Spontaneous Backlit Photography

I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts on photography, and I finished Jimmy Chen’s masterclass on adventure photography.

The one thing I hear again and again is while having a photography plan is great, it’s even better to be flexible, pivot, look behind you, and shoot on the fly as light shifts and creativity ideas merge. So, when I went to take evening landscape photos of the lake and mountains with my new wide angle lens (and frankly, missed that golden hour), my daughter took the opportunity to jump in the lake one last time before dark. I swapped lenses when I realized the awesome photography subject was right in front when me!

The next morning, drinking coffee with my son, I noticed how beautiful the sun rays looked when a car drove by (yep, dust!). Instead of getting a photo of the sunrise landscape, I just pointed into the sun, and unexpectedly dust made more pretty awesome atmosphere and depth.