How I Created Perfect Conditions for Landscape Photography 

Thomas, please don't stress about not getting a "good" photo every time you vlog. The majority of folk who watch your channel were initially attracted by the honesty and clarity of your presentations, and just enjoy watching and listening to the process - of you just being out there. There is always something to learn.

Thomas, your videos are never bad. I know you may think they are because you do these vlogs and you critique them however I think you miss the point here. You are still teaching something. We follow you on your good days and bad days. Even if you say your video is terrible, we still enjoy them because we know life isn't perfect and that your life and adventures you bring us on are not perfect. We are not looking for perfection. We look to you as our inspiration. The lows and highs of vlogging, the dos and don'ts of photography. The mishaps and misadventures you experience. we want it all and we appreciate all the hard work you put into the work you do. Never give up on yourself and believe that we believe, in you.

I love when you have longer videos. You are a wonderful teacher and an incredible inspiration. Never doubt that. Have a lovely week and we’ll see you on Sunday.

Thomas, have you tried using a radial gradient to produce the lense flare? That would give you the ability to control the origin of the light and you would not have to edit out the artifacts.

This was a great 30 minutes Thomas. Didn’t notice how long until you pointed out. This autumn has been challenging so far, in Scotland at least. Breezy and overcast/wet or breezy and bright sunshine. But your video shows what is still possible. I am comfortable in LR editing, but find PS more than a little intimidating and a really steep learning curve. Your video has helped 👍 thanks

I love it when notifications from TH pop up!

Couple of things: With jet stream you mean gulf stream, but that's not important. It is a well studied phenomenon in psychology, that the better you get at sth, the more you doubt yourself. Most of us suffer from that. My point is: I see a lot of respect and appreciation in the comments below your videos. You bring joy to so many!! And concerning the photos and good and bad days: I think it was Tom Waits who said (about songwriting, and I am paraphrasing): "Songs are like fish in a river. You may decide to go fishing or not, they are there anyway. And if you go, you might catch some or not. And if it didn't work today come back tomorrow."

If you ever discover how to B-roll in your head, never tell Gavin Hardcastle how. RU-vid is not ready for such content, nor would it ever be!

Just before I watched your video I was reading Edward Steichen's book. He explains how he made his early woodland photos, so moody and "artistic" (his words)....adding drops of water on his lens, throwing the subject out of focus on purpose, kicking the leg of his tripod to introduce a bit of blur, using different processing and paper to introduce texture/contrast. Your video was just the perfect complement to this idea of pre-visualization. Steichen did it in 1899 with a view camera and a literal lightroom, Heaton does it in 2019 with a digital SLR and LR. Great work sir!

"It kinda looks like you're photographing a bit of bush, if we're being honest..." 🤣 Thank you for keeping it real about not every day being an amazing, epic landscape photo shoot sort of day. Great photographers produce great images precisely because they can push through these frustrations and keep shooting, rain or shine etc.

You are absolutely right Tom about Autumn here in the uk , can be very hard and get the result we are after , especially with the right conditions.

Really a fan of your longer videos bro. Keep these coming. As long as you have a story to tell, I’ll keep that play button running for you 🙌🏽

That was intence.30minutes whent like 5. Absolutely incredible tutorial, going to watch that one 50 times

What an excellent vlog, you where able to take a rather mundane subject and make it into something fun. I'm was sitting here in my home office on kind of blah Monday after here in Colorado and though it would be a good idea to bring up RU-vid and watch some Thomas vlogs......what perfect idea, your video actually made me laugh out load several times and I came away with a totally different mood than when I started watching. Thanks to your great honest personality, and no pretenses.

Another fantastic video, Thomas. Thank you very much. You see something and took your photo and thousands of others pass.

Incredible!! This video has inspired me to go out there and find a forest and take a photo of something that is photogenic and edit it. wow.. Well done! Thank you

That's a really creative piece of work, Thomas. Thank you for sharing! And also, a BIG thank you for not using music this time! It was bliss to have no distraction while I watched you work.

For me, the quality of your video content is not in any way connected to the quality of your images. It’s the journey, learning experience ..and of course your great personality that keeps me watching.

I'm curious why you think your previous videos were a "fail". Your own impressions seem at odds with those of your audience. Obviously I can't speak for everyone, but I tune in to get a window into your thought process, to see what you make of the conditions that are present, how you work with the limitations of the day. A nice image at the end of it is gravy, but it's not the final determinant of whether or not I'll view the next video. It's sort of like the argument of which is more important: composition or light. I go with composition, a) because while light can make a good composition great, it can't make a poor composition good; and b) because outside of a studio you can't really control the light. So if your videos are about your composition process, I'm all in, because eventually that process will pay off.

