Mike Mezeul does not take walks in the park.
“Landscape photography, to me, is not pulling up in a national park and walking out to an observation point that’s 30 feet from the car,” he says. “It’s putting yourself in the elements and having gear that allows you to put yourself in those elements.”
You might say that the gear has to match nature’s versatility—which is pretty much the story of Mike’s images. The camera for the video and stills you see here was a Z 8, and it proved to be a perfect fit for the greater outdoor images he loves to create.
We say “create” because it’s exactly what he does, and here’s how that story goes.
“This is the morning of the first day I shot with the Z 8,” Mike says. “I’ve been to Zion National Park many times, and this is the scene I wanted to capture. I knew I could make a dynamic, storytelling image if I could get close to the waterfall and working with the wide-angle 14-24mm Z lens allowed me to capture the water rushing through the scene and also get the mountains in the background.”
But it wasn’t quite that easy. “The camera is on my tripod, which wasn’t tall enough to get the angle I wanted, so I’m holding the camera up, shooting with one leg of the tripod on a slippery rock, the other two just hanging out in space. I’m soaking wet and getting deeper and deeper in the water because I had to get that tree exactly where I wanted it—in the somewhat negative space between the two peaks.”
Like we said, no walks in the park.
