Tips & Tricks: Alpine Adventure Photography
Five Tips & Tricks
For Adventure Photographers Entering the Alpine
By Sam Bugas - August 2023
What Is Adventure Photography?
I’d like to start off by asking this question because I believe the answer serves as the backbone for the tips I discuss below. What really is adventure photography? I’ve discussed this genre of photography in other posts, and I feel the following is my best, short answer: “[adventure photography] is the immediacy of shots, the urgency of moments, and the desire to put oneself into fleeting, vulnerable environments that leave you little time and comfort to create.” With this idea in mind, a few key themes should be kept in mind:
Immediacy
Fleeting environments
Vulnerability & Urgency
Adventure photography may best be considered a sub-genre of photography, brought into existence by the presence of the above factors, but not limited to any specific broader genre of photography. An adventure photographer may be someone tracking a cheetah through the Kenyan bush, operating with a constant sense of urgency, vulnerable to the heat, the other predators, and the rarity of the subject. The moments they have to shoot are few and far between, adding a dramatic sense of immediacy as they begin to capture their prized frames. The same could be said for someone documenting human conflict, or of someone capturing rare trees in Socotra, Yemen. To pull from my prior piece on adventure photography yet again, “I believe an adventure photographer is someone who flows with the comings and goings of opportunities as they race by, perhaps with the elevated possibility of error. In addition to seeking out adventures, the staple of an adventure photographer is to remain agile, regardless of the pace of a moment, and to always pull what’s possible from fleeting moments.”
Why Focus on the Alpine?
I’ll keep this one brief. I am focusing on the alpine because that’s what I know best. The vast majority of my work has come from moments in alpine environments, and it’s where I feel the most comfortable operating my camera. It is in fact where I first fell in love with taking photos, and is a large part of my motivation.
Two climbers prepare in camp
In only a handful of hours, they will set out to navigate the glacier in the background.
Tip # 1: Rethink the Exposure Triangle
This first tip is perhaps the most broad of all five tips, and is certainly the most challenging (for me at least). The idea behind rethinking the exposure triangle is that you open up your creative box. When you rethink the right ways to manipulate shutter, aperture, and ISO, you vastly increase the number of opportunities you have to create compelling photos. Additionally, the amount of creative possibility within each one of these opportunities increases. In essence, rethinking the exposure triangle is a means of giving yourself permission to be creative. What do I really mean, though? There is no hard and fast answer, so I will give a few examples of my own from instances when I manipulated the exposure triangle in ways that felt uncomfortable at the time:
High ISO
By allowing myself to shoot at a higher than normal ISO, I opened up a whole series of photos that helped me tell the story of this climb. I could have shot this at a very high ISO (think 25600) and still held on to the essence of the photo. Stay open to higher than comfortable ISO.
Slow Shutter Speed
Shooting pre-dawn, with a boosted ISO, a slow shutter speed was still necessary to bring in enough light. I stabilized my camera using a strap to maintain a sharp shot. Prior to this point, I believed a shutter speed close to a quarter second at 200mm would have resulted in a ruined shot. Instead, and through good stabilizing technique, I got one of my favorite shots of the last year.
Tight Aperture
Despite the scene being relatively dark, I tightened my aperture to maintain greater sharpness from foreground to background through a deep depth of field. The frame did not work nearly as well with a shallow aperture, even though it would have allowed me to hold a lower ISO and faster shutter. We tend to shoot wide open, but even if it comes at the expense of a cleaner photo, we should consider the benefits of using deeper depths of field.
Tip # 2: Build a Photo Series
In the age of social media, we are often most drawn to hero shots. They are the photos that catch your eye, explode off the screen, and earn loads of recognition. While they are great, and we should always strive for the best photos possible, it’s extremely rare to produce hero shots on any kind of a regular basis. Furthermore, even the best hero shots typically fall short in telling the full story. This is adventure photography we are talking about! Without story, our photos lack context and meaning. As a cohesive series of shots, it’s far more likely that we can be compelling with our photographs. Consider too that our art is now compared next to AI generated art, composite art, surrealism, animation, and so much more. I think of hero shots a bit like candy; they satisfy us for a moment, pump us up with some endorphins, and leave us crashing fast when the high is gone. We don’t tend to remember the quick endorphins. Instead, we remember the compelling stories, and the pervading emotions. Use your photo series to tell those compelling stories, and to stir up emotions, rather than trying to rely on a single hero shot to do the job.
Here is an example series that tells the story of the whole afternoon rather than of a single moment:
Tip # 3: Find New Perspectives
I like to consider this tip immediately after tip # 2 because it ties very well into the idea that we want to create a compelling series of images. Different perspectives help us to tell the story more completely. By using these perspectives to create more unique compositions, we begin to separate our work from other photographers. The perspectives we seek out often become a clear element of our style, making our work more recognizable and unique. I believe new perspectives can fall anywhere along a spectrum of complexity. Some examples are as follows:
Back and Above
This is a fairly simple perspective that helps to position the subject amongst the scene. While alpine climbing, or moving as a rope team, think ahead about where you would want to be and how to get there.