Hey Tom! I am only 3 min into the video and I need to say... please do noy try to come with an awsome video every time! strees can be underproductive. In my case I do not care at all if a week or two passes and there is no new content. Thanks a lot for the videos! I used to live in a place up in the mountain, and now in the big city of Buenos Aires your videos are the few things that take me back to those calm and peaceful places. Do not let the channel or the media take away the grate feeling of been out in the nature, abstract yourself from the situation and remembre... Damm this is absolutely stunnin´ If you are ever going to Bariloche in Patagonia, remember you have friends there! Feel free to ask for whatever. Would love to guide or advise you in those mountains.

Definitely not too long! It is great to see the process from A to Z and at a pace that can actually be followed by the viewer.

Thank you so much! I was able to use your instruction to take a ho hum, flat fall photo into something that I've had many compliments on in my photography group. I'm not good at Photoshop but your advice for Lightroom processing was perfect for me. I feel like an artist today, thanks to you!

Excellent timing for this - when we have so many brilliant colours and so much crap light. Cheers, Thomas.

Thank you. Free time is limited and so I cant always choose to go shoot in good conditions. This will help immensely to make the most of the photos I am able to take.

So glad I found this! A year late to the party but this is the exact thing I’ve been banging my head against the last few weeks - sh** weather!! 😂 loved the lens flare technique too - I’ve often just used some different brush touches to create this but I didn’t even know the lens flare existed and looks so much better! 💯

Great video not too long. The whole process needs its time and explanation. Thank you.

Thomas, this is a really good video. Liked to follow your entire journey from finding the composition, with you explaining what you are searching for, and in to Lightroom and Photoshop to show how you transformerd the shot. Learned a lot and will be very useful for me. Thanks!!!

I stuck around for the end! - And seriously, I loved the way you talked through your process - it dosnt matter that you are not a pro at PS - I learned so much about the way you think from walking in nature looking for x scene, and then finding something usefull and working it out in post. That really made me change my mind about "boring landscapes i got around me in real life and just inspired me to go do some picture tracking your steps and trying to create a picture where the camera and first shot is only part of it. Thank you!

Actually I personally like windy days in the Forest for photography for the same reasons you mentioned. It brings some subtle blur and you can then play with colours. I always use a polarising filter though to remove unwanted reflections from the leaves, which helps bringing out the colours.

Well done Thomas - you've figured out non-destructive editing. Only one quibble. When you got rid of the bright dots at the beginning, you could have used another layer to do that, making it reversible if you changed your mind later.

I love how genuine Thomas is in all of his videos its literally the sole reason i watch them!! Keep up the work and i will gladly keep on watching.

Great video!!! Thank you, Thomas, beautiful image.

Thank you for sharing this, I’m sure I learned more from this than any in a long time! Please keep these coming, really interesting to see the image pre visualised and then the process to make it happen.

Your last video was great. It’s encouraging to know professionals struggle as well as us enthusiasts. You probably just struggle less than us. Nice to know your human.

Especially enjoy your longer videos. The shorter ones always leave me wanting more. Excellent as always!

Thanks for this very inspiring video Thomas! I am struggling myself to get some nice woodland shots while everything seems to remain way too green and uninteresting. You really opened my eyes here to go out with some possibilities of post processing in my mind. Absolutely amazing result you've got!

Thanks for the photoshop training Thomas it was really informative and the end result was brilliant.

Excellent content. Please continue providing your advice on producing good quality photographs.

Very pleasing video ! I enjoyed from the beginning to the end! More videos like this!

Just finished my first ever ever serious attempt at landscape editing following your guidance and it turned out better than I expected. Thank you Thomas, you are the best!

Sharing the vision , thought process , and the knowledge. Just brilliant

Thank you once again Thomas.

Thank you Thomas. This is a very helpful video. I have been anticipating shooting a tree on a hiking trail when it turns color ( happens very late in my neck of the woods ). I've had a similar concept in mind only where I'm at, in the desert, it hardly ever gets foggy or misty here so this will help a lot.

Thanks for the editing video. Learned a few new things today! Cheers.

