Posts Tagged Canon 17-40 f/4L
Stormy skies
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on February 3, 2010
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Sometimes good nature photography requires some suffering. In the case of this image, the suffering translated to very wet pants on a cold windy day.
I told much of the story of this image in a previous post. After witnessing a break in a large storm that had just passed through, I grabbed my gear and headed to the foothills above Sacramento. Although not raining when I arrived, shortly thereafter a cell developed and the rain started coming sideways. I ran to the car, and started going through my gear:
Rain cover for the camera; check.
Hat; check.
Umbrella; check.
Waterproof jacket; check.
Rain pants; oops.
The umbrella helped keep the front element of the camera dry but with the raining coming down sideways, it did little to keep my dry. It only took a few minutes for my jeans to be completely. The rain stopped after about 15 minutes but the wind coming through my cold, wet, pants reminded me of the event for the rest of the afternoon.
I could have hid in the car until the rain subsided but I’d have never gotten this shot. Being warm and dry isn’t always all that it’s cracked up to be.
I’ve been doing most of my shooting with my 7D but I wanted to go wider than the 24-70 would go on that body so I switched to my 5D for this shot. As much as I like the features and viewfinder on the 7D, there’s just something about a full frame sensor that can’t be duplicated.
Cheers
Mono lake sunrise
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on September 22, 2009
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There’s something really special about watching a brilliant sunrise and having the area all to yourself. It’s like nature is putting on a personal show, just for you.
Most of use spend our lives during daylight hours. While we might be awake for the sunrise, we seldom see it because we’re in the house preparing for the day. A few years ago I took a nephew along for a sunrise shoot at Lake Tahoe. He’d never seen anything like it and I hope that it’s a memory that he won’t soon forget.
This particular morning was in mid November a couple of years ago at Mono Lake. The town of Lee Vining had all but shut down for the season, the tourists were gone and it was cold. My wife and I left the boy sleeping in the motel room and headed out to Black Point. It’s off the beaten path and generally free from the hordes of photographers that plaque the South Tufa area. It was still quite dark when we arrived and the air was crisp and calm. I could already see that we were going to be in for a show as just a hint of light started to appear on the Eastern horizon.
Shooting sunrise is always a challenge because of the speed that the lighting conditions change. I had my pockets stuffed with my full arsenal of Singh-Ray split-grads and knew that I was going to have to use them. The story in the image was very clearly the color in the sky. The shapes in the foreground added visual motion but this image was all about color. I knew that the dynamic range was beyond that which my camera was capable of so I used a 2 stop split-grad to bring down the sky. I metered on the foreground rocks and set my camera two stops below the meter reading to render the foreground black. The result was an exposure of 1/6th second at f/11 and ISO 100.
A little over a week from now I’ll be in the area again with Gary. While I won’t be completely alone, I’m hoping for the personal show once again.
Cheers
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
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.
Eye of the Beholder
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography, Random Thoughts on June 29, 2009
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Photography, and art in general, is incredibly subjective. I recently entered an open show at the Sacramento Fine Arts Center. My single entry was accepted, but the juror for this show rejected more pieces than he accepted. One of my local peers had a photograph rejected that took first place in another show on the same weekend. It is impossible to cater to the likes and dislikes of everyone who sees your images. While there is no denying that it is a great feeling when someone expresses admiration for one of your pieces or, better still, purchases one but really it is important to please yourself first.
I shoot landscapes and nature because I enjoy it. Since I’m not on assignment, it lifts any pressure to please someone else. Being free to create images the way that you see fit empowers you to find your own vision. All of us, as photographers, are influenced by other’s work. It is the act of shaping those influences into your own creative expression that lets your images sing.
Down in the Weeds
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on June 1, 2009
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A few weeks ago I was working as a volunteer for a local NANPA event. At the event I listened to Rob Sheppard give a talk about some of the work that he was doing lately. He called the presentation Voices from the Ground. Rob has been focusing on very low perspectives using very wide angle lenses. The one that he’s been using the most is a full-frame fisheye. His talk got me thinking about the perspectives that I use in my shots and challenged me to mix things up a little bit. I posted an image last week from the same outing. Putting the camera down below the ground level at Fern Spring allowed me to capture a perspective that I’d never seen before.
This image was also a direct result of Rob’s talk. To get this view I had my tripod spread as low as it would go. (It was a bit of a trick keeping the legs out of the shot.) Since I wasn’t able to get low enough to see through the viewfinder, and my camera has no live view, I grabbed an angled viewfinder attachment that I keep in my bag. The next challenge was the range of light on the subject. I knew that the bright sun would cause my foreground to go dark so I did something that I almost never do; I used a flash. While I’m sure that many nature photography purists would be offended at such a notion, it fit the need. It wouldn’t have been the same shot without it.
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