Photographer Page

Cotton Coulson

A new convert to Christianity is baptized in a river on the island of Saint Vincent in the West Indies. This photo appeared in the September 1979 issue, in a story about Saint Vincent, Grenada, and the Grenadines after political turmoil and a volcanic eruption.

A new convert to Christianity is baptised in a river on the island of Saint Vincent in the West Indies. This photo appeared in the September 1979 issue, in a story about Saint Vincent, Grenada, and the Grenadines after political turmoil and a volcanic eruption.

Couples dance in a street on Carriacou, one of the Grenadine Islands. This photo originally appeared in a September 1979 story on St. Vincent, the Grenadines, and Grenada.

When shooting in heavy weather you need to give extra thought to how to protect your gear. For instance, there’s always a lot of wind and salt spray over the bow and deck when you’re on a ship. You want to keep your cameras and lenses away from saltwater at all costs. It will devastate your equipment. There are hosts of available products specifically designed for each camera brand and series, and they do an excellent job of protecting equipment. Protect your gear and find a secure spot. If by chance your camera does get splashed with saltwater, quickly wipe it down with a cloth dampened with freshwater to help remove salt crystals and spray. If your equipment just gets wet from the rain, wipe it down and use a hair dryer on low heat, not too close to the camera, to remove the humidity and condensation. When shooting weather from a moving boat, always try to find a secure place out of the wind and spray that also gives your body some extra support so you can hold the camera steady. Never let bad weather stop you from taking photographs. —Cotton Coulson

Quality of light is always changing and one of the best times to experience this is during a thunderstorm when the sun breaks through the clouds and shines on the rain. Then you might see a rainbow, which can always add a surprising element to a landscape. Here in northern France, for instance, the rainbow draws attention to the main subject, the modern wind turbine. I walked along the road so I could exactly place the foot of the turbine to where the rainbow ended. Tell a story with your composition. Photographing a rainbow by itself is pretty dull. What always makes the photo more interesting is when a story is told through interesting geographic or editorial elements in the composition. Then the rainbow has added value. Be sure to bring along your polarizing filter for these occasions, since it does a great job of strengthening the colors in a rainbow. —Cotton Coulson

One of the most difficult skills to learn when taking photos is patience, especially when knowing you’ve just made a great shot. One’s natural tendency is to pack up the camera and tripod and move on to the next situation. This is true when photographing both people and landscapes. Try to force yourself to stay in the moment to capture any unexpected moments that might arise. In this case, my patience was rewarded when I stuck around to capture the changing weather after the lightning storm had passed through. Be alert to changing conditions. When shooting weather and landscapes, I force myself to settle down and quietly observe the changes in the light and atmosphere. It’s one of the highlights about working as a professional photographer. I made sure that I properly exposed the sunlit clouds, since that was the center of interest. Experience tells me that, depending on which camera system I’m using, I may need to underexpose the picture. For this image, I bracketed and underexposed by about 1 stop to ensure that the highlights in the clouds looked correct. —Cotton Coulson

Most often when I’m working in Arctic regions, where I know that the skies are constantly changing, I bring along a high-quality polarizing filter, which cuts through the atmospheric haze; reduces glare from ice, snow, and water; and increases the contrast between the sky and the clouds. Polarizing filters can be used for both color and black-and-white photography. I find that black-and-white photography often creates a sense of timelessness, while color photos feel more modern. With black-and-white, I’m not distracted by shades of color and instead focus on details and gradations. Use a polarizing filter. When you use a polarizing filter, the image will appear darker in the viewfinder because the filters reduce the total amount of light that enters your lens. A tip to remember is that polarizing filters work best when the sun is positioned 90 degrees to your right or left. They don’t work at all if the sun is directly behind you. If you decide to purchase and carry along a polarizing filter, be sure it’s made from the highest quality glass. If you’re shooting scenes with water, the glare from the surface will be cut and you can see more details below. —Cotton Coulson

Being privileged to spend multiple seasons in the Antarctic with National Geographic Expeditions, I sometimes get the opportunity to shoot beautiful icebergs during the blue hour. This is after the sun has set and the sky becomes a beautiful gradient from pink to purple. In this scene, the full moon was rising over a sculptured tabular iceberg, creating a center of interest for the composition. Capture the "blue hour." The best weather for shooting in the blue hour is when the sky is clear and there are no clouds. Half an hour after the sun has set, mount your camera on a tripod and be sure to photograph the moon just as it comes over the horizon so you can retain detail in the highlights. Very often I bracket the exposure times, since there will be just the right moment when the light on the iceberg, moon, and sky are perfectly matched. This moment in time doesn’t last for long. —Cotton Coulson

One of my favorite weather motifs is shooting before the sun rises, and I especially love it when there is morning fog and mist in the air. These weather elements add mood and mystery to the photograph. Be prepared. When I know that I need to get up early the next morning, I try to prepare everything as well as I can the night before. A couple of things to remember before setting out on an early morning shoot is to check that you have fully charged batteries and spare memory cards. Also, check your ISO settings to be sure they’ll be correct for the new day. In this situation, where there was very little daylight available, I pushed the ISO up to 3200 so I could be sure to capture the scene from the moving fishing boat. The latest cameras easily allow you to push the ISO up this way, without introducing digital noise. Since I am always shooting in RAW, I leave the white balance most often on auto—I can always tweak the color in postproduction using a good application like Apple’s Aperture, Adobe’s Lightroom, or Google’s Picasa. —Cotton Coulson

These clouds in the Antarctic were shot just as the sun was setting, a time of day when shadows are long and the light is golden. Sometimes it makes great sense just to look up into the sky and see how the clouds are shaped. Here, you can see how the low light helps articulate the shadows and contours of the clouds, and you begin to appreciate seeing how shapes and forms create an interesting composition. The sun is no longer directly hitting the lower clouds, giving the image more depth. Keep in mind that at sunset the colors are their most vibrant. Focus on infinity. Even though the light is low, you don’t need a tripod for these types of shots because the subject is at infinity and you can therefore shoot comfortably at around f/4.5 and still have everything in focus. When you shoot using this aperture you can comfortably handhold the camera because your shutter speed will be fast enough. —Cotton Coulson