Camera and tripod

You’ll need a camera with manual exposure control and a tripod. A remote release or a two-second self-timer or delay mode keeps your hand from blurring the shot when you press the shutter.

If you only have a smartphone, use the night photography setting. While a tripod may not be needed for cell phones, you may get better results using one.

Settings for northern lights photography

Start here:

• ISO 800-6400
• Aperture as wide as it opens — f/1.8, f/2.8, f/4
• Shutter speed: 5-20 seconds

These settings will vary based on how bright and close the northern lights are to you. Take a shot and check the exposure on the back of the camera. If it is too dark, raise the ISO or lengthen the shutter speed. Too bright, shorten it. Keep in mind that the LCD will look really bright in the dark; use the histogram to judge exposure for more accuracy.

Ideally, you’ll want a shorter shutter speed to help capture the structure in the northern lights. It’s much better to raise the ISO if it will keep the shutter speed shorter.

If the northern lights are really bright, you might end up with an ISO shorter than 800.

Focus

Ideally, focus on the stars. Find a bright star and magnify it to 100% on your LCD. Then manually focus until it becomes a pinpoint. I like to get to the pinpoint and then continue to slowly turn the focus ring until I go slightly past the pinpoint focus. Then I’ll reverse direction and bring it back to pinpoint focus. This allows me to know that I’m at the actual sharpest point.

You can also bring a bright flashlight and shine it on to a tree or item about 150 to 200 feet away. Use autofocus to focus on that point. After you get focus, switch your camera to manual focus.

Make sure to take a test shot and examine the stars at 100% to make sure they are in focus.

Composition

Instead of shooting directly up at the northern lights, you should put something in the foreground. Trees, a lake shoreline, mountains, or other earthly objects help connect the earth with the sky and can help provide scale. Around Grand Marais, a lake shoreline almost always works.

White balance

A white balance of around 5,000K often results in more accurate color, but shooting in tungsten or incandescent gives a cool blue to the image and looks great on the LCD screen. You’ll fine tune the white balance during processing to get it right.

RAW

Make sure to shoot using a RAW file type to give yourself the most quality and the most flexibility in editing. I offer Lightroom Night Sky Presets that work as a step-by-step workflow to help you edit your night sky images.

Take a workshop

I offer several night sky photography workshops and small group and 1:1 astro photography workshops that can help you learn northern lights photography.

Helpful resources

I have a Northern Lights Viewing FAQ that you can read about figuring out when they will be out. Spaceweather.com runs aurora forecasts and provides helpful tips. For aurora predictions and alerts on your phone, I recommend the Glendale app.

What a Panning Shot Is

A panning shot is made by tracking a moving subject with your camera during a slow exposure. The camera movement matches the subject’s movement, which keeps the subject relatively sharp while the stationary background blurs into horizontal streaks. The result looks like the subject is moving fast even if it wasn’t.

It works with any moving subject, such as cyclists, runners, kayakers, cars, horses, dogs. Anything that moves in a predictable path at a consistent speed is a good candidate.

Camera Settings

The shutter speed is what creates the blur, and you need it slow enough to streak the background but not so slow that the subject goes soft too. The sweet spot is generally between 1/8 and 1/30 of a second. Start at 1/30 and slow down from there until you get the amount of blur you want.

To get a shutter speed that slow in daylight, you need to close down your aperture significantly. Set your camera to aperture priority and increase the f-number — f/11, f/16, or higher — until the shutter speed drops into that range. Pull your ISO down to its base level, usually ISO 100, to help get there.

If you’re shooting in bright sun and can’t get the shutter slow enough even at minimum ISO and maximum aperture, you’ll need a neutral density filter. A 3-stop ND will usually solve the problem. This is one of the situations where carrying an ND filter pays off.

Autofocus Settings

Set your camera to continuous autofocus, which is the mode that tracks a moving subject rather than locking focus on a single point. Move the autofocus point to where you plan to position the subject in the frame. Most of the time that’s slightly left of center, so the subject has space in front of them to move into. A subject riding toward the edge of the frame with nothing in front of them feels hemmed in. Newer cameras with subject detect work well and you don’t have to keep your autofocus point in one position.

Switch to continuous shutter release so the camera fires repeatedly while you hold the button down. You want multiple frames as the subject passes. With a slow shutter speed and a moving subject, your keeper rate won’t be high, and having five or six frames to choose from instead of one makes a big difference.

