea stack that I didn't realize the other 80 % of the image was, there's just nothing going on there. Another thing that can happen as well is we can think that little details are going to be noticeable to everyone else. So it might be like.

you've got your sea stack and some waves and then in the foreground there's all these little rocks everywhere. And maybe in your mind you're thinking, these rocks are, look, there's little leading lines in between them. But when the average person looks at that image, they're just going straight to the main obvious focal point there. And those little rocks which you think were creating leading lines and things, it's just not. So it's really hard sometimes to spot the imbalances in the frame. And I guess my main advice when it comes to that is yeah, just.

just kind of disengage from the photograph for a minute, get out of that flow state. Now just look at it with fresh eyes and go, yeah, okay, hang on. Where is my eye naturally flowing to? And then once I get there, how do I feel? Am I looking at those other elements? Or are they distracting? Do I need to remove them? Do I need to concentrate more on them? I think the other big thing with learning with composition as well, honestly, is probably just looking at other photographers whose work you admire.

Social media is not the best place for that because amongst professionals you're getting amateurs and ads and it's not a good place to learn and actually really take in. So get some books or go to a photographer's website.

and do it every day. Just make yourself a cup of tea, a cup of coffee. The more you look at effective compositions, it'll just soak into your brain. So when you go out in the field, you'll see the shapes. And I always say composition is the alignment of shapes. We're just aligning the shapes. The challenge of photography and what really separates it from something like painting is that we can't just move the shapes with the click of a finger. You have to physically move yourself out there in the field. That can be quite challenging. You know, it's like, look, I love where those three elements

and

so on, but now there's a tree there. I can't just remove the tree. I've got to go keep walking and finding. So it's just that game of let's align the shapes and make sure the bulk and weight of the image, the balance cohesively flows us to the main focal point. And it really begins with establishing, okay, what is the focal point? Where do you want people to go? And then yeah, objectively looking and saying, all right, are they actually going to go there or are they going to get pulled away by something else?

Court Whelan (24:45)
I have a funny little trick that I've never really attributed to helping find balance. Um, it's been more for like looking at my photographs and determining if they're what I call big photographs, like they're powerful. They're, they're, um, they create an impression. And because like a lot of my work is, on thumbnails of websites, you know, for, travel and wildlife conservation and all that. And you kind of get stuck with looking at a big screen, even if it's just a Mac book, you know, it's still bigger than a thumbnail, but I,

I might start doing this for balance as well as what I'll do is I'll have it on screen, the image on screen, know, final version, whatever, like, do I need to do more editing? But then I'll look off and I'll look at the photo with my peripheral vision. And there's something about that where your mind, your eyes don't take that sometimes convoluted journey, but instead it's looking at this picture as I'm just realizing this kind of as a balance of shapes. And so anyway,

Will (25:28)
Hmm.

Yeah, exactly.

Court Whelan (25:40)
Yeah, I just figured I'd throw that out there. I don't know if it's helpful or relevant,

Will (25:42)
And that's probably why I don't like

processing on a big monitor. I just use a laptop and sometimes every photo I zoom out. So it's just a little thumbnail. Sometimes I just do the processing at that level too. It's just big obvious shapes. That's all the composition is. We just need to nail the big obvious shapes and then the light transitions, the dark and the light in conjunction with big obvious shapes.

Court Whelan (25:52)
Hmm.

Will (26:05)
that will determine if it's gonna work or not. There's no point zoning in on those finer details, unfortunately, because the only person that's gonna notice it is yourself, first and foremost, and then maybe that 1 % person who then starts to study everything, but ultimately, big dominant shapes with the right light transitioning. And you're better off looking at that on a smaller scale, 100%. So what you've said there, I can relate to that big time. And that's why, yeah, I just prefer the laptop. just don't need to, I don't need to see the details up close.

because I'm not seeing the whole image flow together. I need to actually zoom out and go, okay, are those colors working? Is those dark and lights working? And the big screen just doesn't allow me to do that.

Court Whelan (26:45)
Yeah, I think it's worth me repeating what you just said because this is kind of like a aha moment for me is you said you often zoom out when you edit photos, even on a laptop, you might zoom out so it's a smaller part of your frame. That is a brilliant technique. It's so obvious, you know, in hindsight, right? But yeah, if you're trying to see the whole picture, you don't get as lost in the details that so that's truly something that you'll do, you know, fairly often when editing. Wow.

Will (27:08)
100%. Yeah, all

the time. I love to work on a laptop. I think it's 14 inch screen. And then I work in camera raw. So it's already minimized a little and then often I'll just zoom out maybe so it's only 80%. And now I can just see the whole image as one. ⁓ Now I can see, it all working together? Is it not? And I'll often just process like that as well. It's just a lot of dodging and burning, brightening and darkening. That's what's gonna determine if it works or not.

It helps for me. And I think most people, if you try that, because otherwise, like I said, you can just get so caught up in the weeds. You can spend a lot of time polishing a rock in the landscape and then you zoom out and it's like, man, it didn't work anyway. So let's just zoom out. Is it working? And that's why you go back to those four pillars. If we nail the location, the composition and the light, well now the processing's just got to be 25%. It should just be adjusting the dynamic range and then we carry on. But if you're using that processing to kind of make up for the other three,

it's just an uphill battle, it's not gonna work. So if you nail those first three pillars, then the processing should just be light work and you shouldn't need to be zooming in and really going in on, in my opinion anyway, because when we look at a photograph, it's a split second and what's, you're not looking at those fine details, it's the light, the subject, the balance comp, bang, okay, now we've got one that works and all those little details which we could have got caught up in.

you know, it's probably not going to be seen or appreciated. It'll work subconsciously to just blend in together, but it's all about those other big factors first and foremost, in my opinion anyway.

Court Whelan (28:40)
That is such

an interesting technique that I'm going to try literally this evening as I edit photos. That's so interesting. Yeah. So yeah, big takeaway about that zooming out when you're in camera raw or Lightroom or what you might be using. Really cool. I'm going kind of stay on a similar topic of cropping. A, I noticed that in a lot of your tutorials, I don't see mention of a lot of cropping. And that could just be because of the ones I watched. And maybe it's not a key part of your style. But I am wondering, do you ever

shoot a little bit wider to give yourself the room to crop and kind of balance in post? Or are you really shooting exactly, you know, hopefully shooting exactly as is to preserve megapixels and integrity and all that? Just wondering what your thoughts are on cropping.

