Posts Tagged Canon 24-70 f/2.8L
World’s greatest taco stand
Posted by Doug Otto in Geek, Photography on February 9, 2010
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While Mexican food and landscape photography don’t generally share a common bond, that isn’t the case with this image.
The first step to overcoming an addiction is admitting that you have a problem. If you know me personally it’ll come as no shock to hear that, yes, I am taco junkie. I’m not talking those cardboard and packaged meat things you get from TacoBell™, I mean real tacos; some spiced meat in a soft corn tortilla with just onion, cilantro and salsa.
Over the summer of 2008 I took the family on a 5 day backpacking trip in Yosemite. The high country, in Summer, is a great escape from the crowds in the valley. There’s a little spot along Yosemite creek, about 7 miles from the Tioga road, where we like to set up camp. From there it’s an easy day hike to North Dome, Yosemite Point & falls or El Capitan; where this image was taken.
Rather than rely on packaged food, we always cook and dehydrate our own meals. It’s easy to do and it tastes WAY better than the bagged meals. On this particular day, my son had set a goal:
We should have tacos on top of El Capitan!
After a moderate 4 mile hike we were treated to this view. While my son started setting up the Jetboil stove, I took the time to make this image. After a few shots I sat down and had lunch at the greatest taco stand in the world.
Cheers
Storms are opportunities
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on January 21, 2010
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In Sacramento, we have it good. Compared to the rest of the nation, we really only have 3 seasons. What we call winter would be welcomed in much of the country. When we do actually get a bout of weather, people panic. After a steady stream of very wet storms, this week was no exception. The newspaper and every local news station had their redshirt character doing a spot outside, getting blasted by storm while telling us the obvious; it was raining.
For nature photographers, weather is an opportunity. Frequent readers of this blog often see me lament the blank blue skies that plaque California. While great for picnics, cloudless skies make for boring photography. Weather, especially right after a storm, can absolutely make a scene. Such was the case with this shot.
Last Monday, we got hit by a very wet storm. Around 2:30PM, we got a partial break that looked like it might last for a few hours. I threw my gear in the car and headed up to the foothills in the hope of catching a great sunset. About 20 minutes after I’d arrived, Gary Hart, pulled up behind me; completely unplanned. After shooting a while, we consolidated cars and headed down the road. With an eye on the developing sunset color, we found a spot that he’d shot at previously. On a fairly narrow road shoulder, we set up and tried our best to keep from being run over. At one point a friendly California Highway Patrol officer stopped by and told us: “I know it’s pretty, but you’re going to get killed.” Thankfully he was wrong and we both got some great shots.
To get this capture I used a Singh-Ray 3 stop reverse graduated neutral density filter. This special filter has a dark band in the center and slowly transitions to clear. For sunsets, on a fairly straight horizon, it’s a great tool. Bringing down the brightness at the horizon, the filter allowed me to get a good exposure on the rest of the sky. The same result could have been had by combining multiple exposures during processing but it’s always more rewarding to do it with the camera.
Cheers
Mount Hoffman
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on January 11, 2010
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While not one of Yosemite’s tallest peaks, at nearly 11,000 feet Mount Hoffman is still respectable. The spelling of the name seems to vary between Hoffman and Hoffmann I’m not sure which is correct but Ansel Adams referred to it by the former and that’s good enough for me.
I took this shot on the same evening as a previous post. Shooting star trails were the goal of the trip for me so this was just a bonus. Having endured many a cloudless sunsets from the top of Sentinel dome, this one was a real treat. The big lenticular cloud over Hoffman was the icing on the cake.
To make this image I used my Canon 5D. The relative closeness of the scrub in the foreground required an aperture of f/16. At this point some folks would be reaching for a hyperfocal chart but that’s all a bit too formal for me. When dealing with such a large depth of field (DOF), I generally will focus on the foreground element most important to me and then adjust the lens to just beyond that point. The result is a sharp foreground and an acceptably sharp background.
Cheers
A day at the beach
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on December 16, 2009
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This probably isn’t the beach that you were expecting but I’d much rather be here than at the ocean. Cathedral beach is a labeled picnic area on Southside drive in Yosemite. While near Cathedral rocks, the most prominent feature is El Capitan. Reflection possibilities abound with the Merced river winding through the area. In the winter the gate is almost always closed but it’s a very easy walk from the road. I took this shot on the same morning as the previous entry.
The real story about this shot is the fact that it sat, untouched, on my hard drive for almost a year. Generally speaking I’m usually very good about sorting my images right after a shoot. Apparently I’d been so happy with the previous shot that I didn’t bother to go through the other images from that morning. Processing this shot yesterday was a lot like finding a lost wallet with a 20 dollar bill inside. As luck would have it, I found a few more from the same morning but I’ll save those for another day.