Positioning Yourself

Where you stand matters. You want to be perpendicular to the subject’s path. If they’re riding left to right, you should be standing directly to the side, not at an angle. The more directly perpendicular you are, the more consistent the subject’s speed appears to be across the frame, which makes tracking easier and the blur more even.

Get far enough back that you have a little room to work with, but not so far that the subject is small in the frame. For a cyclist, somewhere between 10 and 20 feet is usually right depending on your focal length.

The Pan Itself

Start tracking the subject before they reach your frame and pick them up early and build the rhythm of the movement before you press the shutter. The pan should feel smooth and continuous, like you’re swinging through a golf shot. If you start and stop, or if your movement is jerky, the blur will be uneven and the subject will go soft.

Check your results after the first pass. If the background isn’t blurring enough, slow the shutter down by closing the aperture further. If the subject is too soft, speed the shutter up slightly. It usually takes a few passes to dial it in.

Press and hold the shutter as the subject passes through your frame and keep panning after the shutter closes. Following through is important because stopping the camera the moment you fire will introduce movement at exactly the wrong time.

What Makes a Good Panning Shot

The background matters more than people realize. A plain background, such as a wall, a tree line, open water, produces cleaner streaks than a cluttered one. A busy background just looks messy when it blurs. When you’re choosing where to position yourself, look at what’s behind where the subject will be and pick the cleanest option.

Light direction helps too. Side light or slight backlight tends to separate the subject from the blurred background better than flat front light.

And give your subject somewhere to go. Leave more space in front of them than behind. A cyclist riding into open space feels like they’re going somewhere. A cyclist about to ride off the edge of the frame feels stopped.

One Last Thing

Panning is a technique that rewards repetition. The first time out you’ll probably get a handful of keepers out of fifty frames. With practice that ratio improves significantly. Find a location where the same subject passes repeatedly, like a bike path, a road, a running trail, and spend an hour working through the variables. By the end of the session you’ll have a feel for it that’s hard to get any other way.

How to Get There

You’ll find Artist’s Point in Grand Marais, and it’s one of the easiest and most scenic photography locations on the North Shore. At the only stoplight in Cook County, turn towards Lake Superior until you get to the U.S. Coast Guard building parking lot. From the parking lot, walk towards the lake until you see the sign for Artist’s Point. Turn right (west) to walk towards the lighthouse. Turn left (east) to walk towards Artist’s Point itself.

Keep in mind that the shore runs almost due east and west in Grand Marais, which feels a little disorienting if you expect Highway 61 to run north. If you have that mindset, you’ll end up looking south during the sunrise wondering where the sun is.

Best Season and Date Range

Artist’s Point works year-round, but the best sunrise dates — when the sun rises over Lake Superior rather than inland — run from approximately August 25th through April 20th. For lighthouse sunsets, plan to be there between October 15th and March 1st, with November through February being the strongest months when the sun sits furthest over the lake.

On overcast days, Artist’s Point is worth visiting for wildflower photography. Look for harebells growing out of cracks in the rock, and with some searching you may find fireweed and columbine. Head into the woods for more variety — bunchberries are particularly scenic. If you search carefully, you may find the rare butterwort.

Best Time of Day

Sunrise for Artist’s Point. Sunset for the lighthouse. Overcast days for flowers. Midday offers harsh, unphotogenic light and makes it hard to shoot anything worth keeping. Skip it midday.

The Six Areas

Artist’s Point divides into six distinct areas, each with different photographic possibilities.

The Point almost always works well no matter the time of year. Even in summer when the sun rises too far inland to appear over the lake, you can still get good color at sunrise. Two small islands sit just off the point and waves break over them whenever the lake has any energy at all. Watch for reflections in puddles — they make excellent foregrounds.

The East Bay offers a rocky shoreline that makes for an okay photo on its own, but the real draw is the old dock pilings that punch through the beach and water’s surface. This area works best at the edges of the date range, when the sun rises far enough north to light up the bay. The north side of Artist’s Point is lined with five to ten foot cliffs that freeze early in winter and stay in shadow all season long.

Between the breakwall and the point you’ll find a rocky shore with several large cracks and gullies that split the point apart. These photograph best in January and February when the sun is at its furthest south.