Will (29:29)
when I'm a hundred percent self-taught. I had no workshops or no YouTube when I was starting. So the learning process was just trial and error. And I remember realizing, you know, pretty quickly, especially the early digital cameras, like, man, if you crop, you're literally cutting off the resolution, you know? So instead of a 16 megapixel and I'm cropping, I've only got 10. So I did have a pretty strict process when I taught myself, even with ISO, like.

I want optimal quality unless there's a really good reason not to, then why would I minimize quality? And of course over the years, the technology's got better, especially if ISO. But yeah, still when it comes to cropping, I just wanna know that if someone wants to buy this image or I'm printing it for a billboard or something.

I can just back it 100 % and I don't have to question it. And the one that I always bring up is I had Apple contact me in 2014 to license one of my Yosemite National Park photos. I'd been there for three days. I was an amateur photographer. They happened to see one of the images online and yeah, long story short, they licensed this photo and it ended up as one of the wallpaper options on every Apple computer in the world. And the reason why I bring that up is during that process, they obviously wanted to check the raw files. You know, it was a strict process.

probably at hundreds of shortlisted images. And I just remember being like, man, I'm so glad that I shot this in focus, know, did all the right stuff because very quickly they could have just been like, no, the noise is too high because the only place they ever saw that photo was on Instagram. So I always say to people, don't treat social media or anything as, it's just online or it's just this, that is your portfolio. That's.

often where the only place people are going to see the work and you never want to be able to you never want to have to say to someone, ⁓ sorry, I can't print that one. It was cropped pretty heavily. I just wanted to post it online. I've always just said to myself, look, if you're going to put something out there, be able to back it 100%. So that ties into the cropping. It's like, look, I don't mind if I have to crop a little shore, I tried just to do all the work in the field. The main time I do crop is if I'm doing an intimate scene, so intimate landscapes where you're not really getting the sky, it just kind of

Court Whelan (31:20)
Hmm.

Will (31:39)
shooting down at those finer details. When you do that, there's an extreme depth of field, especially if you're at 50 or 70 mil and you're on an angle. And even at F22, it's really hard to get everything sharp all the way through. So sometimes there I'll just go a little wider. When you go wider, the depth of field gives you more coverage. So it's like, look, instead of being at 50 mil, I'm gonna do this one more, maybe 35. I'll do a bit of cropping instead of 60 megapixel, it's now gonna be a 40, still really high obviously anyway.

that technology. It has allowed us to do that a little more but honestly I don't like when I have to crop it's like a part of me dies whenever I'm cropping. I know in wildlife photography it's probably more prevalent because it's just so hard with wild animals to you know have the frame composed ready and then have the animal come in you know so there's probably more reason to do it but yeah I've always tried to avoid doing it as much as I can to be honest for those reasons.

Court Whelan (32:32)
Yeah, I mean, think it's, it's always tempting to do it, but I, you're not wrong that, I mean, if you're going to have this thing and you're going to brag about it, if you're going to be proud of it, if you're going to put it out there, um, I mean, bragging a good way, you know, if you're going to showcase it, it'd be a nightmare. If, if, know, your big break and Apple came through or a billboard came through and what it, and you're like, Oh no, that this one's just for kicks. And they're like, well, what else you got? Yeah, nothing. So.

Will (32:56)
I don't have enough on of that, yeah. And I always say to

people, it's probably not gonna be Apple, but it could be the neighbor down the road who's on the local Facebook group and said, wow, can I get a big print of that? I've got 60 inch wall here ready to fill up. And the last thing you wanna say is no, I just feel like it would be so disappointing for you. And you never know where that could have led from that point onwards. I had someone recently cropping pretty heavily and they were using a pretty small resolution camera, like 24 megapixel.

Court Whelan (33:17)
Mm-hmm.

Will (33:25)
And they cropping a lot of the work and I had to point out like down the bottom in Camera Raw, it shows you what the resolution is and a lot of the resolutions ended up being around 10 megapixel. And I was like, mate, like, you know, if you print this, you're not gonna be happy going too big on there. And I just don't think they realize, you know, it's easy in that digital realm to not think beyond the screen. Of course, on the screen, it's going to look good. But for me as a photographer, not that printing is a big part of my business, but there's nothing more rewarding than seeing the work in print.

Court Whelan (33:38)
not going to cut it.

Will (33:55)
I think every photographer should be printing their work to some degree, whether they're selling it or not. So having that extra resolution there obviously does help. So it's just something to be mindful of anyway.

Court Whelan (34:06)
Okay, so I wanna move on to one of your other pillars and that's editing, the bigger elephant in the room here. And I'm gonna kind of sort of combine a couple of questions. One, I'm wondering, what is the Will Patino photo style? ⁓ And you might answer that not even involving editing at all, but should editing play a part? I am curious about just sort of your general take on editing. You talked about dodging and burning, lightening and darkening.

And I'm wondering if there are any other key aspects of Camera Raw, Lightroom, Photoshop, etc. that you think have been a game changer in your career, in your photography.

Will (34:45)
It's a good question. So when I first started, I didn't want to edit at all. I thought like editing was not part of the art. It was cheating essentially. And the results were showing in my work, you know. So eventually I started shooting raw files and I taught myself how to process and the results were dramatically, you know, a big difference night and day. Now over the years, across 15 years or whatever it's been.

I've had slightly different styles with my work, some bit more dramatic, some bit heavier of the processing. I'd say the last five years and where my passion and high really is, just single exposure and just getting the job done in the field. And my processing is honestly just, it's predominantly brightening and darkening, dodging and burning. Now the main tool I use and the method I've kind of created and what I teach my students is,

I just use one tool and that's the adjustment brush, which is in Lightroom, it's in Camera Raw. And that brush allows us to go in and locally hit different parts of the image. If I want to darken the sky, if I want to brighten a certain tree.

