Archive for August, 2009
When in Yosemite, use your feet.
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on August 27, 2009
Yosemite is a really big park but the vast majority of it is declared as wilderness. A few thin roads carve their way through the park but to get the most out your visit you need to get out of the car. I understand that not everyone is capable of strapping on a pack and venturing into the back country for 5 days, but just about everyone can handle walking a mile or two. Doing so can open up views of the park that you’d never know existed if your only vantage point is a parking lot.
This image is an example of what a short 2 mile, almost completely flat, walk can allow you to see. Many folks who visit the Tuolumne Meadows area just see a gentle stream meandering through a meadow. They have no idea that just on the other side of the meadow is a series of cascades that the river tumbles down on its way to Glen Aulin and Waterwheel falls. It’s a breathtakingly beautiful area but you most certainly can’t drive to it.
The next time you’re in the park stop by a visitors center. The rangers that staff the centers are more than happy to help you find a destination that’s within your ability. Whether you choose to walk 1 mile of 1o you’ll open up a whole new side of the park that you may never have known existed. Pack a lunch and make a day of it; you won’t be sorry.
This image was taken a short distance from where the Tuolmne river leaves its namesake meadow. The river tumbles off of a granite ledge and heads off, sideways, down the canyon. To get the shot I had to carefully climb down the wet, and quite slippery, granite to this vantage down in a crevice. My camera is nearly level with the upper surface of the river. I was very close to the water, and getting a little wet, so I used my Canon 17-40 f/4L to exaggerate the perspective. To make sure that I had adequate depth of field I stopped down to f/16 which resulted in an exposure of 1/20th of a second. Even with the overcast, the sky was still a stop or two brighter that the camera was able to capture so I brought the very top of the frame down with a Singh-Ray 2 stop, soft, graduate neutral density filter. An alternative approach would have been to capture two frames, one for the sky and one for the river and combined them in post processing.
Cheers
Land of Giants
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on August 24, 2009
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Last Thursday the family and I took a much needed break from life and headed to the hills; literally. We camped for 4 days along Lee Vining Creek, just outside of Yosemite’s Eastern entrance. There’s something very relaxing about unplugging and just being outside. The only caveat is that the more I do it, the less I want to go back to the daily grind.
On family trips to Yosemite we have a tradition that is dubiously referred to as “the death hike.” It always starts out innocently enough. A destination is chosen and we head out. Once we get started, we start adding destinations that are “just a little further.” What starts out as a quick 2 mile hike often ends up being 8-10 miles. This image was taken near the end of one such death hike. Although tiring, the destination nearly always makes up for the fatigue. That was certainly the case last Friday.
After starting in Tuolumne meadows, not far from Pothole Dome, we headed to Soda Springs. From there we hiked up to Dog Lake for lunch and then off to Lembert Dome, where this image was taken. From Lembert Dome, we took the “wrong” trail down and ended up having to walk another two miles down highway 120 to get back to the car. Total damage 8.5 miles. Perfect.
This turned out to be a fun image. Pictured, on the edge of the dome, is my son and his Yashicamat twin-lens reflex camera. From the perspective of my vantage point it looks like he’s a giant, surveying his garden of tiny trees. The lack of any real reference point in the middle of the image and a familiar foreground scale causes the eye to attempt to rationalize the scene. The distance involved is masked and somewhat compressed by the camera lens, compounding the effect and making him truly appear to be a giant. Even the clouds appear to be in his reach.
This was captured using my Canon 24-70 at 40mm. The short focal length and and aperture of f/16 gave me a virtually infinite depth of field. Shutter speed ended up being 1/25 of a second at ISO 100.
Pixel Peepers
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography, Random Thoughts on August 19, 2009
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Have you ever failed to see beauty that was right in front of your eyes because you were too busy worrying about other details to notice it? In photography that happens a lot. It’s really easy to get caught up in the details and that blind you from truly seeing. This image, taken during the same workshop as the previous image, tells just such a story.
Our group was out at Olmsted Point in Yosemite. The sky was amazing. Landscape photography is all about the quality of the light and this evening was truly special. Even before the color in the sky really started to develop everything around us began to take on an otherworldly pink glow. The light was soft and warm making just about anything that it touched a photograph waiting to happen. It was one of those special photographic moments that you alway want to catch but seldom do.
As amazing as the scene was, the most vivid memory that I carried away from there was that of two other photographers that we saw that night. They were already set up when we arrived and didn’t budge from their initial location. Both had multiple, and expensive, cameras. The whole time we were shooting, everything in sight, they stood by their tripods and debated. They discussed whether or not the light was going to get better or had it already peaked, was this better than “that other time” ad nauseam. They went on for at least an hour. I’m still not sure if they even took pictures.