The breakwall area is also strongest in January and February. The rocks here are smoother and sit closer to the water than on the point. There’s a section of very jagged rocks that works well for sunset — and sunsets from this area almost always include the lighthouse. It’s nearly impossible to avoid it, which is usually a good thing. Where the path from the Coast Guard building meets the breakwall, keep an eye out for Inuksuit — rocks balanced on other rocks — which are worth a few minutes of your time. Just west of the path, water runs behind the basalt rocks and creates interesting foreground options.

The lighthouse is the classic Grand Marais shot, and the best way to get it is from the Coast Guard parking lot with a telephoto. That said, don’t overlook the breakwall area for lighthouse shots — the angle is different and often just as interesting.

The harbor side of Artist’s Point is characterized by knee-high to head-high brush that’s difficult to photograph most of the year. The exception is winter, before the harbor freezes, when a strong north wind blows spray over the brush and coats everything in ice. The result is a landscape full of unusual shapes and textures that combines beautifully with a deep blue winter sky. If you’re into wildlife, I’ve seen otters, mink, and a beaver working this stretch of shoreline.

What Gear to Bring

For sunrise, think wide and bring at least 24mm in full frame equivalent. There are so many foreground options on Artist’s Point that I’ve been shooting there for years and still haven’t worked through them all. Every trip out I find something I haven’t tried before.

For lighthouse sunsets, bring a telephoto. 200mm is the minimum, 300mm is better. When it’s stormy and waves are breaking over the lighthouse, 400mm is worth having.

For flowers, the blooms on Artist’s Point are small and delicate. A 105mm macro lens with extension tubes is the right tool for getting close without disturbing them.

Notes

Despite being a five-minute walk from downtown Grand Marais, you’ll often have all of Artist’s Point to yourself at sunrise. If you’d like a guided introduction to shooting here and other North Shore locations, I teach photography workshops in Grand Marais throughout the year.

The Planning

The image I had in mind required knowing exactly where the moon was going to be at every stage of the eclipse: before, during, and after totality. I used The PhotoPills to calculate the moon’s position and track its path through the sky over Grand Marais. Once I knew the arc, I could find a spot in town where that path would line up with something interesting in the foreground. I settled on a position that put the lighthouse in the frame.

Focal length matters more than people think for this kind of shot. I knew I wanted to use 50mm, which is wide enough to show the full arc of the moon across the sky, but long enough that if I printed it large the moon would have real detail in it rather than just being a bright dot. Getting the focal length right before you go out saves a lot of frustration on location.

The Shooting

I ran two cameras that night. The first was set up for the wide panoramic shot with the lighthouse and harbor. The second was zoomed in tight on the moon to capture detail during the eclipse itself.

The wide shot is a panoramic composite made from three separate frames shot at different points along a camera pan: left side with the lighthouse, middle with the western marker, and right side covering the marina. Each frame overlapped the next by about 20 to 25%, which gave me enough shared detail to stitch them together in Photoshop.

Here’s the part that took the most coordination: each individual moon in the final image comes from a separate shot taken during the corresponding panoramic position. So while I was shooting the left third of the panorama, I also captured the moons that belonged in that section of the sky. Then I rotated to the middle position and captured the next group of moons. Then the right position for the last group. You have to think through the timing carefully before you start. Once the eclipse is moving, you don’t get a second chance.

At dawn, after the eclipse was over, I reshot all three panoramic positions with the brighter morning light to get cleaner base images for the background.

The Compositing

Back at the computer, I stitched the dawn panoramic frames into one large base image. Then I went through each individual moon shot and placed it where it belonged in the arc — lining each one up with its correct position in the sky relative to the foreground.

I got lucky in one respect: the lighthouse was visible in some of the moon shots, which gave me reference points to work from. Without that, the alignment would have been mostly guesswork.

The main problem I ran into was parallax. When you pan a camera for a panoramic shot without a specialized nodal point tripod head, the perspective shifts slightly between frames — objects at different distances don’t line up perfectly when you stitch. Because of that, the moons didn’t fall into a clean, mathematically precise arc the way I’d hoped. In the end I drew a curve through the moons and nudged a few of them onto it. Whether it’s a accurate arc or not, I can’t say, but it looks right, and the final image captures the feeling of the night better than a technically perfect version probably would have.

What I’d Do Differently

A nodal point panoramic head would have solved the parallax problem and made the compositing much cleaner. If you’re planning a shot like this, it’s worth the investment.

I’d also plan the moon timing even more carefully. Knowing exactly which moon phases I needed to capture during each panoramic position, and having that written down before I started shooting would have made the night go more smoothly.