Get Low
Another perspective that puts your subject in a more compelling scene. Crevasses, ice, wind blown snow, they all paint the picture, and getting low brings them into the photo.
Compression & Scale
This perspective relies on a longer zoom and an eye for far away scenes. By compressing several elements in the alpine, a more complete story unfolds. The use of compression builds a sense of scale that defines the mood and story of the photo, making it far more compelling than if taken with a more standard focal length.
Natural Framing
Using natural elements to frame the scene feeds off of an organic perspective. This helps viewers feel more immersed in the scene. Not everyone knows what it feels like to climb mountains, or to weather blizzards; help them understand!
Tip # 4: Use the Weather to Your Advantage
As alpine adventurers, we are all too aware of the trials and tribulations that the weather provides. For better or worse, it is a major determining factor in our experiences in the alpine. It is also perhaps the single most compelling element we have as we create our photo series. Weather helps develop our story, it can be used to frame our scenes, it affects our emotions as we shoot, and it forces us into circumstances that would otherwise not occur. These are all parts of a complete photo series, and should be incorporated as best we can. Consider an explosive alpine sunrise, backlighting your subject as they ascend a glacier. Without a good sunrise, would the shot exist? Could you create the shot in a snow flurry, and if so, how might it change the photo or the story you are telling. What about a frozen forest with snow falling between the trees. How can you incorporate the falling snow in a way that allows for a shot that wouldn’t exist if it were sunny. These differentiating factors are how we can use weather to tell a compelling story. There is no right or wrong here, and I can’t define what proper use of weather looks like. Instead, I encourage you to double down on the elements (quite literally). Use the sun, rain, snow, and wind to stir up emotions in your photos. Use them to frame your shots, to create depth, to tell stories, and to add style.
Some examples of my own where weather was essential to the photograph’s story:
Tip # 5: Keep an Open Mind
Assume that you will have to be agile, operating in a fast twitch environment, with very little structure involved. Now consider the alpine environment. It is ever changing, always posing different challenges, and hard to predict prior to a shoot. If you go into this environment with a static mindset, you will come out with static pictures. Keeping an open mind also means staying adaptive. The better you can react and create photos with little premeditation, the more completely you will ultimately be able to tell your story. There is no doubt that you must have goals, and you will often enter the alpine with desired shots. This is by no means a bad thing, and if you are shooting commercially, it is pretty much essential. However, recognizing the environment and the style of photography for what it is, fluid, means you must stay fluid with it. Keep an open mind to angles, to times of day you may not have thought to shoot, to new or surprising focal lengths, and to every other variable that presents itself. Furthermore, keep the camera in your hand, and look at each moment as an opportunity, rather than waiting for moments that may never come. It can feel like chaos, but that is the beauty and fun of adventure photography in the alpine.
Fleeting Emotion
For a brief moment, this climber reflected on the scene around him. It felt personal to take his photo, and catching that split second moment provided one of my favorite photos from the climb.
Organic Exploration
Two climbers find the end of an ice cave. There was only one true moment to capture their last steps towards the end of the cave. We had several shots planned before getting here, but by realizing my position relative to them, and recognizing the focal lengths I had at my disposal, this shot was made.
Alignment
There were only a few seconds where this figure was positioned correctly. The lens compression allowed for the composition, but limited the time that the frame would function correctly. I stayed alert and open to what was happening near me, as well as far away.
Final Thoughts:
I have always felt very drawn to adventure photography in the alpine. It’s fleeting nature suits my impatient brain, and I find that there is very little opportunity to repeat shots or copy others. It is an organic space full of life and opportunity, but also misfortune and struggle. There is no right way to do adventure photography, and I write this piece with these five tips as a starting point. When I first started shooting, I struggled to find resources to study. I wanted more rules, suggestions, and attestations, but in the end, I found that it is the chaos of this form of photography that compelled me most. I hope these tips do some good for other shooters out there, new or experienced, who are delving into my favorite place on Earth: the alpine. There are countless beautiful stories to be told, and an endless number of ways to tell them. Have fun, think outside the box, and find pride in your work!
About Me:
I have shot photos for around five years, with a consistent focus on capturing moments of action and environment while I am outside. I’ve dabbled in quite a few different genres of photography, and I’ve found that my favorite moment to take a photo is when the wind is whipping, the air is freezing, and I’m hanging onto a steep slope or wall by crampons or an ice axe. I’m far from a professional, and everything I’ve written above is little more than musings about the type of photography I am the most passionate about. With that in mind, I’d love to chat! You can email me using my email, swbugas@gmail.com, or reach out to me on Instagram, @swbugas (click the button below). I’m only just getting started with this blog, and I have a very open mind to criticism and critique.
Lastly, if you are a climber, backpacker, photographer, scuba diver or whatever else in the broader Washington area, let’s get after it! I’d love to start some group journeys!