Video: Great light and lousy luck for Thomas Heaton on a film photography trip to Iceland

 

 

Even an experienced, talented photographer like Thomas Heaton can come up empty on a landscape photography expedition. Most of the time, a rough day of landscape photography is due to bad light or weather. Sometimes, as we'll see in the video below, it's a mixture of bad luck and misjudging a scene. We often think about landscape photography as a slow-paced endeavor, and it often is, but sometimes light changes so quickly that it's impossible to keep up.

On a recent film photography trip to Iceland, Heaton felt pretty discouraged by flat light and boring conditions. Then the clouds began to part like the Red Sea, and the disappointment quickly became excitement and high expectations. However, sometimes excitement gets the better of us, and Heaton waited at a spot for light that never came. Even worse, good light did arrive, just not where Heaton expected it to. By the time he realized what was happening, it was too late. "And the longer I waited, the more obvious it became that my gamble of shooting to the east had not paid off, and this time I had seriously misjudged the light," said Heaton in the video below.

It's so frustrating to find a composition you believe will work and then have the light let you down. It's even worse when there's beautiful light elsewhere, but there's simply no shot and no time left to set up somewhere else. I'm sure we've all been there. "Well, we had a fantastic light show. Unfortunately, it was in the complete wrong direction, and the gap closed up, and we never got what we wanted," Heaton continues. "But that's landscape photography. That is landscape photography. So, I'm calling it, and I will be back."

However, persistence pays off. Heaton headed back out the next day with lower expectations. How did it work out for him and his Hasselblad 501cm and Fujifilm GX617 film cameras? Watch the full video above to find out.

Adaptation is important in landscape photography. Heaton admits that he was a bit too stubborn, hoping for his expectations to be met. It ended up being quite a big disappointment when they weren't, and there wasn't any time to find a different area to shoot. However, having hope is important out in the field. Even though Heaton ended up being excited for a shot that was never realized, that excitement is part of what makes landscape photography so special.

To see more of Heaton's videos, visit YouTube. To see more of Heaton's wonderful landscape photography, visit his website and follow him on Instagram.

(Via Thomas Heaton)