And it's just really easy to use the way I use it with a high feather. There's no brush strokes anywhere. And there's other little tools Adobe keeps adding, which apparently can help with, ⁓ you want to select the sky and that. But a lot of those, they're too refined. They're too perfect. So I kind of use this brush in a way that a painter might use a brush. It's quite big liberal strokes going in, very large brush, like a Bob Ross basically, just going in, slapping the paint around.

And that is honestly the only tool I use in conjunction with the general sliders, know, shadows, exposure, et cetera. And that's about all. processing, this is a part that sometimes drives me mad because the general public, they don't understand.

you know, like I didn't understand, put it this way. I remember years ago, my mum said, oh, are these edited? You know, and I was like, yeah. And straight away she was like, oh, that's a shame. And I just feel like the general public still has this perception about what editing is and processing and what photography is and isn't. And I don't know, I've got to admit, sometimes I just have this internal thing where I'm like, man, I just wish I was a painter because with painting, no one questions.

how it's done. I'm sure they do. If you got into it, I'm sure that'd be your politics involved too. But it's like, when people look at a nice painting, they just look and, you know, for me anyway, I'm just like, wow, that's beautiful. I don't ask myself, but was that rock really that bright? Or was that bird really in the sky? When you look at a painting, you don't ask those questions because you just know, well, you don't even care. It's just a painting. It's meant to express.

the artist's interpretation of a place, potentially a moment, whether they were there or not. The beauty of photography is, well, at one point anyway, it was representing a literal moment and you being there looking at it as the photographer. That's changed now with drones and everything, because the photographer might not even look at the actual subject with their own eyes. there's just these weird conflicts sometimes where I just feel like, sometimes I feel like photography is shooting itself in the foot with all the AI and the...

the heavy processing and the manipulation. But then another part of me is like, you know what, if it's art, then you should be free to do whatever you want. And I don't know, it's just a weird thing. So for me, I guess I'll just get torn sometimes because my processing is quite minimal. But if you do a raw before and after, it still looks quite heavy because raw, if you're shooting backlight, which I said I really enjoyed shooting, you're exposing for that bright highlight.

Naturally, the rest of the frame is quite dark, so in a raw file, it looks terrible.

And then in the processing, could be 45 seconds, just lift up the dark tones, know, recover the highlights, more or less job done. But you put that side by side, it's going to look very dramatic. And because we I sell like digital tutorials, you need to show before and afters on ads and things. And I have an agency that does it all for me. But yeah, it just gets me down sometimes when I feel like photography gets discredited, because people think, that's fake. And this is this. And yeah, I've gone off on a side tangent here. But look, ultimately, my processing, is just so

minimal, it's stripped back. I generally just prefer just shooting a single exposure and it's brightening and it's darkening and that's all and it sounds ridiculous and so many students or people on YouTube will say to me

Okay, that was good tutorial. Wow. But what do you do? What do really do? And this is it like it seems ridiculous. But that's all I do. There's no gimmicks here. You don't have to buy plugins or anything else. I just keep it real simple, kind of like probably what a maybe a wildlife photographer might do. You know, you probably a lot of landscape photography just goes through these big stages where it's

It's leaning real heavy into certain techniques and methods. And like I said, over the years, I definitely tried things like luminosity masking and buying panels which automate processes for you and different software that has plugins that makes things easier. But yeah, along the way, I just said, you know what, as a teacher, I want to be able to do this stuff manually and show people how and why first and foremost, I don't want to say, hey, just buy this and push this button. It'll look really cool. I want to be able to approach this like a painter would an empty can.

and say, all right, which area should be darkest? Which should be lightest? Why, why not? And let's just go into it that way. And if there's big flaws in the image, it's the other three pillars. We're not using the processing now to save the day. So anyway, sorry for the big side rant there. It's just a, it's an interesting topic and photographers get it.

but it's just the general public and because we share our work online and to the public, yeah, it's just, it's a real tricky place as a photographer when it comes to this, you know, sometime that's why I love YouTube because I bring people along on the journey on how the image is created. And sometimes my job is to capture spectacular moments to be at the right place at the right time as the rainbow is going perfectly across a sea stack or from one end of the fjord to the other. Or as the lightning strikes when I'm in a sea cave and there's a rainbow and I've got that in a single shot, my job is to

to be there, that's what I love, that's what I like doing. And I love YouTube because it's like, hey, I know this image looks fake, I know this looks like AI or heavy Photoshop, but hey, I just go on and film the whole thing too. over the years, I've leaned into YouTube more and I'm enjoying the challenge of saying, all right, I can create this image, hopefully it's gonna be hard, but imagine if I can document the making of it too. And that way other photographers might learn and enjoy it. And it shows people this is photography.

to me. It's not just pushing buttons on the screen, it's about this passion out in the field, the highs and the lows and trying to be there for that exact moment. It's always been about that and yeah don't get me wrong along the way I definitely experimented with, I might replace the sky here or put some atmosphere in there but I've kind of stripped it all back over the years and said nah what do I really enjoy, what's this about to me personally.

And for other people it's something different and I think all the arts are like that at the end of the day but yeah that's where it's at for me. But the processing is just that brightening and darkening ultimately.

Court Whelan (41:43)
Yeah, no, you said so many great things. I kind of want to underline a few of those because I fully agree. And I think the key one is that photography, if you if you make it, it is art, you know, at the end of the day. I think it can be a little bit confusing for people because there is such thing as documentary photography. You know, there are war photographers, there are humanitarian photographers, there are people doing that sort of stuff.

but there really aren't like documentary painters, right? ⁓ But no, I I think we have a choice to make in photography and like the reality is it's the art that 99.9 % of us are doing. In fact, that's one of the lessons that I've learned from fellow photographers over the years is, know, don't make it a wildlife documentary encounter. Like you're not trying to document that like, I saw this toucan. No, you're trying to create some beautiful looking masterpiece out of it.

Will (42:33)
Yeah.

Court Whelan (42:33)
So

yeah, yeah, fully agree on all that stuff. Yeah, very similar kind of mindset with Camera Raw and Photoshop and all that.

