Archive for July, 2009
A bug’s eye view
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography, Travel on July 31, 2009
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This is another image from our whirlwind tour of San Francisco. It was one of my first opportunities to really do some playing with my new Canon 15mm fisheye lens and the tiny tripod.It’s exactly this type of image that I’ve been experimenting with. While this is far from my best work, it’s an interesting perspective. The position of the camera and the exaggeration of perspective cause the tiny flower to seem much larger than life. Another thing that I’m really liking about this lens is the quality of the bokeh. Bokeh describes the way that out of focus items, in this case, background items, appear.
To add the correct scale the tall stalk, in the middle of the frame, is about 7″ tall. My lens is about an inch from the ground and is actually responsible for the shadow on the lower edge. It was a challenge keeping the tripod, and my fingers, out of the frame.
To get this I had to crouch on the ground and use my angled viewfinder to compose the frame. My son took a very unflattering photo of me in “shooting position” with his cellphone. I don’t think that I’ll post that.
There’s nothing special about the exposure on this. The shutter speed was 1/4000th of a second at f/2.8 and ISO 100. The light, while fairly bright but being scattered by a thin layer of clouds. The clouds did a really nice job of softening the shadows.
Cheers
Pointy things
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on July 29, 2009
As I mentioned in my previous post, we spent some time in San Francisco last weekend. The reason for the trip was, of all things, the Norcal Cactus and Succulent show. I will be the first to admit that a cactus show isn’t high on my to-do list, but we take a bus down with some locals and it’s a fun day.
Cactus, and their succulent cousins, make interesting subjects. The variations of color and form are unlike any other plant type. It’s amazing that some of these plants can take years to produce a flower while others bloom regularly. I didn’t bother to read the label on this subject but I believe that it’s in the agave family. (A family that’s near and dear to my heart, but I digress.)
The show, this year, was in the county fair building in Golden Gate Park. Because of the spacing between tables and the sheer number of people, a tripod was out of the question. I wanted to concentrate on the cactus spines and let the background dissolve to colors and shapes so set my aperture at f/2.8. I was using my 24-70 f/2.8 so I zoomed in to 62mm to eliminate distractions from the edge of the frame. Since I was forced to hand-hold the camera I raised the ISO to 400 so I could get an acceptable shutter speed of 1/50th. That’s technically still slower than I’d have liked but I got lucky and got a sharp image.
I have a few more images from this trip but I’ll save those for another day.
Cheers
Victoria Amazonica
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography, Travel on July 26, 2009
This weekend I spent some time in San Francisco with my family. We spent much of the day in Golden Gate Park, including a visit to the Conservatory of Flowers. It is a small living museum of rare tropical plants.
The museum is split into different rooms, each with their own climate. The East most room houses a pond featuring victoria amazonica. These huge water lilies have brilliant purple flowers and, like much of what lives in the Amazon, pointy “teeth.” These floating leaves of these lilies can reach 3 meters in diameter. The edges of the leaves curl upward creating what looks like large dinner platters floating on the water. Read the rest of this entry »
The sunrise that wasn’t
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography, Travel on July 20, 2009
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Landscape photographers often maintain pretty strange hours. The best light of the day almost always occurs in the margins of the day; sunrise and sunset. That often means waking well before sunrise and being out well after dark. During the long days of summer it makes for very little sleep.
This is one such, sleep deprived, image. I took it two years ago while on an extended family vacation in South Lake Tahoe. The gathering was in celebration of my parents 50th wedding anniversary. We were staying near Stateline which made Emerald Bay about a 35 minute drive. I like to be in place at least 30 minutes prior to sunrise so that meant setting the alarm for around 4:30AM.