Cheers
Timing is everything
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on December 14, 2009
My photography is more avocation than vocation. While my real job is pretty flexible, the fact of the matter is that I can’t always just head to Yosemite anytime the weather looks interesting. If you’re a regular reader of this blog you’ll know that weather, generally bad, plays a huge role in my shooting style. This scene is a great example.
As one of Yosemite’s most frequently photographed views, Tunnel View is a grand vista. It’s one of the most iconic locations in the park, and for good reason: it’s an amazing sight. Most of the time I don’t even shoot from this location but it’s absolutely the best place to be to get a broader understanding of what is going on in the park. From the seat of your car you can see mist forming over the meadows or be among the first to see a storm starting to clear. The the case of the later, it’s almost impossible to leave the camera in the car. Getting this shot was the result of a gamble that paid off.
One Monday, last March, I was checking the weather forecasts for Yosemite. A storm was forecasted to hit over the weekend with a snow level of 5000. At only 4000 feet the valley floor would, most likely, see only rain. With the weekend approaching the forecast started to look more promising. Snow levels remained at 5000 feet but the predicted low temperature kept dropping. Friday evening, on a hunch, I made a reservation for Saturday night in Curry Village (an unheated tent cabin if you’re keeping score). Saturday morning I threw the family in the car and we headed to Yosemite.
As expected we were greeted by rain in the park, turning very heavy after dark. After a nice dinner at the Mountain Room, we tucked ourselves into our sleeping bags and fell asleep to the steady pounding of rain on the tent. Ironically it was the best nights sleep I’ve ever had at Curry since the rain managed to drown out the noise from neighboring tents. During the middle of the night, that pounding on the tent turned to a soft flutter. It was snowing.
Waking up to fresh snow, in Yosemite, is like walking into a fairy world. I couldn’t wait to get out shooting. After fighting with 3 sets of snow chains, a story not fit for young eyes and ears, I was off and headed to Tunnel view to survey the park. The occasional snow flake was still falling but it was obvious that the storm was breaking. Iconic view or not I had to shoot it. By early afternoon the snow had all disappeared so we piled into the car and headed home. If only every plan worked out as well.
Cheers
Graduated neutral density fingers
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on November 4, 2009
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Landscape photographers often encounter challenging light conditions. While the human eye is perfectly able to render a scene like this, the camera just can’t handle this range of brightness without help. One way of dealing with such a problem is through the use of graduated neutral density filter, often referred to as a “split grad.”
A split grad is a square or rectangular piece of resin or glass. Across half of the filter there is some degree of darkening. The transition from light to dark can be either smooth (a soft filter) or very abrupt (a hard filter). They’re used to darken just a portion of an image in an effort to make the dynamic range of the scene more manageable.
Split grads are fantastic tools but they have a drawback. When an image has no clear and level horizon it’s difficult to apply the filter without darkening more of the scene than you want. In the case of this image, from near Leidig Meadow, I’d have lost all of the detail in the rocks on the right edge of the frame. I needed another solution.
The answer came in the form of the thin black gloves that I was wearing that eveing. To get the color that I wanted in the water I’d already calculated my exposure to be 5 seconds. With 3 fingers in front of the lens I was able to roughly match the triangular patch of sky in the top of the frame. Next I tried several exposures and altered the amount of time that I left my fingers in front of the camera. 3 seconds out of the total 5 second exposure worked out to be the right formula. Since it wasn’t an exact match I did have to do some minor dodging and burning to even out the edges of my “filter” but it was a lot less work than trying to repair the damage from a traditional split grad.
The best part is that a quality split grad from someone like Singh-Ray can set you back $175. Fingers are free.
Cheers
Frosty morning on the Merced
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on November 2, 2009
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I think that nearly every landscape photographer struggles when they visit a location for the first time. The first instinct is to grab the widest lens that you have and try to capture it all. More often than not the resulting images are busy, confusing and uninteresting.
During the Gary Hart workshop that just concluded, a number of folks commented that they had struggled with one location that we visited. It was a morning shoot along the bank of the Merced River. It’s also really the only place that you can get an end-to-end view of El Capitan and the Three Brothers. While I’d been to this particular location many times, I’d never really captured an image that I felt did it justice.
After the group spread out and began searching for their compositions I tried to break the scene down to find it’s essence. Really, this hugely vast scene came down to just a few things: the Merced River, the golden first light on El Capitan, the chill in the air and the color of the fall leaves. The next step was to find a composition that embodied those components. After a short walk I came upon this vignette. It’s not the grand vista that one first imagines from this spot but, at least to me, it more accurately captures the “soul” of the location.