Will (42:42)
mention about with painting, I always say to people, you said there's no documentary painters, but I'll say it's like if someone paints the wall in a house, they're painting houses all day. It's still paint on a brush, but there's a big difference from that versus the artwork that's painted and then put on that wall. And yeah, the camera's the same. And I think what's tricky with photography is there's just this underlying. ⁓

written code that was established, you know, a long time ago that what you see was a literal moment in time. And it looked exactly like that to the photographer's eye. And obviously that was never the case. Like you do a long exposure, that's not how it looked to the eye. But it's just along the way it's taken on, you know, and there's no right or wrong because it is art. But yeah, part of me just wishes that, I don't know, I think when it comes to when you're sharing your work, it just be nice if people...

because you get skeptics and...

And then you have the other extreme where someone's heavily manipulated something and people are like, wow, well done. Like the effort to get that. And they don't know the person just created the whole thing from the comfort of their couch. So, I don't know, guess just sometimes it's a shame that people don't know what actually can go into creating these pieces. But like I said, YouTube's my one little chance to kind of show a bit of an insight. It's like a wildlife photography. If you see an amazing wildlife photo, one that just is almost too good to be true, you're either going to go, wow, that's fake.

that's

a shame or that's incredible. How did they do that? And you kind of left wondering and it's, just think in this day and age, it's nice to just to have a little bit more than the still photograph. Even if it's just the phone video, just showing like the quick shot behind the lens, you know, and it's like great, wow. Now I really respect that.

because yeah, we just live in this weird timeline where what we're seeing, even political photo, you know, whatever, we just can't trust. And I don't think people should trust, but I think it's nice when the viewer can actually know. And I think that's why you probably just, you follow, you gravitate towards certain photographers. You go, yeah, I know what they stand for. I know how they do their work.

I like that guy for that reason. I know what I see was achieved in a certain way. And then there's the other extreme where you're like, no, I like the composites. It's creative, cool. There's no right or wrong, but yeah, it's just an interesting space with photography in the digital world where we're just getting bombarded with so many images. And I feel like things can just get watered down after a while.

Court Whelan (45:04)
A buddy of mine has a, an interesting kind of retort to the whole, someone asking if the photo is edited and it's basically, you know, if he's with his friend, the friend sees the photos. my gosh, gosh, this is an incredible photo, but you know, is it edited? And then friend says, does it look edited? says, no. Great. End of story. That's, that's yeah. That's it. Did my job.

Will (45:23)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

there's a gallery where I am here and we should have.

sell work in there and yeah, it's just one of those questions that people is it like exactly that, you know, because it's like, wow, this is incredible. Is it is it fake? Is it edited? And it's there's no simple answer there. Like if you say yes, because it is edited, then you got to actually elaborate to some degree because otherwise that the instant thought is it's fake. So it's like, man, it's just a can of worms. But

Court Whelan (45:51)
Well, taking a JPEG

photo is an edited photo because your camera is compressing the raw. Yep.

Will (45:55)
Exactly. the people on smartphones. Yeah, the smartphone

does the editing for them. But people assume a smartphone has no editing. Yeah, it's on a phone. No editing site, dude. It's doing all the editing for you.

Court Whelan (46:07)
Well, I for one say I'd be flattered if someone thought my photos were edited. I say, wow, so I created something so beautiful. You can't comprehend how it was captured and how it's showcased. Cool. Did my job.

Will (46:19)
Yeah, it's funny because over the years

it went from being, ⁓ is that Photoshopped? And now they just say, is that AI? It's like the verbs, it's just changed over the years, know, as AI has become more prevalent. But yeah, ultimately it almost is a compliment. It just means that, yeah, you really saw something pretty special there. And that's your goal really. You do want people to probably look and go, man, that's surreal. But with that comes that extra bit of baggage for sure.

Court Whelan (46:30)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Okay, so I'm gonna ask another technique question. Intentional motion blur. This is something that I saw you teach about and I don't know how much you use it necessarily, but it looked like something that you've gotten your sort of your quiver, so to speak. And I'm wondering if you can share a little bit about what intentional motion blur is ⁓ and how you might use it, how you might encounter a scene and know, okay, this is the time to use this technique and what you might do about it. What like kind of settings sort of stuff along those lines.

Will (47:14)
Hmm.

Yeah, it's something I don't do too much, but it's definitely like a nice tool to have on your belt. And I do teach it to a lot of people, especially on the coast. When you're capturing a seascape, you're generally probably using a wide angle. You've got some sea stacks, maybe you're on a telephoto, getting waves or even sea stacks of telephoto. But then the intentional camera movements are really fun way to play with texture in the landscape. So I do use it a lot in with water, whether it's on the ocean or a river with just flowing cascades and light dancing across the surface of the ocean.

It's even really effective in the forest with trees and ferns. ⁓ And it's just a way where we're basically doing a semi-slow shutter. So I shoot handheld, I don't use a tripod, so I'm not doing 10 second exposures here, but it's anywhere from half a second, one second, quarter of a second. And as we're creating the exposure, we're panning. So we're panning from down to up, from left to right, something like that. And by doing that, we just create a completely different texture.

to the subject matter that we're creating. And with water in particular, it works really well because you get the water that kind of smooths out, it blends together. And you can really create some nice images and those intentional camera movement, the ICM pieces, they look good on a wall because they're just so soft and easy to look at and interpret. And it's a really fun way to kind of work with the landscape. So it's something I'll just often say to people once we've maybe captured the obvious shot. ⁓

It's like, hey, why don't we get an ICM now, just zoom in on that and there's another image right there. And that just ties in with shooting more intimate, small scene photography in general. ⁓ I love grand landscapes. I've always been drawn to the big moving moments out there in nature.

but you can capture that and then flip things around afterwards and go, cool, now I'm gonna zone in on these little details, which have also caught my eye. And the beautiful thing about doing that is you get two completely different images. It'd be like in a wildlife photo, you're getting the bird with its beak and its eyes and the water coming down, yeah, it's raining. And then you've got that image and then you go even tighter, zoom in.

