What this nature aficionado shoots, however, depends on the time of day he’s out and about. In general, the early a.m. hours offer the best opportunities for shooting landscapes and native wildlife. “You typically want to photograph landscapes during those ‘sweet’ times of day when you get that special quality of light,” Voorhis explains. “That includes sunset, but also about a half hour before sunrise and about two hours afterward. The light that you get during this early part of the day helps define the textures and nuanced features of the landscapes and animals. If you want to get the various wrinkles in the landscape, that shallow, low-angle light helps to showcase those wrinkles by casting shadows in certain areas.”

Heading out before the sun pokes its head over the horizon is also practical if you want to capture native wildlife at its bustling best. “Bison and deer, sheep, and other prey-type animals will be most active during this time of day, as will the predators,” Voorhis says. “These animals tend to become less active as the day progresses.”

You’ll need to do more research for your locations than you would for midday shoots or even sunset shots. “I have to know the absolute correct position to maximize the sweetest light right after sunrise,” Voorhis says. “I have to be there and be ready when the light’s perfect. You have to be more aggressive at sunrise than at sunset: At sunset, after the sun goes down, the light gets better and better as time goes on; you can stumble on things a little more spontaneously and have longer to work with them. At sunrise, however, you’ll find the light is initially great, but then it will get progressively worse as the morning advances.”

To fully take advantage of sunrise’s ethereal glow, Voorhis strays from his usual reliance on custom white balance. “I believe in shooting with custom white balance at all times of the day, except for at sunrise and sunset,” he explains. “At sunrise, if you use the custom white balance, you tend to filter out that nice warm light you got up for. Instead, I shoot everything in RAW in automatic white balance. I then have the capability of selecting whatever white balance will give me the tonality I was looking for that early in the morning.”

Whether he’s shooting wildlife or landscapes, Voorhis is always shooting “locked down hard and tight in a tripod.” He uses many different light-measuring techniques, depending on the circumstances, from letting the camera handle the task in semi-automatic mode (e.g., shutter priority or aperture priority), to going to full manual mode using the spot meter in his camera (particularly in a fairly contrasty lighting situation), to using a handheld light meter.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks in early-morning nature photography is the lower light levels. “You’re going to have a more difficult time struggling with shutter speed, especially with wildlife,” he says. “With the new digital cameras, you have the capability to increase your ISO, which helps quite a bit, but you still always want to shoot at the lowest ISO necessary, however.”

His exposure times, aperture selections, and lens choice rely on the subject of the morning. “Whether I concentrate more on shutter speed or on depth-of-field depends on whether I’m shooting landscapes or wildlife,” he explains. “When I’m photographing a grand landscape, I’m typically using a small aperture and a wider-angle lens so I can take in more info and have more of the area in sharp focus. I’ll also use a fairly slow shutter speed. For this type of nature photography, I’ll use the Tamron 10-24mm, the 17-50mm, and the 17-35mm, depending on which camera body I’m using.”

If Voorhis is focusing on wildlife, however, he has to change things up. “With wildlife, I might not be able to get as close, so I want a larger magnification so the animals fill more of the frame, so I’m going to shoot with longer lenses such as the 200-500,” he says. “At that point, you should be less concerned about depth-of-field and more concerned about shutter speed, because the animals are going to be moving around a lot more and be a lot less predictable than a landscape; a 1-second exposure is going to give me a blurry animal. For shutter speeds, I’ll shoot for 1/60 to 1/125 of a second and faster; a better goal would be in the 1/400 to 1/500 of a second range to stop any motion the animal might have.”

As the sun ascends in the sky, it’s time to switch gears to shoot nature effectively in midday mode. Check out September’s enewsletter to see what Voorhis shoots in the field when the midday sun dominates—and how he compensates for the often harsh contrast that results.

For more of Les Voorhis’ work, go to www.focuswestgallery.com.