You see that sort of mentality all the time in the “gear” forums on photography sites. There are always folks whom you never see post a real picture but will spend days arguing over which lens is sharpest at a 200% crop. Successful images convey the feelings and experience of the photographer. Pixels don’t evoke emotions; photographs do. The message here is to slow down and take the time to appreciate what you’re photographing. That appreciation is the soul of your image. Be aware of the limitations and technical details of your equipment but don’t let them blind you. Let the scene generate an emotional response from you and your camera will certainly follow.
Half Dome – Alone in the moonlight
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on August 13, 2009
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Just over two years ago I took a workshop with Gary Hart. The main goal of the trip was to shoot Yosemite under the light of the full moon. This is one of my favorite images from that trip. That was also when Gary first asked if I’d be interested in assisting on future workshops.
The workshop group consisted of just 5 students, including myself. The small group made for a really intimate setting and I still hear from nearly all of those folks on a semi-regular basis. I think that part of that bond came from the grueling conditions that we all endured together. Because it was summer, the days were very long. We’d get up at 3:30Am to be in place before sunrise. After shooting all day and well into the night we generally didn’t return to the hotel until after midnight; only to do it again the next day. I’m still not sure how we all made it through but I will admit that by day 4 we were all a bit punchy.
If you’ve never experienced Yosemite by moonlight, you should make that one of your goals. The stark white granite absolutely lights up under moonlight and is unlike any place that I’ve ever seen.
This image really formulated my basic strategy for moonlight shooting. With a fairly wide angle lens, in this case a Tokina 12-24 @ 16mm, an exposure of 30 seconds still results in fairly sharp star images. Longer exposure and focal lengths make the rotation of the Earth much more apparent. I wanted as much light as I could get so I set the aperture to f/4. The entire scene was at infinity so depth of field wasn’t a concern. I left the shutter speed at 30 seconds and started raising my ISO until I got the exposure that I wanted. In this case, I ended up at ISO 400. My old Canon 30D was pretty clean at ISO 400 or below but I did do some noise cleanup using Noise Ninja as well as basic color correction and sharpening in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop CS4.
Cheers
Missing Yosemite
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on August 11, 2009
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Summer is always a slow time for my photography. A couple of factors come into play. The first is that Yosemite Valley in the summer is a zoo. It gets flooded by the unwashed masses in their rented RVs. Traffic and crowds are what I try to get away from, not go to. I go to Yosemite to reduce my stress level, not increase it.
Another problem is that the early summer is generally a very busy time for my “day job” and this year was no exception. The California fiscal year ends in June. Every agency that has unspent IT dollars tries to ram through a bunch of last minute purchases, often just for the sake of spending the money. All of those systems end up shipping at the same time, making me a very busy person.
Usually Bonnie and I try to get away to the Yosemite high country for a few days each summer but schedules made that difficult. Other than one overnight stop before the July 4th holiday I haven’t spent any time there since mid-May. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to finally break away spend some time there sometime in the next few weeks.
Blue Geranium
Posted by Doug Otto in Geek, Photography on August 5, 2009
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I’m really having fun with the new fisheye lens. I’ve heard from lots of folks who insist that you need to keep the camera absolutely level to avoid the “fisheye effect” but I love the distorted perspective. Rather than try to avoid it, I’ve been working on exaggerating it.
This bunch of geraniums in Golden Gate park is one such example. In real life, this was just a nearly flat wall of flowers. The depth and perspective is a complete fabrication thanks to this lens. Since my camera has a full 35mm sized sensor, it’s able to take full advantage of the huge 180 degree field of view. Keeping yourself out of the picture is actually a bit of a problem.
The details on this one aren’t anything special. I shot this at f/3.5 with gave me an exposure of 1/640th of a second at ISO 100. The day was bright but overcast giving me some really nice diffused light.
Cheers
Stapelia flavopurpurea
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography, Travel on August 3, 2009
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This, other worldly, bloom is the flower of a member of the Stapelia family. These interesting plants are found predominately in South Africa. Most of the plants in this family have garnered the nickname carrion flowers because of their interesting smell. They rely on flies to handle their pollination so their scent ranges from rotting meat to dog poop; probably not the best choice for a bouquet.
The plant in the picture is one of the few members of the Stapelia family that doesn’t hold that same distinction and actually has a pleasant scent. While that doesn’t make much difference to this photograph, it’s a huge deal for me since it followed us home. With 2 dogs and a teenager already in the house we don’t need any more bad smells.
This photograph was taken indoors on our San Francisco trip. I was using my 24-70 f/2.8L at 63mm. Since I was unable to use a tripod in this venue I raised my ISO to 400 so I could get to a high enough shutter speed to keep the image sharp; 1/160th of a second. I shot with my focal plane roughly parallel to the face of the flower to keep it in focus while letting the rest of the image blur due to my large aperture of f/2.8.
I’ve considered replacing that lens with the 24-105, to eliminate a gap in my coverage but it’s shots like this that talk me out of it. The bokeh from the 24-70 has a buttery smooth characteristic that I just haven’t seen in another lens. I don’t spend a lot of time at wide apertures but when I need to, this is my go-to lens.
Cheers
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