400 mil just on the feathers of the bird with no face at all. And now you have a layered shot of feathers and rain droplets two completely different images. So that's kind of how I treat the ICM and just intimate photography in general, kind of compliments the grand stuff that I enjoy. And a lot of the time, those other moments may end up being my preferred one. I'll go to a location with a general goal in mind. I'm like, wow, look at this mountain. I'm getting all this stuff.

And then randomly you'll just spot a little flower on the road with a fern curled around it and you capture that and then you get home and you go, man, that was, I'm glad I got that. Cause I like it more than the other stuff. So that's kind of how I treat it. And the intentional camera movement just ties in pretty well with that.

Court Whelan (50:03)
Yeah, I think that's a really important skill to know as a photographer, not necessarily the intentional camera movement or blur, but really how do you walk up on a scene and shoot it in three different ways, five different ways, 10 different ways? I, know, getting back to the light and the moment and all that, there's, there's only so much time we've got when we're in a perfect, beautiful scene that's just blowing us away. And I think learning that skill, how to take something in a half a dozen different ways.

Will (50:15)
Yeah.

Court Whelan (50:30)
is really, really valuable if you're looking to level up in photography. And yeah, I think this intentional movement is a great one to kind of, you know, having your bag of tricks more or less. And so you mentioned a half second, a full second. Is that kind of your go-to?

Will (50:39)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's a, probably it depends. Even water, you can do one over 20. So a 20th of a second, which is a little bit faster. It just depends how fast your subject's moving. If I was gonna use it on a bird, for example, not that I shoot wildlife, but know, tracking a bird flying across from left to right.

⁓ 20th could be perfect because it'll render the bird relatively sharp on the face if you're moving at the same speed as it But the wings will be painterly and the background more importantly will be streaked out So the shutter speed works in conjunction with your panning if you have a longer Exposure you can pan slower if you have a faster shutter You need to pan a lot quicker in order to get the same type of result So as I'm showing people how to do this in the field, you know, some people naturally just they're way too

and I'm like, no, no, no, let's slow it down. And now for people are too slow and it's like, look, the pace you start panning.

has to work with whatever shutter you're at there. But yeah, generally one quarter, one fifth, somewhere around there, just that semi slow shutter, and then just figure out that rate of panning that you want to use. And just on a point you mentioned about getting different images on location, I think one reason why I gravitated to stop using a tripod, and one thing that it allows me to do easier is to do exactly that. When I used to use a tripod,

I will just kind of lock in and this is the shot and I'm gonna sit here until the light is bad and now that's it and I'll go home and I've got an hour's worth of the same frame and all I'm gonna do is pluck out the one shot which is probably the obvious when the light was peaking at one certain point but with being handheld.

it encourages you to not just sit there on that one thing. It's like, all right, I'm gonna get that frame. Cool, I can see I've got some here that it's in focus. The histogram's good, I like the light. All right, well, I'm not just gonna stand here.

what's over there? And hey, if the light suddenly changes, I'll just walk over and reshoot that thing. So a lot of my process that I've developed over the years with being handheld, which is exclusively eight years now, the only time I use a tripod is for the Aurora, which is like, you know, pretty rare. So it's not that often. Otherwise, I just don't bring one. don't carry one. haven't for eight years. And yet it just allows me to get in that flow state. And I do learn from, I kinda...

My creative process relies on shooting and reviewing. So I'm not afraid to shoot a few frames. I look on the screen and then I adjust my comp and I kind of work like that. I'm kind of not afraid to just shoot more. It's all part of the direct feedback I'm getting with the subject, with the camera. And I just kind of move around the landscape like that. And I know it works for me. I really enjoy it. And that way you can get home and you're like, man, I'm glad I moved away from that first shot. Cause I thought that was the shot.

And I know from experience, I used to do it all the time. I just locked the tripod down and you'd get home and all you've got is that one shot. And if you can force yourself to move away, you'll be pleasantly surprised. I think you'll find something better. It's just amazing how you think you've found the best comp. It's like a tunnel vision. This is it, yes. But yeah, just try over there. You'll be surprised what you'll find. And you can do that with the tripod, but it can be a little bit harder.

Court Whelan (53:58)
I'm definitely in your camp. If I can be handheld, I'm always handheld. So much more freedom, flexibility, versatility. gives your creative brain the room to flow literally and metaphorically throughout the landscape. ⁓ what's the slowest shutter speed you feel comfy handholding? ⁓ are you kind of using ISO a lot to buffer that? mean, obviously you're probably using aperture as well, but there's probably minimum apertures that you need to feel comfy. Obviously there's some sort of...

Will (54:03)
Yeah.

Court Whelan (54:28)
⁓ Not secret, but like a certain minimum shutter speed. Wondering if you ⁓ would share what those numbers might be for you personally.

Will (54:35)
Yeah, it depends on the lens. So the wider you are, the more you can slow that shutter speed down. So the guideline I teach people is whatever your focal length is, if you match that with your shutter speed on a mirrorless camera that has IBIS, which is critical for this, then you're 100 % safe. So for example, you're at 50 mil.

and you're at one over 50 on the shutter, you're gonna be safe on the IBIS mirrorless camera. If you're at 15 mil, nice and wide, you can slow that sucker down to one over 15, you're gonna be sharp. And this is a guideline that is almost bulletproof, unless you're bouncing around like a maniac. But if you're just standing there calm, no worries at all. So how do I get then slow shutters? Well, we just break that guideline. So we say, all right, I'm at 15 mil, 15th of a second, yeah, it's sharp, but the water doesn't look nice.

and we start to break the guidelines. I can, and it depends if I'm sitting as well. So sometimes I'll be sitting, I'll be kneeling, I'll be resting against a tree. The main thing is elbows locked, two hands on the camera and look through the viewfinder. When you put the camera up to your eye, that viewfinder against your head, against your face, sorry, that's a third point of stability. So you're like a human tripod. So if I'm doing that on a wide angle, I'm very comfortable around.

1 quarter, 0.4 seconds. Now if I'm sitting, I've got two second exposures, tack sharp, no worries, because I'm sitting, elbows on my knees, camera against my face, I relax my breathing, fire away.

