Nature Light Photo

Photo of the Week – Sundial Bridge in Redding, CA

Sundial Bridge in Redding, CA

I walked around this bridge for hours looking and waiting for the light to be just right. Finally, the bridge was illuminated and the sky at the perfect level and I got the image I wanted. It was one of the first times I understood how to pre-visualize an image.

The image was taken with a Nikon D70 and a Nikkor 18-70 3.5-4.5 lens at 18mm. The exposure was 1 second at F4 and an ISO of 200. Very little post processing has been done.

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think.

5/5 Posts and Sites You Should Read for 2/25/11

Here are the posts and sites that I found this week that I think you as a photographer should read. Not all of them are always related to photography, but they are worth looking at and will probably make you think.

POSTS

What Happens to the Plastic We Throw Away – This is a post with some VERY disturbing images. (You have been warned.)

Using Your Camera’s Diopter Adjustment – One of the little talked about features on your camera.

How to Choose a Workshop – Three good tips from Justin Reznick

Mass Animal Deaths – A Google Maps overlay of the world’s mass animal deaths. Morbid, but interesting.

20 Ideas to Help Your Photography – Scott Bourne give you 20 ideas that will challenge you and help your photography.

SITES

Alaska Photography Blog – Home of Patrick J. Endres.

Guy Tal Photography – Home of Utah based photographer Guy Tal.

Cornforth Images – Site of Washington based photographer Jon Cornforth.

Ian Plant Dreamscapes – Virginia based photographer Ian Plant’s blog.

Bret Edge Photography – Website of Bret Edge, another Utah based photographer.

Photo of the Week – San Fransisco Grizzly

San Fransisco Grizzly

This was taken in one of the best zoos that I have been to, the San Fransisco Zoo. It isn’t big or famous, but it is both visitor and animal friendly.

The grizzly bear enclosure is really nice and provides a fairly natural. The only problem is the glass between the visitors and the animals gets very smudgy. As a result, I had to either wipe it off or find a none smudged place to shoot through.

The image was taken with a Nikon D300 and a Nikkor 70-200 f2.8 lens at 110mm. The exposure was 1/320 at f2.8 and an ISO of 200.

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think.

5/5 Posts and Sites You Should Read for 2/18/11

Here are the posts and sites that I found this week that I think you as a photographer should read. Not all of them are always related to photography, but they are worth looking at and will probably make you think.

POSTS

Decode your credit card – not photography related, but interesting

Steve McCurry talks about creativity – From John Paul Caponigro

Accomplishing Everything – A good post about time management

Exploring Death Valley – a great read for those who love DeVA from Guy Schmickle

Posing 101 – A great post on posing models

SITES

Justin Reznick – An outdoor photographer who is based in Seattle.

Gabriel Ryan – A SoCal wedding photographer with a good site that covers a lot of aspects of the industry.

Beyond Megapixels – A good site for different and general photography information

The Photographers Ephemeris – Plan your shoot around the sun and moon.

WPPI – I’ll be there next week, so I check it a lot.

Galen Rowell: A Retrospective – Book Review

I have traveled Highway 395 through Bishop many times for lots of trips. On almost every trip, I stop at Galen Rowell’s Mountain Light Gallery at least once. His work is amazingly beautiful and inspiring. In addition, the gallery always has a section where a guest artist’s work is displayed and their work is usually equally impressive.

Unfortunately, Mr. Rowell died in a plane crash in 2002. The Sierra Club Book publishing company of San Fransisco brought together more than 175 of his images and writings along with those of guest authors document Galen’s body of work and a lot of his life.

Each of the ten different authors document one aspect of Rowell’s life and/or photography and each essay is accompanied by several of Galen’s images that directly relate to the writing. Sprinkled throughout the book are short writings by Galen and others that highlight certain aspects of his photography. The book also covers his equipment and some of his thinking in taking different images.

