We put the spotlight on Zoltan and found out what he had to say about when his passion for photography turned itself into a profession, and how photography equipment has influenced his shoots.
LG: Have you always taken imagery of beautiful landscapes? Where did it all start?
ZG: I have been fascinated by landscape photography for many years, and it’s been my main subject ever since I bought my first camera more than 15 years ago. When I moved to the UK, I started taking landscape photography more seriously because there are a lot of wonderful, photogenic landscapes here, but it only became a profession after a holiday in Malta.
I was surprised when I found one of my Maltese pictures on the start screen of the Windows operating system and on the Bing search page. I was very happy about this and tried to take more equally beautiful landscape photos, preferably of well-known places and landmarks. This was when I started purposefully travelling, discovering and photographing these wonderful places at the best possible time and under the most beautiful light conditions. At that time, I was only working with a DSLR camera, but after a few years, I felt that I wanted to develop my portfolio to another level.
I found two possibilities that I was very interested in: time-lapse videography and drone photography. Since time-lapse videos require very serious heavy and expensive equipment and quite a lot of work time, I turned to drone photography and have not regretted it at all. With a flying camera, a whole new world and a million perspectives opened up in front of me (not to mention that with a drone, time-lapse and hyper-lapse videos are also available and very easy to do).
LG: What’s your all-time favourite shot from your collection and why?
ZG: Perhaps one of my favourite photos was taken in the Italian Dolomites. I went to the Gardena Pass to take photos and when I saw that there was the chance of a really wonderful sunset, I took off with my drone. It was really stunning lighting, but in order to capture the whole sight, I had to take a lot of photos.
For the final result, I took 6 frames in 3 rows (each picture in Automatic Exposure Bracketing mode, so each frame was made up of 5 pictures, which meant a total of 90 exposures were taken for this view) which I combined into one large, spectacular panoramic picture with the sunset, the winding road of the Gardena Pass and the peaks of the Pizes de Cir mountain range are also visible.
LG: When you go out to shoot, do you take any essential items other than a camera and lens (or other than photography equipment)?
ZG: Not really. When I go on a photography tour, I can’t take anything else with me except my photography equipment, as my photography backpack itself is too heavy. Two DSLR cameras, 4 lenses, a tripod and 2 drones are so heavy and take up so much space that even food is hard to pack! I love the Scottish Highlands (especially the Isle of Skye), but it turned out that I couldn’t take all my equipment with me on a trip there, because it was so heavy and there would have been no room for food and warm clothes – which you really need in the Scottish countryside.
LG: Where is your favourite location to shoot and how much preparation does it take?
ZG: One of my favourite locations is in London on the top of St.Paul’s Cathedral. My most successful stock photograph has been taken here, but it wasn’t easy to take a good photo from here for several reasons.
First, if you want to capture good sunset lights (for sunrise it’s impossible to get up there, the building isn’t open), you have to visit the cathedral in winter, when the place is still open for visitors, and the sunset is earlier. You still don’t have much time to shoot, as the building always closes around dusk.
Second, there are 528 steps all the way to the top, which is a lot!
Third, the staff don’t allow us to use a tripod there, as there isn’t enough space to set up a proper tripod – which is essential for good cityscape photography- and it will be completely in the way of other visitors and because of health and safety reasons of course.
So I had to plan my visit to the cathedral in February or March (check if the cathedral’s top balcony will be open for visitors) and take a mini tripod with me, which is steady enough to hold a DSLR camera, which can be placed on the rock bannister of the building, so it won’t be in the way. Finally, it’s a good thing if you can capture nice sunset lights.
This photograph has been downloaded more than five thousand times from stock agencies.