But as it turns out, I'd like light. I'm not shooting in the blue hour. I'm shooting when the sun is above the horizon, very close to the horizon, even obviously just after, you know, as it just goes below the horizon. But when you're doing that, you very rarely need long exposures. Now you might need one if you wanna be at F22 and ISO 100, but I don't like water that has longer than one second most of the time. Sometimes on a seascape, two seconds, sure. But otherwise, I'd want faster shutter speeds anyway.

So you're right, I balance out the other settings. I'm pretty strict on the ISO. Most of my work is ISO 100 or 200. And then the little threshold I personally have on my camera Sony is 640. Once up to 640, it just looks really clean. And 640 is almost comparable to 200. And I think there's something there with the ISO invariance where it's like you might as well just go straight to 640 if you're leaving 200.

But I don't go above that. Now I have found in the forest, if I have happened to bump it up to 800 or a thousand, you wouldn't even know. In the forest, the noise just has a way of really blending in there. But long story short, I keep the ISO below a thousand always, and the F-stop, it's just a picking your battle wisely. So, all right.

What speed do I need? Am I running out of light? I'm not gonna touch the ISO now. I'm gonna just lower the F-stop a little. Hopefully I can get away with it. Worst case, I'll focus stack. So maybe instead of being F11 single exposure, I might have to go to F7 and do two exposures. One for the foreground sharp, one for the background. Pretty rare for me to do that, but that's a way you can get around that little issue. But honestly, most of the time,

I'm shooting around 1 8th of a second, 1 10th. They just seem to be common speeds I'm at with this low light, high f-stop, low ISO. That seems to be where I'm at and it's pretty easy for me, even on 35 mil to be sitting around 1 8th of a second. So it's just something that it goes against traditional photography, especially if DSLRs, but with mirrorless cameras and the inbuilt stabilization.

it's opened up the possibility to do this and I just found out out of necessity because I like shooting in the rain, in the elements, standing in rivers.

There's no way you can use a tripod in those conditions. So I just started shooting handheld because I had to. And then I was like, holy moly, I'm streaking the water how I like it at 1.8 and it's sharp. And then along the way, the technology's got a bit better with stabilization. It's got better with ISO as well. So it's just really opened up a whole new way of shooting. yeah, to this very day, literally every week on YouTube, someone will say, but how? But how, how are you doing it? Surely you can not, you know, or they'll pull out a photo from my portfolio or someone.

if I do a webinar or something, but what about this show? What about this one? And the answer's like, you just do it. Just go try, you'll be surprised. And yeah, I have that on workshops all the time. People, they'll bring the tripod, they're a bit skeptical, and then day one I'm like, look, let's just give it a go, and sure enough, yeah, most people can end up doing it. I always say to people, look, just bring the tripod, especially if you're a beginner, just use a tripod, it's one less thing to worry about.

but definitely try to shoot handheld because it will free you up creatively and you may find you prefer it. And if you like to just be slow and methodical, you don't need a tripod for that. You can do it handheld by just standing there, not moving. It's a common argument. People say, you should have a tripod, slows you down, makes you think more. I just say, look, you don't want anything that forces you to slow down. You wanna make the choice. Do I wanna be slow? Do I wanna be fast? People say a tripod forces me to slow down. I don't wanna ever be forced in my creative process. So if I wanna slow down,

I'll just stand there and soak it up, you know. So that for me I think it's a really, really fun way to work with the subject and be out in nature and it's awesome that we can do that in this day and age.

Court Whelan (59:57)
Yeah, it's so tempting when you're locked into a tripod to see the scene before you and say, you know what, this would probably be a little bit better if it was, you know, half a foot lower or just a little bit lower to the ground. And then you start thinking of how much you have to break down your tripod and you say, ⁓ I'll just move back a little bit and then crop in. And so it actually, in a way, it kind of, forces a little bit of laziness and just, ⁓ you know, complacency.

Will (1:00:13)
Yeah, not worth it.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And that's

what I used to do. I'd set it up at a comfortable level and then anything more, I just couldn't be bothered. Now, at the end of the day, I'm shooting in these locations, which are uneven surfaces standing in river beds on the side of a mountain.

If you're just the guy that's going down to out of the car park and you're just gonna get short, just use a tripod, saves you holding the camera, no worries at all. And I understand, you know, people just prefer it, no worries. Like people get the wrong idea. I've had people say, I wanna do a workshop with you, but I like my tripod. I'm like, bring the tripod. Like, you know, I probably can still use a tripod better than most tripod users, cause I spent so long using one. But I think here from a compositional standpoint, even just finding the comp first through the eyes and the lens.

then you say, this is the comp here, now I have to get the tripod to that height. That can really help you with photography. A lot of my compositions are not possible with a tripod. They're just in the most awkward, above the head, down low, you you name it. It's just spots that I would never would have found using a tripod. Now, one last point I'll say on that is there's definitely moments where I'm like, yeah, if I had a tripod, this would be easier right now. You know, when it's really low light, maybe I'm doing a focus stack and there's all these factors involved.

But it's a trade off and the trade off of having to carry that tripod on that once in a blue moon where I think I might need it, I'd rather not bother. I'd rather just be out there and I figure it out. And like I said, that's kind of what I've done now for so long, longer than I've used a tripod. So it's just kind of second nature to me, but it could be pretty abrupt for someone if they're not used to it. very quickly, people seem to enjoy that process from my experience with teaching anyway.

Court Whelan (1:02:01)
Yeah, and the stabilization, being able to get down to 1 eighth of a second is just fantastic. I should probably note, yeah, certainly is. And I should probably note that your kind of general rule of ⁓ one over the focal length as a shutter speed is for full frame equivalent millimeters, right? Yeah, yeah.

Will (1:02:05)
and often for water at a good speed.

Full frame equivalent and that's

for the, what I'd call like safety. You should be safe here. So if you're wondering how slow can you go easily, that's a little guideline, know, match the focal length. So you're at 200 mil and you're at two hundredth of a second, no worries, but definitely try to break that guideline and you'll be surprised. But yeah, if you're matching this, the focal length, you're going to be sweet. That can tell you if you need to get the tripod out or not. If you're looking for a little rule of thumb.

Court Whelan (1:02:27)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, you can generally go like multiple stops from that one over focal length rule, especially like what eight times image stabilization to some of these IVASs. Yeah, it's crazy.