Rowell is able to make any place look special with his photographs. His images cover the globe from the foothills of San Fransisco to the mountain ranges of Tibet and South America. All of them are beautiful and inspiring.

He demonstrates why you sometimes need a person in the scene to give the viewer a measure of scale and he shows how to use color in a way that draws the viewer into the shot. By examining the images the book contains, you can see how an artist captures light in different scenes. His composition is precise and well thought out.  All of his images seem to have nothing out of place and everything included in the image was intended to be exactly where it is supposed to be.

This book should be required reading for any photographer who is interested in shooting the outdoors. It documents a advocate who is not only the photographer of nature, but also part of it.

Focus on the Eyes

Focus on the Eyes

With any image that has an animal in it, it is critical to have the eyes in focus. Humans are drawn to the eye. If the eyes are not in focus, there is a disturbing feeling about the photograph.

If the depth of field is very shallow and it is only possible to get one eye in focus because the one eye is closer than the other, it is important to keep the closest eye in focus. The closest eye is the one that people look at first and expect to be sharp.

In the above image of a…(ok, I have no clue what that is)…you can see the eyes are in focus. Even though the nose and the rest of the image is out of focus, the image still works. Why? Because the eyes are clear and in focus.

The image was taken with a Nikon D300 and a 70-200mm f2.8 lens and a 2x teleconverter. The exposure was for 1/200 of a second at 5.6 and an ISO of 200.

Please feel free to leave a comment and tell me what you think.

Photo of the Week – Steel Cable

Steel Cable in Bodie, CA

The State Park of Bodie, CA is a ghost town in “arrested decay”. As you walk around the town, there are artifacts from when the town was a functioning mining town. This is the end of a steel cable used in the mines to lower and raise the miners down the shaft.

The image was taken with a Nikon D300 and a Nikkor 105mm f2.8 macro lens. The exposure was for 1/40 of a second at f8 and an ISO of 200.

Please feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think.

We Are the Keepers of Memories

My mother, Shelby Williamson passed away suddenly last September and I lost a close friend to cancer in the last couple of months. In both cases, I found some comfort in my photography.

The community had a Celebration of Life gathering for my mother and needed photos of her for the guests to view. I had those images. And as I went through them, looking for the ones they wanted, I was reminded of some good times with her and my family.

When my friend Dave Arnold passed away recently, I was again asked for some images of him for different organizations in which he participated. As with my mom, I had the images and had the same fond remembrances as I went through all of my images of him searching for the correct ones. I found myself smiling as I did so.

I had the images because I took them. I made the effort to carry the camera, pull it out, and take the picture when the time was right.

By doing so and making sure that I took creative, technically correct images, I had good shots of my loved ones.

That is the role we play as photographers.  It is our job and responsibility to make the effort to capture the moments and keep them for ourselves and others.

We are the keepers of memories.

Composition is Important – Poll Results

Late Night Ride

About eight weeks ago, I asked what people what they focused on when they look at a photograph. Possible answers were technique, location, composition, technical merit, lighting, and other.

66% of the respondants said composition, 11% said lighting and 22% said other. Other responses included the subject.

I found that interesting. I would have thought it would be location and subject (which I include together), but the responses make it clear that a well composed photography is very important.

Why? Because it holds the viewers interest. A photograph that is boring and not well composed is essentially a boring image. By using the rule of thirds in the image above and putting the horse and rider to the right, I hold the viewer’s interest just a few moments longer, allowing them to really look at the picture.

Take care in your next shot and ask yourself, will this composition hold my viewer’s interest.

Photo of the Week – Death Valley Wildflowers

Death Valley Wildflowers

Death Valley National Park is not the first place that comes to mind when you think of wildflowers, but in the spring and from certain angles, it can seem that the desert floor is carpeted with them. This is the road from Furnace Creek to Badwater.

The image was taken with a Nikon D300 and a Nikkor 70-200 f2.8 lens. The exposure was for 1/250 of a second at f5.6 and an ISO of 200.

Please feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think.