My plan, on this particular morning, wasn’t to shoot from this spot but we were early so I stopped. The amount of light is deceiving as it was still very dark as sunrise was still another 45 minutes away. While I really couldn’t see it, I knew that if I could leave the lens open long enough there should be color along the horizon. I also knew that if I exposed to get detail in the trees and lake that the color would get blown out. Read the rest of this entry »
Stayed Tuned for Filter Calc – Now Available
Posted by Doug Otto in Geek, Photography on July 16, 2009
Announcing Filter Calc. Filter Calc is a simple application that I wrote for my iPhone. Neutral density filters are a fun way to do some really long exposures. The caveat is that once you get past 30 seconds, most cameras are unable to give you the correct exposure value.
Enter Filter Calc.
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The premise is pretty simple:
1. Meter the scene without the filter.
2. Enter the filter type and shutter speed into Filter Calc.
3. Read the corrected shutter speed.
4. Install the filter and take the shot using the corrected speed.
Filter Calc should be available in the iTunes App store shortly and will be offered, initially, at no charge.
There is a ton of potential for photography applications and I’ve already mentioned that I’m a big fan of Focalware. It just goes to show you that there’s nothing wrong with being a geek.
The typo on the main page as already been fixed and will appear in the next update.
Cheers
Simple is good
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on July 11, 2009
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It’s easy to over complicate landscape photography. There are rules about foreground, depth of field, where to put the horizon, etc. It’s good to know all of those things but sometimes simple is good. This image is a perfect example of that. I did use the rule of thirds to place the tree and the horizon but there is essentially no depth of field and nothing in the way of foreground. I like it nonetheless.
I made this image one morning up in the foothills to the East of Sacramento. I was actually standing on the hill pictured in my Orion and Oaks image. The reason for the trip was to shoot the full moon setting over Sacramento but the angle wasn’t right. Since that wasn’t going to happen I started to look for something else to capture. I spotted this tree way off in the distance, all by itself on a ridge. It was so far away that I had to use my Canon 100-400, zoomed all the way to 400mm, to get the shot. The exposure was 1/160 sec at f / 22 and ISO 100. Depth of field wasn’t an issue but I knew that I needed the narrow aperture to get the rays from the sun. The effect is actually caused by the pattern that the aperture blades in the lens create. At a lower f/stop it wouldn’t have been there.
The exposure was straight forward but the capture wasn’t. I set up shortly before the run came peaking over the ridge. When the first hint of light came over I realized that I’d misjudged my location and it was well to the left of the tree. I grabbed all of my gear and when running, like a mad man, down the hill so that I could get another shot at it. The second try is what you see here. I’m certain that it was a pretty comical scene to watch. It’s probably just as well that no one caught it on video.
Cheers
Fire and life
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on July 6, 2009
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Fire in Yosemite, or just about any other wild place, is a fact of life. Lightning and fire is natures way of taking out the trash. In our urbanized culture we see fire as a destroyer of life and property. In nature, while there is loss of life, fire is a birth process. The problem with our perception is that we operate on a different time scale than most of what we see around us. For the trees in the forest our little ~80 year life span is just a blink.
I spent a couple of days in Yosemite just prior to the Independence Day holiday. There are, as of this post, two wildfires burning in the park. While I rarely venture into the valley during the summer because of the crowds, I do still appreciate the view. Friday afternoon my wife and I hiked out to Dewey Point to have lunch. There was so much smoke that Half Dome was only a faint grey outline. It was still a good hike but it would have been nicer with a view to reward us.
I took this image a couple of years ago. It was from a stretch of Highway 41, North of the Glacier point road. The area had been burned, roughly a decade ago, but in that short length of time was already bursting with new growth. I’d driven by the area several times thinking, to myself, that there was a picture hiding there somewhere. The sky was grey, from some management fires in the valley, so I choose to exclude it. What struck me was the contrast of color. The green undergrowth, the yellow of the Elm, the gold of the Oak, the bright pink of the Dogwood all contrasted against the stark grey and black of the, still standing, burned forest. Color vs monochrome. Life vs death. Read the rest of this entry »
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