Will (1:02:51)
man, like I've, I've got shots. Yeah. Exactly.

I've got one recently at 200 mil at one six of a second. Now I was sitting down on the sand on my butt, you know, like I, and there was a lot of soft frames, but there was enough sharp ones there too. So it's amazing what you can actually achieve if you want to push it.

Court Whelan (1:03:14)
So before I get into some gear related questions, I wanna ask ⁓ one final question before that. So you as a self-taught photographer and kind of a self-made photographer having ⁓ a fantastic YouTube channel, online presence, photo courses, what is one lesson you'd like to impart to aspiring nature and landscape photographers out there? Many of which I'm sure are listening and keen to know like, what would Will say? What would Will do?

Will (1:03:42)
⁓ Honestly, I do say to people quite often when a workshop finishes, I'll say, your job now is to just get out there as much as you can. And I think that just solves all the problems. If you're into photography and you're trying to do it and you're having fun, but you're kind of struggling as well and you're at that plateau point, if you can just keep getting out there with the camera, it will eventually smooth things out. It's just like the, you're learning to play guitar.

You gotta keep picking that instrument up and just keep pushing on. And when you do that, especially with nature photography being outdoors, you will eventually coincide with a magic moment. ⁓ So maybe you're going out and you're getting bad light and some of your shots were soft and you're getting discouraged. The solution isn't to watch YouTube videos all day. It's not gonna help you at all. What's gonna help you is go back out tomorrow and then the next day.

because you're gonna learn from trial and error and then the nature, the interesting part with nature photography, landscape, wildlife is you can do everything you like, but if nature doesn't meet you halfway, then you're not going to create a good photo. So if you wanna statistically have a better chance of success, you gotta be out there more often. You can't go out once a month and wonder why you're getting bad light. Well.

Good light doesn't happen often. So you got to get out there as much as you can, for example. So I feel like if I was going to give anyone advice, it's less time on the screen, less time on social media and even YouTube, right? Like even though that affects me, you know, I sell workshops and courses, but if you want to grow as a photographer and get results, just get outdoors with your camera and lower the expectations of yourself. I think.

Now we're bombarded so much with world-class imagery, no matter what art you're in, music, tattooing, you name it. You go on social media, you're seeing the best of the very best in the algorithms pushing all this viral stuff in your face. That's not healthy. I think what's healthy is to strip all that back, go out there and just have fun, lower the bar and...

measure your success against yourself, not peers, not anyone else, not what algorithms are showing you. And you gotta just enjoy that whole process. And for me, like I said at the beginning of our chat, it was that curiosity, not quite being content, but still being content enough to wanna keep doing it. And that little feedback loop there, no comparison with anyone else, no aspirations to make it a career. It was just me against me and saying, hey, I love photography so much.

and I love what I'm looking at in nature. I'm trying to do it justice and I'm expressing how I feel, but I feel like I can do better. Let me try again tomorrow. And I just love that challenge. And that's still a challenge this very day.

Court Whelan (1:06:28)
Hmm. Fantastic. I did forget about one other question that I have to ask. This might be selfish, but, ⁓ not really. Everyone's going to benefit from this white balance. What do you do about it? It's like, okay, there you go. There you go. Yeah.

Will (1:06:40)
Easy, easy answer mate, just leave it on auto. I just leave mine on auto. I just never have a problem with it being on auto

and in the processing that's where if an image is a little bit warm or a little bit cool, I just adjust the colors, obviously not much, but yeah, I just kind of adjust it in post. I just don't waste time in the field trying to get the image looking great on the back of the camera because it's a raw file. When you put that on the computer, it goes flat as a tack anyway. So why waste time in the field trying to get the colors right?

Right, that's just me personally. No right or wrong, but I leave it on auto and I'm pretty happy with the results. Now sometimes with teaching, know, we've got all these different cameras there. You'll look at someone's and go, man, your greens look awesome. You know, the Nikon greens always look pretty good in the forest compared to Sony and Canon. And there's different scenarios, different cameras look better.

But we get all those back on the laptop and it's like, man, they're all flat anyway and now you've got to actually know how to get that colour back out. So I just leave it on auto white balance. Don't have to think about it. All I do is if I got a camera out of the box today, put it in manual mode, shooting raw, job done. Not much else I need to adjust, nice and easy.

Court Whelan (1:07:48)
Okay, good,

I'm glad to hear that. I'm always slightly vexed by white balance, because when I change it on the computer, it's like, oh my gosh, it's such a different photo, it's so shocking. But no, that's, yeah, I subscribe to that as well. Glad to hear it. Now we're gonna get into gear. You mentioned Sony, Canon, what are you shooting on?

Will (1:07:52)
Yeah.

I've been shooting with Sony for over 10 years. I was one of the early adopters when the first mirrorless full frames came out by Sony back in 2013. At that point I was shooting Canon. Nikon had a really good landscape camera, the D800, and I just couldn't afford to jump from Canon to Nikon. Photography wasn't my career, it was just a passion and a hobby. And then when Sony released the A7R, it was essentially the Nikon's D800 sensor in this little mirrorless body.

they were really smart, you could get an adapter for Canon glass and just chuck that, it was for free via redemption. So all I had to do was buy this Canon little camera, sorry, Sony camera, and then I could keep using all my Canon glass. So the output was really low compared to if I wanted to go from Canon to Nikon, I just couldn't afford to do that. So I bought this Sony and there was just no looking back and they really just took over the industry.

They pushed the technology. Now, thankfully, we're at a timeline now where all the brands just have very equal bodies that you can use and lenses that you can't go wrong. If someone gave me a certain Canon model or a Nikon, I wouldn't complain, you know, they've all got certain models which are basically equal to what I have in Sony. So I'm definitely not a fan boy. It just happens that I was an early adopter. And because they just kept on releasing and updating and making improvements, I was like, I don't have a reason to leave, but it is

pretty cool time now to be in a position where it's like look just just get a camera and you're to be fine as long as it's made within the last probably 10 years then you're not going to have a problem with what we need as photographers that's for sure.