One Last Thing

Lunar eclipses are predictable years in advance. NASA publishes eclipse schedules far into the future, so there’s no excuse not to plan. Find the next one, spend an hour in PhotoPills figuring out where the moon will track over a foreground you care about, and go make something more interesting than a telephoto closeup of a red moon.

Anyone want to guess how 2021 went for me?

About the same as 2020 but with interesting exceptions.

First, I’ll talk creatively.

I had another down year.

Creativity and Imagination Takes Time

We are doing online school with my kid this year, which means much of my creative time is wrapped up in school. My wife and I are splitting the time to do it, and as an example of how hard that is and because she tracks her hours whereas I just work all the time, we know that she has lost about a full month of hours in 2021 due to online schooling. She often starts work before I’m out of bed to go photograph sunrise and she works until late at night. It’s a lot of work to homeschool your kid! Parents should consider sending their kids to school as a sort of modern-day luxury for freeing up time as well as all the benefits for the kid and the necessity of doing so.

The amount of work going into online schooling has been subtracted from the amount of time that I exercise and photograph (I gained 15 pounds after the school year started). I’m not complaining too much though because I’ve gotten to spend far more time with my kid than I ever thought I would, and I’ve seen him learn and grow throughout the year. Plus, he loves online school.

But it does affect my work.

The Yearly Photography Statistics

Each year I look back at the numbers. Here are the numbers of 2021.

• Number of 3-star and above images in 2021: 294 (due to time constraints I haven’t looked through all my images. This will likely go up by a couple dozen.)
• Number of 3-star and above images in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020: 478, 417, 353, 507, 523, 437, 316
• Number of 5-star images: 1
• Number of images that I kept: 16,755 (This will likely go down by 5,000 to 9,000 images. I have not had the time to do a proper culling of images).
• Number of total images in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020: 16,711, 18,461, 18,296, 13,318, 13,448
• Worst month: January with 343 (compared to 295 images in 2020 and 1038 so far in 2022)

The Business Rebound?

Many amateur photographers who want to become pros underestimate the importance of running the business. You need to set goals, hit goal, hit stretch goals. You have to account for all expenses and keep those expenses adjusted based on sales and sales goals. Want that new lens? Want that new camera? Can’t have it unless you had it in the budget or you’ll blow your profit, which is how you pay yourself. There are bills to pay, including insurance. You have to get the proper trainings to operate on public lands and you have to fill out permits, submit paperwork, resubmit paperwork, etc… It seems endless, because the business side of photography is endless. When you’re an amateur, you can just end your photography at anytime and pick it back up on a whim when you want to. With a business, you can’t. Even when you quit a business, there’s still the business of quitting and all the paperwork that involves.

The good news for me was my business mostly rebounded from a disastrous 2020, and despite students using credits they had from covid, I still had one of my better years. The reason was that I added extra workshops, got a few out-of-the-blue big image sales, such as a book cover, and I taught a bunch of online classes, webinars and had online video sales. I think I worked harder in 2021 than in any year since I closed my sea kayak guiding business. I got to the point that I ended up turning down work, because I couldn’t fit more work into my schedule in the timeframe that they wanted the work done.

My big goal in 2021 was to work as hard as possible to get all the workshop credits from 2020 used and then make back all the money that I lost in 2020. I came close to those goals. It’s weird, because a lot of those credits that I had to get used were from deposits paid in 2019. It was a big goal to have and to come as close as I did to hitting that goal feels good.

My Favorite Images of 2021

Without any further ado, here is an explanation of my selection criteria. Actually, you should go read my selection criteria in the newsletter that I started in 2021.

January

I really like this shot from January, because it is probably the best shot that I’ve taken of this old fish house. I’m not hip on the flare, but not much to do about it now.

February

This is a shot of my current favorite style and the conditions came together perfectly in this image. The wave and its speed echo the softness of the ice and snow on the foreground rocks, touches of the sunset extend into the little slot canyon.

March

March gave perfect conditions at The Tombolo, a favorite place to shoot. With water levels closer to normal more rocks and structure came back which I think adds interest to the foreground there. The speed of the water and the colors of the sky all brought this image together for me.

April

This shot turned out great and just draws me in, so it ended up as a favorite for April.

