Landscape Photography from Start to Finish - Epic Drakensberg Sunrise

In this video take you through my whole landscape photography process from start to finish. From finding a composition and practicing it, to photographing it in incredible light the following morning, to processing it once I get back home.
The final image is actually a focus stack, so along with my normal editing process I show a simple way of exposure stacking without specialist software (or techniques!)
My Website: www.alexnail.com/​
My Workshop Mailing List: tinyurl.com/4m3y3syk
Online 1-to-1 Teaching/Mentoring/Processing lessons:
www.alexnail.com/online-sessi...

[@windleman1]

Another great watch from you. What a wonderful place to visit. The run through of your processing was excellent as well. Many thanks.

[@alexnail]

Glad you enjoyed it, thank you!

[@davidskinner274]

Seperation of the yellow patch made the shot work.

[@pat664422]

I've just discovered your videos and I'm loving the in depth focus on composition.

[@alexnail]

Thank you!

[@carlreid4161]

That’s a great alternative way to focus stack using manual masking will give it a go Alex! Thanks for a super informative video as always.

[@alexnail]

Hi Carl! Yeah with simple scenes it’s an easier faster way in my experience!

[@PeteBrownGuitars]

More great content from you, Alex!

[@alexnail]

Thanks Pete!

[@johnchambers6272]

Always enjoy your description and thought process while you are considering a composition in the field. Thank you for sharing Alex and look forward to your course later in the year.

[@alexnail]

Thanks John, my pleasure!

[@Azim0000]

Really appreciate how you went through your thought process to getting the compositions. So much more insightful than the usual "Top FIVE TIPS to level up your photography!" I struggle watching those 10 minute videos, yet i was completly enthralled with this 30 minute video. Thank you.

[@alexnail]

The tips videos get the views and are easier to make though, so you can see the reason why people do them! Glad you enjoyed the whole thing!

[@MegaDwilkinson]

Beautiful image, captured by the master - great to see you back in the Berg

[@alexnail]

Thanks David - another coming on Friday!

[@ivinghoe777]

so from someone who works in central London and catches your inspiring videos.. I can only imagine what it is like to actually live the dream

[@alexnail]

There are ups and downs in any job, but obviously its amazing to do this sort of thing!

[@briannicholson2971]

A most enjoyable video Alex and a nice coincidence as at my camera club tonight I am going to ask about focus stacking in Photoshop an area I want to understand more about. Thanks 🙏

[@stigfloberghagenphotography]

That was a superb start to finish video. The composition thinking and the photoshop process was great. 👍🙂

[@alexnail]

Thanks so much!

[@henriborius6158]

Awesome again!

[@gchristopherklug]

I came across you first on the discord, then on a Podcast where you interviewed Joe. Now this video. Thank you for your clear explanations and examples. Nice to meet you.

[@alexnail]

Nice to meet you too Chris!

[@ThyWorshipMetal]

Oh how timely, was just watching one of the Torridon videos and seen this pop up!

[@howardrankin7119]

Such an informative video. Always love hearing your in field decision making on composition and technique. And the processing with manual blending was very instructional.

[@alexnail]

Glad you enjoyed it Howard!

[@ianperkins1360]

As always, another excellent video explaining your thought process both in the field and editing, Alex!

[@alexnail]

Thanks Ian, glad you found it helpful

[@donniebel]

That brings back memories! Still bummed the fog closed in and we couldn’t capture the waterfall on the climb up. You did an excellent job describing the compositional challenges of this scene- achieving balance with the mid ground to the rest of the scene. Your discussion of focal length choice is interesting as well. Looking at my images, I find many of my favorites compositionally were with the normal lens on my iPhone which I think equates to about 20mm full frame. I brought 14-30 and a 24-200 lenses with my camera and since many of the scenes seemed to want longer focal lengths as you discussed I used the longer glass most of the time. The light changes so quickly there in the morning that without the advantage of multiple visits it was hard to have time for lens swaps and associated reframing and comp refinement. This points out the challange of workshops in general where you move on to a new location every day. It is a fabulous environment and I hope to return again after gaining some familiarity to give it a another go.

