Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve really been feeling the pain of the short zoom. Living in Alaska, I’m constantly surrounded by huge mountains. On the east end of town, they loom over you, feeling huge.
But when your maximum zoom is 50mm? The background shrinks, the foreground grows, and the effect is diminished.
Thus the other day’s image wasn’t quite what I wanted. Sure, it imparts information about the contrasts and how bright it was, but you lose the effect of the mountains looming.
Holy crap, I just realized: we’re well past the one-year mark for this blog! March 30, 2009 was the first post, in fact. So, um… happy birthday to us?
Looking back, I realize that most of my posts were fairly introductory. Basic, aimed at beginners. There was some good info back then, but much of it doesn’t apply to my life anymore. The sd500? Toasted while scuba diving last fall, shortly after the pic in this post. Talk about the CHDK project? I’ve pretty much abandoned it now that I’m shooting the LX3.
Things pretty quickly moved on to slightly more advanced topics, with the occasional relapse. May started working more towards looking at light (I still love the contrasts in the mountain, fence, and tree shots), with pretty decent observations of the world around me. I’m thinking of the spring (contrast this with yesterday’s April Trail shot – it’s the exact same location!), abstract, and moon shots. A year later, and I’m thinking that my work back then was better than it is today.
As the year progressed, there was more individual work involving abstracts, technique trials, and a variety of landscapes. Strobing took a larger importance for me (gotta get back to that!), and I started going for obvious (if not colorful) nature photos. Then, inexplicably, all work took a nosedive towards the end of the year. Shortly after the holidays, in fact.
I’m still trying to figure that out. The only thing I can think of is that I purchased Topaz at that time, and I’m wondering if maybe I turned off some of my creative juices in favor of easy out-of-the-box editing.
Prevailing wisdom among photographers is to always bring a camera with you, wherever you go. That’s the rule: you never know when you’re going to need it. But really, there should be some tempering to the madness, no?
No.
Today I went out to get the mail, without my camera. Nothing big just a 30 foot stroll. There, flying just overhead, slowly into the wind: a North American Bald Eagle. Naturally, I didn’t have *any* camera with me.
D’oh!
I’d like to tell you that I ran inside, grabbed the camera, and just made it to having a decent pic for you. But I didn’t: even flying slowly, that bird was long gone by then.
So there you have it. A missed opportunity.
There’s a general rule: if you’re going to put photos on the ‘net, you’re going to have them stolen. Period. It may not be nice, or ethical, or legal, but it will happen.
Despite the often-poor quality of the things that I choose to publish, I am not immune to this myself. Most of the time, the culprits are exactly what you’d expect: Students (who either don’t know or don’t care), Chinese (Koreans are right behind them, usually on some site spreading malware), and Russians. Click to continue »
A lot of what photographers shoot could be called high-pressure photography. Think about a wedding photographer – the photographer needs to know how to take photos in a variety of situations, be able to predict when great photo opporunities arise, and must always be on the ball. There are no second chances in wedding photography.
A lot of what I shoot is personal photography – family moments, or action during get-togethers. In some ways, this has the same pressure as wedding photography. There really are no do-overs, no second chances.
So take this as an opportunity to shill the training & blog of David Zizer. I recently had the opportunity to watch his “Wedding Photography: Rapid-Fire Tips and Tricks” video on KelbyTraining.com and I have to say it’s perfect for the family photographer.
Over the last three weeks I don’t think i’ve taken a single keeper. Even looking back at my recent Hawaii trip, no more than ten photos were taken that really speak to me. This is something of a dry spell – usually I get something.
The question that makes me wonder: are my photos really that bad? I have this sneaking suspicion that I’ve crossed over a plateau in my approach, that I’m seeing more. If this be the case, what is blocking me?
Eh, I’ll leave the musing for another day. Off to chase a 5-year-old!
Koi Pond Reflections
Permit me, if you will, the opportunity to share a failure with you. The image (to the right) is to what I refer to: abuilding reflected on a koi pond.
This was taken at sunset on our recent trip to Hawaii. The sun had just passed behind a building and the reflections were strikingly strong. There is no amplification of the effect here. A quick shot and on I went, chasing a tired 5-year old.
Looking at it later, I noticed that something was… missing. But what? Click to continue »
Just an odd observation: there has been a massive increase in the traffic pointing here, mostly due to people searching for “bokeh.” Looking over the logs, I’m seeing a bunch of people hotlinking to images directly (to web hosts paying for the bandwidth, this is considered stealing) instead of linking to posts.
Still, at least I’m aware of them. Won’d do anything ’bout it now, but thought it was strange. Nothing for months, then suddenly this week.
Some from Arabic-language only sites, too…
The last post in this series gave you visual examples of making bokeh. What was the key concept?
The more out-of-focus the target, the larger and dimmer the bokeh.
Bokeh behind bread
Now here’s the thing: focus on the background is relative. Let’s say you’re photographing something that’s in front of a Christmas tree. By focusing on the object, the tree becomes a background of bokeh. A perfect example: the monkey bread to the right.
So here’s the thing: if the bread is closer to the tree than it is to the camera, the smaller and brighter the bokeh. Closer to the camera and it’s larger and dimmer.
This is also effected by the overall distances: for this shot, I was maybe two feet from the bread and three feet from the tree. Larger bokeh. Step back two feet, and the bokeh grows smaller. Increase the distances with the same ratio (say, 4 feet from the bread, six feet from the tree): bokeh grows larger still (it’s further out of focus). Tighten your f-stop from f/1.4 to f/2 and the bokeh shrinks again.
Getting the feel? It’s kinda like a dance. Mentally, I tend to associate it with hyperfocal distance, but instead of maximizing sharpness, it’s maximizing the bokeh.
When I take the time to review hits for this site, I find it interesting to me that I get so many visitors who are searching for bokeh. I mean, there’s really only a couple of pics, and they’re fairly poor at best. Yet over the last three months it has been my main reason for getting traffic from image searches. Click to continue »