Court Whelan (1:09:42)
Okay, so favorite landscape lens. It's a loaded question. It's a tough question. Favorite one,

Will (1:09:48)
So

I only have three lenses. I'm about to mix things up, because one of them's really damaged, but three lenses, a 12 to 24, a 28 to 75, which is Tamron, and then a 100 to 400. So I only carry three. As you can see, I'm a pretty minimalist type guy. The favorite, I love them all for different reasons, different results, obviously. It's so different shooting the landscape at 400 mil versus 12 mil.

I like the challenge, like probably the majority of my work at least 40 to 50 % is probably on the ultra wide end, 12, 16 mil, 20 mil, you know. I love the challenge and the complexity of the green landscape where we have so much there and trying to fit it all in but make it work. And that's where the wide angle is used. It's saying, hey, I wanna get not only the mountains, but the river, I want the sky, I want the ferns.

You know, some people look down upon ultra wide angle landscape photography. There's like this bit of an elitist view sometimes where it's, that's just too easy. Just putting in a wide angle and pushing the button. ⁓

whereas more methodical zoomed in shots are more artistic. I don't say it like that. I'll just shoot anything and everything. And I find it quite challenging to say, hey, there's a lot going on here. Instead of making life easier and stripping it back to one thing. No, I'm gonna try fit it all in, but how can I make that work? And the wide angle is the tool used to do that. So I'd say probably my favorite is the 12 to 24.

because it allows me to say, let me get everything in a single frame here, but make it flow and balanced. And yeah, I love using the wide angle. It's just when I first started, I was drawn to wide angle photography. So it still holds a pretty strong place to this day. It's almost sentimental to me, just a big grand wide angle landscape scene.

Court Whelan (1:11:32)
They're super fun. mean, I use them a lot for travel photography and even wildlife stuff. just, picked up a 20 mil, which is not crazy wide, but it's wide enough, ⁓ but F 1.4. ⁓ one of the most fun things. I'm just, just aiming it in various directions just to create cool looking stuff. And yeah, wide angle, ultra wide.

Will (1:11:43)
Yeah, good.

Yeah.

I do have the old

landscape, odd wildlife photo too, where I combine it with the landscape. So I've got the Kia, which is the native mountain parrot here. But instead of just zooming in on shooting the Kia, just a portrait, like to me, that's not what I'm into, but I've got shots where I've been able to 16 mil right up close to this bird, still create a landscape photo. But then the Kia is there as basically my foreground. And that to me is like the jackpot. So it's really fun even from a wildlife perspective, yeah, to being able to fit so much in and there.

It's good fun to use, but you got to have all the elements there working with you and that's the challenge of it. We're not stripping it back and removing things where we're going to go, no, I've got to make it all work. So how can I make everything work in a frame?

Court Whelan (1:12:33)
Okay, second to last question. This is a little bit of a wonky one. You can take a second to think about it, but what is a piece of gear for your landscape photography that is surprisingly helpful that isn't camera or lens related that people may not think about? Like, yeah, okay, good.

Will (1:12:48)
⁓ That's easy.

Yeah, it's easy.

Yeah, because I have I mentioned this a lot. So I don't carry much at all, to be honest, just the lenses, the camera and a microfiber towel, which is like a, you know, getting from an outdoor store or a camping store. And this towel is what I use to kind of cover my camera when I'm out in the elements, because I do shoot in the rain when I can where I live in fjordland. When it rains here, can rain proper rain, you know, in a couple of days time, we have eight inches of rain coming down in a single day, for example,

But even on a standard day, which might be three or four inches, that rain will transform the landscape into waterfall paradise. So the mountains, they're very steep granite mountains and waterfalls just emerge off them. So I often want to get in the landscape when it's raining to capture these waterfalls coming down, even the rainforest, know, little cascades in the rainforest are better when the rains there.

But when you're in the rain, the problem is, hey, the gear's getting wet. many, many years ago, I just started carrying around these towels with me, these microfiber towels. I've got a blue one, which just seems to be my go-to, my blue towel. And I just leave my camera under my arm like a football, the blue towel's over it, so it's getting protected. And then when it's time to shoot, it's just so easy to kind of, because of the handheld, bring it up to my eye.

keep the towel draped over it to some degree, get a few frames and then cover it back up. So that towel really allows me to shoot in the elements, keep the camera dry. And even if I need to wipe the lens, it's microfiber, so I just quickly wipe the lens and yeah, it's my little handy tool. Cause you can buy like rain sleeves for cameras, but they're real clunky, it's plastic and it's hard to, I just use this towel and I've got about four of them that I'll carry with me by the end of a good productive day, all four of them will be saturated.

And that means that I've just been out there and had a good time and made the most of it.

Court Whelan (1:14:39)
That's a great mark of success. And interestingly

enough, you are not the first guest to have a towel as their favorite piece of non-photo gear. It seems to be a somewhat common one. yeah, great info, great bits of wisdom. Will, folks are gonna wanna hear more from you. They're gonna wanna learn more about you. Where do people find you?

Will (1:14:46)
There you go.

⁓ Like everyone, I'm all over the place. The main areas that I put my energy into is YouTube. So I try to do a weekly or bi-weekly video and those are educational. I'm sharing tips or I'm just filming out in the field, creating my images and just trying to bring people along for the ride, know, and share some insights into how I create my photography. I really enjoy YouTube. I just feel like it's a great community there. So for the last two to three years, that's really where my energy's gone. And then I still use Instagram. I post photos on there when I can, but

Also stories, so I'll just put little stories up. That's the main places you can find me. So if you search my name on either of those platforms, ⁓ that's where I'll be. But YouTube's definitely a place that I'm putting the time and energy into and hope to keep it going and put more into it as the years roll on.

Court Whelan (1:15:44)
Yeah, and it shows your videos are fantastic. So folks, I'm gonna put all the info in the show notes. Highly recommend you check out Will's YouTube channel. It's really, really great. Informative, entertaining, beautiful. And ⁓ with that, Will, thank you so much for joining us today. I learned a lot, had a great time, great conversation, and appreciate your time today.

Will (1:16:03)
I really appreciate it, mate. Thank you and thanks everyone who listened. It means a lot.


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Court Whelan

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