May

In May, I did a 160-mile trip from Grand Marais to the Boundary Waters to Lutsen Resort by canoe. It followed a historic route from 1879. I’ll be doing a presentation on it at virtual Canoecopia in March of this year. I took this shot on the trip. I’ve paddled past this spot multiple times, but never took the time to stop before. It was also right after a massive thunderstorm and the water was running!

You can see the trailer for my Canoecopia presentation here

June

In July, I was testing out a new filter with my h-alpha modified camera and made this image. It’s so dreamy. What’s not to love?

July

During the early parts of the pandemic when we were locked down, I found joy in photographing insects in our front yard. My favorite where these skipper butterflies. They don’t stay around the whole summer, so when they returned I made sure to spend some time with them. While I doubt they are the same butterflies, they seemed more used to me and that was fun.

August

I’ve photographed these rocks many times, but I think I finally nailed the composition in this photo. The colors are so subtle and it’s a fun shot.

September

In September, I was able to return to the Black Hills to teach my Badlands and Black Hills Photography Workshop. I had to cancel it in 2020. It was great to be back in the Black Hills at one of my favorite viewpoints with workshop participants that I’ve become friends with over the years. The conditions we got were great.

October

As a family, we try and get at least one fall Boundary Waters trip in. Our trip in October 2021 was cold, snowy, windy and kinda brutal as far as weather, but the last sunrise of the trip! This was one of the many photos I took that morning. It was amazing.

November

The family and I hiked into a waterfall hoping that it would be half-frozen and half-open. It was completely frozen. I was about to leave without getting a good shot when I opened my mind to see what was around me and saw this shot.

December

In December, I taught a Death Valley Photography Workshop, which was a workshop that was postponed due to COVID. Instead of flying, I drove. The workshop was all but one returning student and the new participant was a great person to have on the workshop, and it was a blast! This was the last morning of the workshop. It had rained the day before and the wind and rain had cleaned the sand dunes of footprints. After a short hike in, we found this area which had great shots in every direction, but this dune is the one that caught my attention.

First, 2019 wasn’t an ideal year for me. My summary in my 2019 post bluntly stated, “In 2019, that forward momentum stalled. It stalled so much that this has been one of my most challenging years artistically, socially, personally and mentally.”

Any maybe you can guess how 2020 went?

It was exhausting.

The big news of the year was COVID-19, like I needed to tell you that. Like with everyone, it impacted me significantly. I remember shortly after when I first heard about it in January of 2020, I was sitting in Subway eating lunch and had this crazy feeling that this might be the last casual lunch that I had without worrying about COVID-19. That was January 27th — almost a full year ago as I write this. I also remember the president saying, “We have it totally under control.” How wrong he was, and how right I was.

Anyway, we all know about it. It sucks. I’m not going to dwell on how bad the federal response was and how bad many in this country behaved, but COVID-19 hurt.

How bad? I don’t like to talk about income, but I’ll be open here. I lost about 60% of my income directly due to cancelled workshops, speaking events, sales, portrait bookings, 1:1 workshops, folded magazine columns and more. When you calculate in the additional impact of lost potential bookings due to reschedules or people filling spaces on workshops with their credits, I lost approximately 70% of my income due to COVID-19.

To make up for that, I pivoted my business online as quickly as I could. I ended up running five online workshops and doing several webinars. After Minnesota allowed workshops again, I managed to create new workshops and fill them. Fans of my work increased print purchases, sent donations, including several very generous gifts. Facebook also started a Supporter’s Group that allows people to support my daily pictures for $5 a month. You can sign up here: https://www.facebook.com/becomesupporter/122323837827341/

After everything was said and done, I had a 37% decrease in income. I did manage to get a PPP loan which allowed me to keep working during the lockdown and develop those online classes and webinars, and I also managed to get some unemployment. Once those are factored in it’s about a 20% decrease.

To help offset some of that loss, I’ve also spent much of the year selling old outdoor equipment and old camera equipment. I’ve sold a significant amount of my personal gear that I’ve accumulated over the years. Just today someone on Facebook saw I was selling something else and asked, “Will you have anything left after you’re done selling all this?”

But that’s not all!

Much of my loss is deferred. This is where it gets a little weird. I lucked out in that most of my workshop students ended up taking credits instead of asking for refunds — towards the end of the year I had cash flow to do some refunds. Many of those credits were used to book 2021 classes. When that’s accounted for, my 2021 is already down three months worth of work. The weird thing is that many of the credits were actually taken as deposits in 2019 and much of the rebound came from deposits taken in 2020 for 2021 classes. So, if 2021 classes have to be cancelled, I take a huge hit.

