Continuing on with yesterday’s thoughts, which are still occupying parts of my brain that could be better served by applying to photography. Or better.
The argument that had been made was that photographers were mediocre. I would argue, myself included, that most photographers have always been mediocre. There are just many more of us today.
I’m not critic, so take what I write here with a grain of salt.
Recently I was reading an article online, and there was a comment, the gist of which was: today’s photographers aren’t great. Not on a technical, nor on an artistic level. Most of them take the same, boring photos and apply some actions in photoshop, or a trendy effect. In a few years, we’ll look at these photos and be able to date them by the effect: “this must have been taken in 2008 or 2009, it’s a classic Kubota“. These photographs will have lower value in the long run due to their limited range of style.
A little over a week ago, we returned from a weeklong vacation. It’s tough, sometimes, getting back into the groove of things. You’ve seen some of this over this week – a missed posting (first since April, I believe?), postings not on time… Well, here’s what’s occupying my thoughts: the cruise. Click to continue »
In yesterday’s post, what you saw was an example of using hyperfocal distance to my advantage. Go ahead and read the wikipedia article. I’ll wait.
Now, why do we care? If you can grasp this concept, then it’ll drastically improve the depth of your landscape images.
What does this mean to us when shooting? (more, after the jump) Click to continue »
To get a wide depth of field in a shot like the one below, I aim for a nearby object (not too close), and focus there. Then I minimize the f/stop. In this case, I was not using a tripod, so I had to be careful if I wanted to keep things sharp. In the end, I had to go much larger in f/stop than I would normally like, and also had to bump up my ISO.
A pond in Hoonah
Specs:
I’m still thinking over my impressions of using the Urban Design in the field, but I will say this: it’s intended purpose is technically to make it easy to have quick access to your equipment while shooting. It does fill that need pretty well.
In theory, I might be out shooting with a telephoto lens, and suddenly want to shift to a wide angle. This happened when shooting the ice pic from the other day. The nice thing? Well, I was in a light rain, yet was able to angle myself quickly and efficiently to swap out lenses without getting the insides wet.
So that’s a nice feature.
Plus, I got to test their (included) all-weather cover. It works as advertized!
About nine months ago:
Maui Beach
I think I’m ready for this again…
A Calving Glacier
Here’s a situation that happened to me last week, on the 6th full day of a South-East Alaska cruise: we’re sailing through fog, right up to the Hubbard Glacier. When we get up to it, everything is spectacular – calving at regular intervals (that’s the breaking off of ice into the ocean), deep blues… how to show this?
Well, even with proper exposure, you’ll end up with a fairly flat, even grey pic. The problem is that everything is a dingy white, and the sensor will try to dirty it down. You can alter your exposure, but it won’t really matter – you’ll still end up with a flat image, short on the color that you actually see.
In the case of this picture, here are the steps to resurrecting it:
In this case, I took it a little overboard on the glacier. This was deliberate – otherwise the splash from falling ice gets completely lost.
(link)
We were out – on vacation, in fact, cruising southeast Alaska. Beautiful things there, all over. One of those things that we shot were icebergs – the Hubbard glacier. I may post a pic or two of that sometime this week. In the meantime, check out the link above. What’s really neat about it is how well they captured the colors and detail. Nowhere near that well done in my pics, I’m afraid…
Just returned from a short vacation. It was a personal thing, but also a chance to try out the Urban Disguise as a travel case. I’ll write up more once I get a chance to recover, but for right now take this as a general overview:
Major Pros:
Small, easy to pack, lightweight, carries a fair amount, tons of pockets.
Cons:
Doesn’t carry as much as I’d like, tight fit for a lot of equipment, bulging when overloaded can be a prob.
Overall:
I’m afraid I’m still looking for that miracle bag that does everything. This one won’t be sold out – I’ll keep it in my arsenal, but probably as a carry-on for travel & a daily around-down bag for short shoots. For longer-term shoots? Not quite good enough…