Eloquent Images by Gary Hart
Insight, information, and inspiration for the inquisitive nature photographer
Anchor Management
Dawn on the Rocks, Lake Pukaki, New Zealand
Sony a7R III
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
15 seconds
F/18
ISO 50
Virtually every scene I approach with a camera is beautiful, but a beautiful scene is rarely enough for a great image. Human experience of the world differs greatly from what the camera captures—the photographer’s job is to understand and use those differences.
I’ve always felt that viewers of an image are more comfortable exploring the frame—and therefore tend to linger longer with the image—when they have a starting and return place. So the first thing I do when trying to turn a beautiful scene into a beautiful picture is create that place by finding something to anchor my frame. Sometimes this anchor is an object that’s beautiful in its own right (such as a reflection, a flower, or the moon), but often it’s just a grounding element that aligns with the scene’s more striking features.
When I approached this scene on the shore of Lake Pukaki in New Zealand, I was struck first by the rich glacial turquoise water (I’ve seen a few lakes with similar color, but none that were nearly as big as Lake Pukaki), and second by the snowcapped peaks lining the distant shore. And in the pre-sunrise gloaming I could see that the sky was very nice too—maybe not spectacular, but with lots of character in the clouds plus the potential for soft, warm light when the sun finally arrived. Given all the scene had going for it, I probably could have raised my camera and composed something decent from any spot with a view of the lake, but a scene like this deserves something more than decent.
So before advancing any further, I performed my standard scan for something to anchor my frame, a visual element to surround with the scene’s inherent beauty. I was instantly drawn to an area of the beach where a few rocks protruded from the lake and quickly made my way down to the water. At the shore, in addition to the rocks that drew me I found a striking mosaic of rocks submerged beneath the clear water. A bonus for sure, but as beautiful as these submerged rocks were, as I tried to get all the visual pieces to fit together I quickly realized that they introduced a layer of complication as well.
For the next 10 or 15 minutes I wandered the lakeshore experimenting with compositions that used a variety of foreground rock combinations, but couldn’t really find anything that thrilled me. I’d click a frame or two, evaluate the result, but just couldn’t seem to organize all the foreground rocks with the mountains and sky to form something coherent.
But this wasn’t the time to become discouraged. I knew something was here and continued experimenting, hoping to find it before the light changed. As the sky brightened, I settled on the trio of rocks you see in this image. They aligned nicely with the mountains, better than anything else I’d found so far. But they were also orbited by a disorganized arrangement of satellite rocks that competed with the simple foreground I sought. I moved closer, extending my tripod as far into the water as I could, then dropped low and composed a fairly tight frame.
Eliminating the superfluous rocks made my foreground all about the rock trio, and with a few tweaks (preliminary frames followed by adjustments) arrived at the composition you see here. At this point the rocks were just a few feet from my camera, making depth of field a concern. Assisted by my hyperfocal app, I stopped down to f/18 and focused at the back of the farthest rock, taking only a couple of frames before I was confident my hyperfocal distance was dialed in.
The final piece of the puzzle was dealing with the chop in the water. Sometimes water motion can be a feature and I try to find a middle ground that softens it while retaining a bit of shape or texture. In this case I wanted simplicity, and felt that anything that wasn’t mountains, rocks, or color would be a distraction. The solution was to smooth the water as much as possible with a 15-second shutter speed.
There’s nothing inherently special about the rocks I used to anchor this image. The scene’s true beauty lies in the water and mountains, but if I’d have settled for an image that was just water and mountains, there would have been nowhere for your eye to land. Adding a simple foreground element to anchor my frame serves as a visual launching pad from which you’re free to explore the rest of this beautiful scene.
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Visual Anchors
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Eloquent Images by Gary Hart 
Greetings from mike /in Canada/ Do you agree the A7riii is the best camera. Makes me wonder…what the next 3 versions will WOW . ! !m(Im) thinking canon/Nikon will create next . the next5,10,15 IS GOING TO BE AWESOME !!!!!! Your photos are very very superb vary excellent