Dude, use a vector shape layer with a gradient fill - then you can fine tune the colours of the grad and change the shape as much as you like. Those lens flare filters have not changed for 15 years... probably cos nobody uses them😆 Actually I wish photoshop spent a bit of time making more realistic flares instead of the horribly fake ones! Nice work though, atmosphere out of nowhere 👍

Many thanks for this. I live in an area with not a whole lot to photograph and I've other restrictions. This shows that something can be made out of almost nothing.

The autumn foliage was also forecasted to be delayed in Japan too. The dry dry summer the world had pushed everything back.

Thomas I absolutely loved this, I had seen Nick use the orton effect in the same way but I loved how you explained the process of preparing the image with the adjustments you made, I just processed an image Took a couple of days ago in the same way and wow what a transformation, thank you.

Very cool process. Always good to see how different people work in PS.

I came to UK for a holiday (from Australia) in 2012 and I came in mid september for six weeks, I was hoping to see those autumn colours, my last week there was spent in south Wales and I tried numerous times to fine those lovely orange leaves and checked out the Cwmcarn Forest area bear the bike trails, the day before I left UK I only then saw the first signs of those lovely orange colours but it was such a small amount, I was pretty cheesed off that Id chosen the wrong month to go there 😆

The videos are never bad.

One of your best videos tbh

This was so useful, Thomas. Thank you! 👍🦘🇦🇺

That edit is magical. Such intention and thinking behind it! Congratulations! You've created the most autumn image without having those autumn conditions.

Love all your videos! so calm. It was nice to see the edit and how you created your image. I'm not a bit fan of massive edits, so this was great to see those little adjustments. Thanks.

Didn’t feel like half an hour and. I really enjoyed the way the image transformed. Great video.

You have correctly identified my frustrations in the woods and in Fall. You may get the color but then you get no light and rain, or you may get no color and nice light, or you may get nice light no leaves, and on and on. It is really hit or miss. That's why I sometimes look for the odd item, the first tree to change, the last tree with leaves, the colorful tree among the only green ones. For me personally, I can't really get to the location I want to shoot the thing I want to shoot, and even if I could, by the time I got there I would probably find something more blocking the view. It is absolutely true you cannot see the forest for the trees. IF you can get up high and if you are on the right side of a valley and at the right time of day and with the right sky and you can get a clear shot, well that works better. The odd thing is though that the "golden hour" -well in a forest that might be noon when the only light comes through or 2 in the afternoon. And for hills, well if the sun is low, as it is in Northern latitudes the "golden hour" may be basically too dark everywhere you may have wanted to shoot. Sadly there are some places where the light will never give us what we like, ever. And so that is the reality. It did not stop Ansel Adams from extreme manipulation of his negatives to achieve his vision and it should not stop us from doing the same thing visually. Life is short and that tree or whatever may not be there tomorrow. I gave you thumbs up at the beginning of the video, any guy using sliders behind trees, real or emulated, deserves a thumbs up for that alone. But the video was quite worthwhile without the sliders. :) Best wishes!

Nice.... You nailed it with this one. Got these conditions all the time, at my once a week shoot. So, thanx... very inspiring😄

Truly inspiring and this is why I call you Master Heaton! ...and are you kidding when you say you're a clunker in Photoshop? I'll have to watch this several more times for my brain to wrap around the process! Thanks, Tom for your mastery!

Thank you Thomas, very nice video and something to learn as well. Thanks!

Although I'm not into editing... this is expert lvl! Congrats, gr8 work!

Thank you Thomas! Great video as always

Really love the way you look to different elements in a landscape. Lots to learn from you :)

As always I enjoyed your video Thomas, maybe I should venture beyond Lightroom and into Photoshop. There might however be a missed opportunity in our approach to subject matter and weather conditions. We set off with something in mind, and the weather dictates "not today, sir". I admire your persistence in almost finding what you were looking for, but maybe there was something else saying look at me! Haven't you ever marvelled at wind and what it does to trees? I come from the NW coast of Scotland, and it took a New Yorker painter (Jon Scheuller) to show me what I had missed when I dismissed the weather as 'bad'. He opened my eyes to what it was offering which I had refused to even see or look at never mind consider and appreciate. There is something exciting when the invisible wind makes its presence visually evident by waving branches and foliage around in a seemingly chaotic manner, but wind doesn't get everything it's own way, and ground, trunk and sheltered branches remain static. You use these phenomenon to alter waves in the sea or moving water in a river, by combining time with light and colour. I think we, and you in particular, could take some extraordinary photographs of the wind as witnessed by trees in motion, captured in your chosen time frame, to creatively compile some magical images. Something that the eye does not glimpse but the camera captures. In short, maybe we need to see and value what's actually happening rather than only search for what's more elusive' if even there at all. Of course, I may be wrong. Perhaps you have been photographing wind and saving it for some future video! Anyway, thank you again for an instructive and helpful video which my comment is in no way intended to detract from. And thanks also for your calendar which is as always a beautiful portfolio of a year of your most memorable photographs.