[@alexnail]

Yes it can certainly be challenging to make the most of great conditions on the first visit!

[@AnomandarisPurake]

A really interesting video. Great to see your work process from A-Z. Cheers.

[@alexnail]

My pleasure :)

[@brendanlynch7296]

A beautiful image Alex, and and excellent video, really like your focus stacking process. Glad I'm not the only one who thinks Ps can't auto focus stack 🙂 As an aside, I caught your interview with Joe Cornish on Matt's podcast last week. It was without a doubt one of the most interesting talks I've listened to, really enjoy both your insights, and interesting to see some of the things you mentioned being put into practice here.

[@alexnail]

Thanks Brendan, that's such a generous comment!

[@briannicholson2971]

Hi Brendan......ditto 👍

[@brendanlynch7296]

@@briannicholson2971 hi Brian, fancy meeting you here 😅

[@keithfoster3831]

The pinky white flowers in your foreground of the edited image are Saxifrages ! Stunning image Alex.

[@alexnail]

Good knowledge, thanks Keith!

[@dimitristsagdis7340]

thank you, really useful to see start to finish. In some future video you plan to make, I would love to hear some more elaboration on clipping the channels, your WB choice of 5500 and the Canon R5 Daylight Profile, and the reasons behind your 4x5 preference. Carry on the good work.

[@alexnail]

I’m glad you enjoyed it. I’ll have to give some thought to videos on that topic but I do have 2 videos on whitebalance that go into considerable depth!

[@dimitristsagdis7340]

Tnx, I’ll watch your back catalogue as I joined your channel after them. All the best

[@dimitristsagdis7340]

@@alexnail I now watched your 2 videos on WB and they spot on - tnx once again for pointing me in their direction. I will study the rest of your back catalogue. Take care

[@iqueque]

I enjoyed the processing section, but have one personal preference : I would soften the ridge line against the sky. To me it is too hard and defined, a negative aspect in digital landscapes. A small amount of haze would do the trick.

[@alexnail]

I think this comes down to personal preference and how good your eyes are perhaps? Because I see in this way I would like my photos to represent that. If looking into the light then I agree that a bit of bleed to reduce contrast can be preferable and more realistic in certain circumstances

[@slimblue0]

Really interesting from start to finish. Thank you. I would have found it interesting to see how Photoshop’s auto blend compared to the manual blend that you did. I tend to use auto blend. It works well with some images, and with others it is awful. That’s my experience, anyway

[@alexnail]

Thank you! Yes I don’t do focus stacks often so I have only tried the auto feature half a dozen times in photoshop, but even if it does a good job it makes mistakes and those mistakes take more time to correct than if I had just manually painted masks!

[@slimblue0]

I have found it’s either perfect or rubbish: no middle ground. What I can’t detect is a rationale, it just seems “pot luck”. When I focus stack it is usually more intimate images rather than the wider one that you showed here, and never less than six individual frames.

[@iqueque]

In my experience Photoshop seldom blends perfectly, and the fixing up is more effort than manual blending

[@ChristophGeiss]

Since it's a video about "process": any reason you crop twice? I usually let PS work on the full image and crop later. Or would the moving clouds have been confusing to the software?

[@alexnail]

No, that’s probably the better approach, but since I knew I wanted to crop to 4x5 I just did that early. Sometimes it helps me to both get excited about the image and to edit it appropriately. But certainly it’s technically better to crop as the final step

[@rocketmanab]

I enjoy your videos...but man do I have a lot to learn about Curves. Find it so confusing to use for some reason.

[@alexnail]

Have you watched my series on curves? There’s three parts up here on KZbin and a lot of people have found them very helpful!

[@rocketmanab]

@@alexnail It's been a while...time for me to watch them again! Thanks for the reminder :)