Mathias Joschika

In this series I try to show you how I took some of my pictures in my portfolio. You will get to know the gear and settings I used, as well as a little back story of how and why the image was created.

Enough introduction - let's get it on!

In the summer of 2017 I was visiting a friend in France. Of course I had to bring my camera.

After a couple of days - or more like a couple hours - we headed southwest. Destination: Bretagne

After visiting the Golfe du Morbihan and the Île-aux-Moines during the day, we wanted to get some nice sea food for dinner. Unfortunately time was running out to eat on the Île-aux-Moines, so we had to find something on the mainland. My friend found a restaurant via the internet, close to our hotel, so we headed there.

We had to park on a hill and walk down to the restaurant. And after I saw the location where we were going, I had to sprint back up the hill to the car and get my camera and tripod! Oh what a beauty this town was!

After having dinner in the Port of Saint Goustan, I went out and ran across the bridge to the other side of the small harbor. So what kind of image should I shoot? What settings should I use?

I wanted to get as much in focus as poosible - so I knew I had to use a small aperture.
I also wanted to get as much details in the shadows and the highlights as possible, but HDR was not really a possibility. So I had to stay with ISO 100 because we all know that Dynamic Range suffers with higher ISO.

So with a small aperture and ISO 100 the shutter speed was quite long. Normally thats no problem with a tripod and static subjects. But this here, was definitely not static!

I was worried I would not be able to merge the images because the tide moved so fast. Using 13x20 seconds exposures, and adding some cool down time in between, let the water rise quite a bit!

Fortunately everything worked out!

In this series I try to show you how I took some of my pictures in my portfolio. You will get to know the gear and settings I used, as well as a little back story of how and why the image was created.

Enough introduction - let's get it on!

Spontaneous sessions sometimes really pay of.

This spot is super accessible and is also easy to squeeze in between other appointments your daily life throws at you. After coming home from a multi day work assignment, I decided to head up there and enjoy the sunset.

Even though I used a 3 Stop GND, I still had to do a bracketed shot, because the dynamic range of the scene was way to big. I wanted to get as much detail as possible in the clouds as well as in the valley. What use is a nice sunset with a lot of black underneath it?
For everyone interested: I combined the shots using Lightrooms HDR Merge module.

Some of you might ask: Why did you use a 3 Stop GND and not a darker one? That is an easy answer: I only own one GND. Even if I had a darker one, I probably still would have struggled with the foreground and the valley.

In this series I try to show you how I took some of my pictures in my portfolio. You will get to know the gear and settings I used, as well as a little back story of how and why the image was created.

Enough introduction - let's get it on!

Sometimes you just have to be lucky and keep your eyes open.

After taking the shot "Foggy" I was heading back down. Quite some walking later I got back into the super thick fog and started to look for some interesting motives in the forest. I found a couple of promising scenes and tried to work out a composition which I liked.

The photos I took in the forest just did not work out the way I would have liked, so I went on to get back to the car. About ten minutes before I was back at the parking lot, I saw this lonely, crooked looking tree. Thanks to the thick fog, the light was diffused and especially the backlight of the tree was just marvellous.

Since I had my settings already at ISO 200 from the shots in the forest, I just left them there and took a test shot. I imagined a calm tree in my images, so I had to use a faster shutter speed because the branches of the tree were shaking due to the wind. I zoomed in and pressed the shutter. Nice!

When I imported the picture in Lightroom I saw some huuuuuge sensor dust spots. While changing lenses on the mountain top, some rather big particles took the opportunity and settled on my precious sensor. Fortunately, it was relatively easy to remove these spots in this image. After one click onto black and white and some contrast and clarity sliding: Tada - there was my envisioned image.

The doors to a new year have been opened! Let's see which doors we all take.

I wish you all a happy 2017 full of portfolio-worthy photographs!

In this series I try to show you how I took some of my pictures in my portfolio. You will get to know the gear and settings I used, as well as a little back story of how and why the image was created.

Enough introduction - let's get it on!

Scenes like this are the reason why I love landscape photography.

After days of sitting in the fog I finally found the time go get out and up the mountains. I hoped for an image like this so I packed my only telephoto lens I have - a cheap Sony SAL 75-300 4.5-5.6 with an LA-EA3 adapter.

When I arrived at the top I was greeted with a view you would call: WHITE! Oh how I loved the fog in that moment... Hiking up and getting exactly the view you DO NOT want.

But I was lucky. The fog and the view were exchanging their place every minute.
Just for your imagination: I couldn't create a panorama because after one or two images I had to wait for the fog to dissolve again. And even then, the exposure changed dramatically.

So I set up my tripod and pointed my camera roughly in the direction where I knew the valley would be. That is definitely not so easy when all you see is white! After a couple minutes the fog cleared enough for me to frame the shot and get my composition right.

I shot a couple of images in rapid succession because I wasn't sure if the fog would clear again. Unfortunately, my fears were right and I left back home again.

Nonetheless I got the shot I wanted and it is currently sitting as a 60x40cm print in its black frame.