Let’s Go Hiking - Sunol Regional Wilderness
One of my favorite ways to get exercise is to go hiking, and as a photographer/videographer I find it impossible to leave my camera at home for these adventures. I used to just take a few leisurely photographs that may or may not have turned out and leave it at that. But recently I’ve turned it into a way to practice my craft and get better at it. What I’ve begun to do is take a minimal gear set that isn’t necessarily ideal for the conditions and challenge myself to get difficult shots. This process in my mind has helped me improve my abilities to think on my feet and work in less than optimal conditions.
For this hiking excursion I’m taking you with me to Sunol Regional Wilderness in Northern California. Around April every year I like to hike this park because the creek is fairly full and running rather quickly, sending cool clear beautiful water rushing through the hills, rocks, and trees. The challenge I set forth for myself was to get close to this rushing water and capture the beauty that is spring in Sunol, while using a less than ideal gear set. I brought with me a monopod, my Nikon 85mm f1.8, and my Tokina 11-16mm f2.8. To make matters more difficult I decided to do video as opposed to photography on this trip.
So what did this mean for me? Well for starters using a monopod while trying to capture running water (often while being waist deep in the water) makes it difficult to get steady shots. In an ideal situation I’d have brought a heavy tripod. Then my lens selection basically mandated that I get very close to my subject or be quite far away from it unless I was filming details. A 35mm or 50mm lens would’ve been an ideal focal length to allow me to have a nice distance without either being in the splash zone of the water elements I was capturing or having to find a way to film through the many obstacles in my path. So I definitely had my work cut out for me.
Overall though I found that this sort of thing encourages me to try new ways of filming things when I don’t have the ideal gear set. Wedging the monopod into the rocks at the bottom of the creek and trying to steady it with my hands as water rushed past was a fun and challenging task. Getting right in the face of water as it rushed down tiny waterfalls and splashed past me with the 11-16mm gave new and exciting perspectives. Even the 85mm offered me opportunities to try to climb and change perspective due to obstacles in my way. I also chose to shoot everything in 60p since I knew that I’d still get some camera shake using the monopod in these conditions and slowing the footage down would help to mask that. I learned and improved even if only a little bit, and that’s always the goal. Now, I’d like to share the results with you:
Let’s go hiking again soon! Check out our website (imaginemproductions.com) and join us next Friday for a video that takes you behind the scenes of a photo shoot we recently did. We’ll be posting here every Friday so don’t forget to follow and let us know in the comments if you have questions or want to see more stuff like this!
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