Anyway, I worked my butt off and made up for some of the loss, but last year’s losses have already impacted this year. If there are anymore lockdowns, then this year will be bad as well. I suppose I should get another PPP loan to help, because I do qualify. But I hated doing that. That’s probably more than you wanted to know about the business side of being a landscape photographer.

The worst part of COVID-19 had nothing to do with the business side. I lost my grandma to COVID-19. She was diagnosed on Christmas Eve and passed away on New Year’s Day.

2020 was exhausting and sad, and I’m glad it is over.

Was there any good?

Yes. Despite having the economic impacts and personal losses, we have been distance learning my kid the entire year and will likely continue that until summer. That has meant that we’ve spent a lot of time together as a family. I’ve really enjoyed it even though it has been hard.

My travel was down from about 100 days a year on the road to a week in Door County last February before COVID-19 took hold. While I love being on the road, being home was awesome. It allowed us to get closer as a family. We took multiple Boundary Waters trips and spent a lot of time together as a family exploring our property and the local forest.

I also produced six YouTube videos. You should subscribe to my channel, like all my videos and comment and such. My channel is https://www.youtube.com/bryanhansel

The most popular video was the one I did on the Ricoh GRIII.

I also put out a fun little zine that you can get here: The Landscape Photography ‘Zine.

If you’ve followed my work and life through these updates in the past, you know that in 2016 I joined a political party and was elected chair of the local unit. Last year, I was also elected vice chair of a regional unit. My local unit swung our county towards our candidate by one of the largest margins in the state of Minnesota. To be honest, we won. I’m proud of the work that I did, and it was a relief off my shoulders when we won. I’m now in the process of resigning my positions and going back to just being an artist for awhile.

Was there anything middle-of-the-road?

Yes. I’m in the middle of switching camera systems. I started in 2019 and was planning on getting everything switched in 2020. This put me in a bind. My camera system was a mess and I needed to spend some money on new equipment, which wasn’t ideal consider the losses I was taking. But there was no way around it. In the end, I sold a lot of equipment that in a normal year I wouldn’t have sold. This helped to fund the purchase of new photography equipment to get me into a usable enough of a system to be able to sell more photography equipment and do most of the photos that I like to do. I’m down some lenses that I wish I would have kept, but what I have is fully functional again. I still have a bunch of equipment that I need to sell. You can see it in my garage sale page. You can see my current equipment list here: https://www.bryanhansel.com/about/gear-books/

Anyway, the year was exhausting. It sucked. There was some good. Let’s see the numbers.

Here are the annual photography statistics:

• Number of 3-star and above images in 2019: 316
• Number of 3-star and above images in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019: 478, 417, 353, 507, 523, 437
• Number of 5-star images: 5
• Number of images that I kept: 13,448 (This will likely go down by 2,000 to 6,000 images. Due to distance learning I have not had the time to do a proper culling of images).
• Number of total images in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019: 16,711, 18,461, 18,296, 13,318
• Worst month: April with 149 (compared to 844 images in 2019)

What about being an artist? Did my work grow or what?

I’m not sure how to evaluate this question this year. I took a lot of pictures that I love. I got some of my best fall color pictures of the area. I loved shooting skipper butterflies. I also made some epic canoe shots.

I made a few most favorite shots of my life in certain categories: bloodroot flower, macro insect (not included here), night sky due to NEOWISE, canoe sunset, and a fall color shot. It’s funny that some don’t appear in my selections below due to a technicality. For the selection, I always pick one photo from each month that qualifies as my favorite from that month.

I felt like the overall quality of what I’ve shot is a bit higher than last year. I’m happyish with the work I’ve done, but not the volume.

Still, that’s not bad. But, I feel pretty numb. It’s almost like there’s a mental block that is stopping me from looking back at 2020 and really evaluating what happened for me artistically. When I think about it, everything just kind of goes blank. It’s really a weird feeling, like I have no ability to look into the past right now.

My Favorite Images of 2020

Here are my favorite 12 images from 2020. There’s one from each month. April’s image would have never made the pick in any normal year, but I didn’t have much to pick from.

Even before the pandemic, my favorite solution was to use a product called Cat Crap. It’s an anti-fog spray with an unfortunate name that was designed for skiing. I like the spray better than the paste, but the paste also works. You can get it at Amazon here: https://amzn.to/39CvGpd Note: if you buy it from Amazon via that link, I’ll get a little commission.

