Badwater

Badwater, Death Valley – Steve Rutherford Landscape Photography Art Gallery

Badwater, Death Valley – Steve Rutherford Landscape Photography Art Gallery

This is an unframed, limited edition collection landscape photography print of only 25 units. It is printed on Hahnemuhle Fine Art Pearl papers, structured to refract the highest values in colour and detail. It’s high-quality ink absorbing layer enables exceptional image quality with enormously detailed sharpness, and a very broad colour range, providing archival permanency of your artwork for over 100 years.

On tripod, Canon 5DMk2, 15mm, F18, 2.5 seconds, ISO 50, no filter, processed in Lightroom.

If ever there was an eerie place, it was this. A little plain of pure white salt that spans for miles in all directions, each step on the salt is like standing on broken concrete that crunches under foot. Sounds exactly like a 10 year old eating Corn Flakes. I’m not kidding. Each line of salt is like a three inch high trip hazard. As the light faded quickly behind the Death Valley ranges I had to build a composition. Once I had that sorted, then I turned my attention to the exposure, but new the foreground would be way too underexposed. I had a head torch and a string mini maglite torch with me, so I widened the beam and swept them both through each shot. Some worked, some didn’t, but this one was perfect.

Badwater, Death Valley – Steve Rutherford Landscape Photography Art Gallery

Places like Death Valley in the USA are about as harsh as they get. Aside from the temperatures ranges of extreme heat in the day to extreme cold in the same night, the landscape itself is rugged, jagged and just plain hard as nails. These environments can be so interesting to photograph. Always remember your health and safety first, but explore everything from the tiny to the tall. Use small apertures (f10-f16) to demonstrate the size and scale of the place in full sharpness. Every detail counts so include something interesting in your foreground that ties directly to the background. Get up close if you need to, but connect the subject to the landscape and you’ll have a great shot.