Really useful video - thanks for sharing👍👍

Great video! Bob Ross would be proud!

Thomas Heaton: the landscape creator :-))

Wow a nice place to do photography.

Actually, these are the most helpful type of videos for most of us. Thank you.

Liked how you said many times in the video that it was "fun". Good to remind us of that as we do take ourselves and our photography way too seriously some of the time!

Thank you, Thomas. I absolutely like the progression of your idea for the photo and the final product. I plan to take detailed notes to learn the Orton effect and layer masks. No worries on the length of video time. Much appreciated.

Nice video, Thomas. Expecting some more videos with your Hassy 501.

I love the long videos.

Such a cool video. I enjoyed the Photoshop work you put into the photo.

wind is rubbish for autumn as you say kills off the lovely leaves, I have been going to the lake district for the last 12 years and still love it there in AUTUMN, I find the first week of November the best time for the colours. I go there on photography tours pretty much every year, and it was raining 3 quarters of the time. but there you go, they don't call it the lakes for nothing, I did a vlog or 2 on the autumn colours from last year myself, have a look if you have time Thomas.

Awesome video young man and yes I understand With fall colors abound I to find my photography quite hendersons Because all I have is Saturday and Sunday and the yellow with the green as abstract it does work quite well

Taking a photograph that requires post-processing seems like the way Angel Adams previsualized the final print when exposing a sheet of film.

No apologies needed. This was a very well-spent 28 minutes. We haven't had much foliage change in my neck of the woods either, and we rarely get fog. So, I'll definitely give these techniques a try.

I finally gave this technique a try and it has brought my 2 star images up to 3 stars, thanks Thomas for making photoshop look less intimidating

Great video, really liked the way you brought out the image. Also lots of useful info in there are well.

Love your vids Thomas - Instead of the lens flare layer, why not a radial gradient?

Just what I needed on this rainy day to make it brighter!

Thomas, thank you. Fine video, as usual. You’re doing what I’ve done many times over the years-making “something” out of “nothing.” It makes a wonderful exercise, provides you with some editing practice and gives you some excellent creative tools for the future. That being said, it is never quite as satisfying to me as serendipitously finding nature’s gorgeous beauty when out exploring the countryside. Nothing I can do can match nature herself.

30 minutes is never too long when watching your videos, dude.

Wow, l got to learn to edit like this,thanks Thomas

Hey Thomas! The timing of this video couldn’t be better! Where I currently live it has been sunny with blue skies, no rain or mist, and almost no change in the color of the leaves with the exception of the occasional tree here or there. This video is perfect inspiration while I wait for Fall to actually arrive! Thanks for the ideas and keep up the excellent photos and videos!!

Beautiful.

Thomas. Great video and just what I needed to help me explore woodland photography this autumn. Thank you :-)

Thanks for that tutorial on the glow. I've always wanted to try it and this week I grabbed a shot on my hike where it is perfectly suited for a nice glow on all the autumn trees

Blooming wind!

30 minutes was great. Loved it.

once again a very nice video! To be honest, your last videos weren't as good as I normally think they're .. but you deffinitely made another great video again! Thanks for the clear explanation in photoshop! Looking forward to your next video :D

good stuff. i like the longer videos...

It is so interesting to watch an artist work his craft. So well done!

Thank you so much!! I love it!!

simply magic ...

Now, that was imaginative. Both the concept and the execution.

Book yourself at trip to the Lake Superior north shore next year to get some amazing colours! We get a good 4 weeks of great sunrises/sunsets yellows/reds/oranges! Some of the nicest people you'll ever meet live here :)

Thanks for this, Thomas - I went out yesterday and came back with nothing feeling I was a right loser at this kind of landscape. This helps me get back up off the floor. Cheers!

All I would say is - don’t feel pressure to release a video every week. I’ve not watched one of your videos yet, that I haven’t found entertaining, interesting, informative or all three. Point is, it makes no difference to me if it is every week or every month as long as it is every something.