Here are a few tips to help prevent your glasses from fogging up:

1. Use an anti-fog spray on your glasses. The ski brand Cat Crap is one of the best. Get the spray version and not the rub on version.
2. Rub a sliced onion on your lenses to prevent fogging.
3. Make sure the area around your nose fits tightly. Adding a soft piece of metal into the mask around your nose helps. Then when you put it on, mold the metal so that it fits perfectly. Amazon sells metal pieces with stickers on the back that stick to masks.
4. Wear the mask higher on your nose.
5. Tighten the mask.
6. Wash your glasses in dish soap and water, do not rinse and let the glasses dry. Dawn works best. Do not use anything that says sensitive skin.
7. Put a nylon stocking over the mask to hold it tighter to your face. This helps prevent your breath from going upwards towards your glasses.
8. Tape the top of the mask to your face using athletic tape or micropore tape.
9. Apply shaving cream and wipe off and let the glasses dry.
10. Try a different mask.

When you use an anti-fogging spray, you should keep a bottle of it with you, because you will need to refresh it throughout the day. With Cat Crap, I can get about 3/4rds of a day out of one spray. So, I put it on when putting my sunglasses on for the first time in the day and then reapply in the afternoon.

I hope these tips help you. It is helpful to try these solutions at home before you come to a photography workshop. That way you can concentrate on learning photography instead of learning how to keep your glasses fog free.

2018

2019

2020

2021

Here they are all together along with a couple of other shots of the same composition on New Year’s Day.

If you aren’t familiar with filter holders systems, there are two parts: the filter holder and an adapter ring. The adapter ring is sized to screw into the threads on the front of your lens. The holder attaches to the adapter ring. When looking at a filter holder, you will see slots that run parallel to the front element of your lens. These slots hold the square or rectangular filters.

K&F Concept Filter Holder Description

K&F Concept made their filter holder from lightweight aluminum with two plastic modular slots. The holder features a slim and round profile. It has a velvet-like gasket glued to the holder to help block light from leaking during long exposures. On the holder’s side, you’ll find a semi-circular button that releases the holder from the adapter rings. Many filters holders now feature a polarizer holder, but this one keeps it simple and skips that. It’s painted black, and after 3 months of use I’ve noticed that it’s wearing off on the edges of the adapter rings but the holder still looks good. That’s probably more of a function of wear I carry the pieces in my pack than of anything else.

Speaking of adapter rings, usually when you buy a system, you buy the filter holder and then enough adapter rings to cover all the different sized threads you have on your lenses. For example, I have lenses with 62mm, 67mm, 72mm, 77mm and 82mm threads. While I might not use a 100mm filter on all those lenses, it’s nice to have the adapters if needed. Adapter rings cost anywhere from $10 to $40 each, and the cost adds up. To help you save money, K&F Concept includes all the sizes from 49mm up to 82mm. That’s a great selling point for this system.

At under $45, it seems like a bargain.

What’s it like in the field?

So, what’s it like in the field? Pretty good except for one major flaw. I’ll get to the flaw in a second (technically it’s the six point in the list below if you want to skip everything else).

When in the field you want a holder that does six things easily. You want a filter holder that:

1. Goes onto the adapter ring easily. This one uses three tabs to lock onto the ring. It’s not easy unless you figure out the trick. The trick is to hold the filter holder vertically until you get the top two tabs locked onto the top of the adapter ring, and then push the release button to allow the filter’s bottom tab to lock onto the adapter ring. It takes a few tries to get the hang of, but once practiced, it works fine. There are a few other holders that use a similar system, notably Nisi and Kase.
2. Is easy to put filters into. I tried both glass and resin filters and it’s smooth and easy to use. If your filter already has a gasket, such as Singh-Ray’s Mor-Slo filters, you will need to remove the filter holder’s velvet-like gasket to make it work. Note: use the code “thathansel” for a 10% discount from Singh-Ray.
3. Holds the filter in place. It works just fine for this.
4. You also want a holder that spins on the adapter ring, so that you can vary the angle of your filter. More importantly you want it to rotate to make it easy to place your filter right. On a split ND grad, the filter is usually divided in the center. The bottom of the filter is clear and the top of the filter is dark. You usually place the split between the dark top and clear bottom on the horizon. To easily and accurately see the split, you rotate the filter back and forth. As you rotate it, you’ll see it pivot in the center of the split. Then you move the filter up or down until that pivot sits on the horizon. This filter holder works just fine for this purpose.
5. Doesn’t vignette on wide lenses. This one is fine out to 14mm on my Nikon Z 14-30 f/4 S lens.
6. Stays on the adapter ring and can’t accidentally fall off. This is the flaw. The filter holder stays on the adapter ring without issues unless, and this is a big unless, you accidentally push the release button against something. The problem is that there is no locking mechanism or safety catch that will hold the holder onto the adapter if the release button is pushed. That means that you have to be careful not to do that.