I purposely left the technical details of my last couple of posts because I felt them to be conflicting with the message of the post but I know that people like to see them. This simple scene contains a challenge that is worth commenting on.
Reflections can be difficult. The tendency is to focus on the reflection which often results in a loss of sharpness in portions of the frame. The distance to the object not the reflection, determines the focus. In this case, El Capitan was at infinity not the 2 foot distance to the reflection. To get the leaves and grass sharp and have reasonable sharpness in the reflection I set my aperture to f/11. I was using my Canon 24-70 at 55mm and was as low as my tripod would go. I tried several exposures but the blurring of the water seemed distracting so I brought the ISO up to 400, giving me a shutter speed of 1/5 of a second. I felt like it was just enough water motion to give it texture without being a distraction.
Cheers
The importance of having your camera.
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on October 28, 2009
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I shot this just over a week ago while assisting on a Gary Hart workshop. We were taking advantage of a recent storm and shooting in the Yosemite’s Mirror Lake area. One of the members of the group was handicapped so she was able to drive up the trail while most of us walked at our own pace. After it started raining, and Gary sprained his ankle, most of the folks wanted to pack it in. Our one vehicle on the trail started driving folks back down the hill 4 at a time. There were more bodies than room in the car so I headed down on foot. It was less than a mile to the car and honestly there isn’t a much more peaceful situation than walking through a forest in a light rain at sunset. One of the group members agreed so he jumped out of the car and walked with me. The downside was that he left his camera in the back of the car. I still had mine.
About halfway down the trail we reached this clearing, looked up and saw the rainbow over Half Dome. It lasted less than 3 minutes. I frantically looked around for a clear shot and the exposure was tough. I only managed to fire off 5 frames before it was gone. This one was the best of the bunch. The whole time, the guy with me was kicking himself for putting his camera in the car.
Tomorrow I head back down to Yosemite for my last workshop of the year. The schedule is already in the works for next year. I’ll see ya there.
Cheers
A yellow leaf
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on October 26, 2009
The creative process is a funny thing. One of the things that I struggle with is the uncoupling of my engineer brain from my photography. Don’t get me wrong, having a strong grasp of the technical details is important but it can cloud your vision.
I ventured down a small hillside to this setting because something about it grabbed me. My initial focus was the small cascade in the top left corner so I set my tripod right next to the tree with two legs on the fallen tree in front of me and started shooting. From that vantage I worked several compositions but it felt very uninspired. I shrugged and stepped away from the tree, meaning to climb the hill and be on my way. Gary was somewhere behind me and I wanted to catch up with the other members of the group that were already near the top of the trail.
As I turned around my eye caught a flash of yellow. I scanned the area for what ever it was that had caught my eye then I saw it. The tree, with it’s sprawling roots clinging to the side of the stream with the single yellow leaf in contrast. This was obviously what had drawn me to this spot but I nearly let my brain keep me from seeing it. The details are important but it’s as equally important to forget about them occasionally and just let yourself “see.”
Cheers
Fall on Tenaya Creek
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on October 20, 2009
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Tenaya canyon lies directly North of Yosemite’s Half Dome. Tenaya creek makes its way through the canyon, from the high country, and joins the Merced river in the valley. The area is often known for Ansel’s Adams images of Mirror Lake.
Mirror lake isn’t a lake at all but merely a large widening of the creek. The size of the area causes the water to slow and often yields a mirror like surface just begging to capture reflections of Half Dome. It’s a pretty area but in fall it is almost always completely dry. During most years you could walk right past the “lake” and never have any idea that it was ever there. (Don’t ask me how I know that.) Luckily, this wasn’t like “most” years. The storm last week brought spring-like flows to all of the waterways in the park and Tenaya creek was no exception. Mirror lake is far from the only photographable scene in the area. The creek runs directly next to the trail and offers a ton of spots to shoot.
I actually shot this spot more than once. Each time I walked by it grabbed me and insisted that I spend some time there. What really made this shot was the light. Tourists crave bright blue skies but they’ve the bane of most landscape photographers. On the day that I shot this it was completely clouded over and just starting to rain. The cloud cover acts like a giant “soft box” and casts a smooth even light. Defined shadows disappear and everything gets a nice soft look. I’ve got more images from this area but those will be posts for another day.
The details. To make this image I used my Canon 24-70 f/2.8L, the lens that is on my camera 90% of the time. My focal length was set to 30mm. I set the aperture to f/11 to get an acceptable depth of field. (If you’ve been reading many of these posts you’ll realize that I spend a lot of time in the f/8-11 range. One of the main reasons is that most lenses are at their sharpest in that range.) With my ISO set to 100, the exposure ended up at 1.6 seconds.
Cheers
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