Video: A beautiful day at the beach with landscape photographer Adam Gibbs
posted Tuesday, August 9, 2022 at 8:30 AM EDT
Like all of Adam Gibbs's videos from the field, his latest is peaceful, shot in a great location, and full of amazing photographs. In the video below, Gibbs travels to San Josef Bay near Port Hardy on Vancouver Island. The primary objective is to photograph sand patterns.
It's a great area with a strong, rugged landscape. Gibbs has been there before and shot the landscape itself, but it requires specific conditions and light to work well. In the absence of these conditions, he wants to focus instead on small scenes within the larger scene and do close-up shots. This is an important idea to focus on. Even if you're in an area with an interesting, expansive landscape, that doesn't mean you need to use a wide-angle lens or even that you need to focus on the landscape at all. Sometimes the more interesting compositions are small chunks of a larger scene. Whenever you're out shooting and have extra time, exploring everything but the most obvious subject in the area is worthwhile.
Gibbs's first non-traditional coastal landscape subject is a rock covered in barnacles and other sea life. It's richly detailed, colorful, and visually interesting. For this shot, Gibbs used his Fujifilm GFX 100S and GF 45-100mm F4 R LM OIS WR zoom lens. The lens offers a roughly 36-79mm focal length range in 35mm terms. It's a lens Gibbs has used only rarely because it's a bit heavy. However, a nice trait of the lens is that it focuses closely, able to focus to 65cm (2.13 ft.), which is good for a GF lens. If you would like to see a breakdown of all Fujifilm GFX cameras and GF lenses, read our "The state of the Fujifilm GFX System (2022 edition)" guide.
The GFX 100S is well-suited to close-up shots, given its eye-watering resolution. The next subject is a more traditional landscape shot that Gibbs walks us through step-by-step. It's always enjoyable to see how an experienced, talented photographer sees a scene and builds the image piece by piece. The rest of the video includes more amazing scenes and photos, so be sure to watch it all.
If you enjoy Gibbs's blend of serene nature photography and practical photographic advice, visit his YouTube channel. You can see more of his work and learn about his books on his website.
(Via Adam Gibbs)