Five out of six criteria isn’t bad (or ain’t bad if you are into that type of language). But, the failure of the sixth criteria is a tough one. You could have $500 of filters hanging off the end of your lens and accidentally push the release button wrong and have the filters break when hitting the ground. Not ideal.

Can it be fixed?

If it weren’t for that, I’d have no problem recommending this holder, but at $42 I don’t want to give up on it either.

So, I experimented a bit. I took a small piece of gaffers tape and put it under the release button. Then I tried to push the button to get the filter holder to fall off. It doesn’t fall off! Perfect if you don’t mind dealing with a piece of gaffers tape. I suppose a paperclip or something else would work fine. Someone with an engineering mind could probably 3D print something that would work. Or if you have the tools, you could drill a threaded hole to put a safety screw into the release button and then screw the safety screw down to prevent a release. This would be similar to other systems out there. In a completely unscientific test, I used my kitchen scale to determine it takes between 10 and 14 ounces of force to depress the button enough to case it to release. That’s not a lot of force, but it’s not exactly a light touch either.

In the end, I don’t really have a recommendation to make. I like the filter holder enough that I’m using it with my 14-30 f/4 when I haul that lens out (which has been exactly zero times since I got the Z 14-24 f/2.8 S). I also have it in my pack if I want to use 100mm filters with my 24-70 (almost never) or my 70-200mm (even less than never).

But…

It’s $42. That’s a bargain. If it didn’t have the flaw it does, it would be my recommended filter holder. I’d love to see K&F Concept fix this issue. With a simple fix, I’d highly recommend it.

Get it at Amazon (If you order from this link, I get a commission.)

Announcing issue one of The Landscape Photography Zine. This is a free issue. It might be the only issue. It’s a zine, and it’s designed to print at home on one piece of 8.5×11-inch paper.

It’s nearly impossible to to put everything that I’ve learning about landscape photography in a small zine of this length, so the zine doesn’t claim to be comprehensive. On the back cover, you will read the blurb, “Not nearly everything you need to know about landscape photography in a small pithy zine.” It’s not going to teach you everything you need to know. I offer landscape photography workshops to help you learn that.

Two Formats

I’m providing this in two formats (I’m sure both will have spelling or grammar mistakes because I wrote and edited it in like three hours. The layout took another couple of hours).

• The first format is for readers who want to read it on a phone. If you want to read it on your phone or computer or tablet or wherever you electronically read, you can download that one. The pages are in order.
• The second format is for readers who want to print. It’s a zine. It should be printed. You should print it. It’s designed to be printed double-sided on a 8.5×11 sheet of paper.

Print, Cut, Fold, and Assemble

When you print it, print it double-sided and flip it on the long edge. If you can do borderless printing, it’ll look better. But, it is a zine, so whatever is just fine. You get bonus points to pat yourself on the back with if you print it in color on double-sided fine art photo paper. After you complete the printing, fold the paper in half along the bottom of the front and back cover — a hamburger fold. Then cut along that fold.

Next, fold the two pieces of paper you just made between the pages and assemble the zine so that the page numbers are in order. Next, staple the zine together. I guess you could sew it together, too, if you are that type of zine lover. I like to open mine up, set it on a piece of cardboard and then with an open stapler, staple down the book’s spine. After done stapling, pull the zine off the cardboard. At that point, you’ll need to fold the staples over. You made a zine! Wasn’t that fun?

I hope that you enjoy this gift. Since the beginning of the pandemic, I’ve wanted to make a zine. I figured I better get it done before the year ended. This isn’t the first zine that I’ve made. Back in the ’90s, I used to publish a zine called The Plywood Review that was distributed through local record stores. One issue sold nearly 100 copies. I also published a zine that we put over 1,000 copies out in public places for people to pick up for free.

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