470 - Laguna de Alegria
Today I discovered the cheap thrill of being a pirate- and it all started in a flooded volcano. If you have any sort of imagination, you might imagine me navigating the treacherous sulfur waters of Laguna de Alegria in a rotting sailboat, raiding priceless treasure. And in a way, you’d be right.
We’re talking digital pirating, AKA blatantly ignoring copyright laws and illegally downloading thousands of dollars worth of photography courses. I don’t know why it took me so long to piece together the puzzle of buying a VPN, setting up a torrent application, and going ham. But one day as I eating a strange cherry pastry in a Salvadorian coffee shop, it hit me. Why aren’t I doing this?
See, I don’t normally have the money for that kind of rubbish. I can’t justify spending $60 for a two hour editing tutorial where the photographer simply turned on a recorder and started talking. Or a $600 course. Or a fucking $3,000 course for that matter. (Yes, these things scale with ego.) I’d much rather spend that money traveling and getting better in the field.
But I do understand these courses have an inherent value, and photographers often reveal juicy insights not found in your average everyday YouTube video. So here I am. Soaking up the knowledge like a sponge in lava.
This recent criminal bout was largely inspired by the fact that I’ve been sitting on my ass all month because of my fractured foot. I’ve grown weary of the so-called “YouTubes,” which consist of 80% filled content, 10% ads, and 10% useful advice. Watching free content is like smoking drugs. It works, but eventually you realize you should probably be injecting if you want the real experience. It was time to take my addiction to the next level… Which can only be found in lovely world of premium content.
I suppose I’m writing this down to justify my behavior. It’s not without it’s fair share of guilt. I understand how little landscape photographers make, so stealing all their paid content isn’t exactly noble. But… (And yes, there’s a very large but here…) I’d argue that I’m making less. In fact, this whole career choice of “adventure photography” has lost me tens of thousands of dollars by now.
And if these photographers are making full-time careers out of it, I suppose they’re my competition. Which means that every nugget of information I can steal out of them is fair game. So until I’m making more then these guys and I can rightfully pay my dues for their “vast streams of knowledge,” I’m going to steal it. So long as it’s available- and trust me, if you have the time to score the dark corners of the internet, it is.
Let’s cut to the present. Most of this adventure was spent bingeing photography courses by artists I will not name on this forum. In terms of the landscape I’m sitting in, there’s not much to write home about. It’s a lake inside of a volcano that smells like sulfur. Cool.
The overlook view of the crater (a 4 mile hike) is the real reason you come here, but I couldn’t access it for obvious reasons. Haley was off on her merry way. But when the sun finally decided to drop, I took a long hard look at the smelly waters and shut my laptop. This adventure wasn’t going to go down without a fight.
If I’m being honest, it was extremely difficult to find a shot. I was literally crutching through mud, slipping and sliding like a goat on ice. But I did find a scene worth shooting.
There was a straight set of wooden poles in the pastel water that looked like something out of Myst. Check this out:
“Pastel Post”
Taken on Sony a7rIII + Sony 70-200mm f/2.8 GM
[ISO 500 ~ 184mm ~ f/9 ~ 1/60s]
(Want a Print? Get one here.)
Composition was the hero here. Notice how the rock was perfectly in the middle of the frame, and the two poles that were longest were evenly placed on either side. A symmetry dream. I knocked out a single frame and knew it was the one.
As I hobbled back to the van, I knew I was going to have to implement a new editing technique I had just learned from my recently acquired bounty. Warping.
I converted the shot to a Smart Object in Photoshop, and pulled it just long enough to maintain it’s sense realism, yet still pull that water into brilliant rays of abstraction. So there’s my lesson of the day. Don’t be afraid to use the Warp tool to move elements of your composition into place. The trick is to do it subtly enough that people can’t notice it.
The amount of information I’ve already learned from these premium courses is bonkers. I think it goes without saying that sometimes I forget to inject learning into my photography process. Sometimes I spend too much time outputting, and not enough time inputting. Balance is key.
Anyway, I’m going to waterboard myself with more courses so you don’t have to. Let’s put forth a toast to free knowledge, shall we?
I’m on a mission to explore as much as humanely possible.
Want to see my progress? Check out the Adventure Map.
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