Dress Rehearsal - Without the Camera

You may have come across one of my older posts about this topic. However, what if you don't have your camera with you, for various reasons?

I spent the weekend in Ocean City, Maryland with friends. You may have seen some of my pictures of the area in past posts:





This trip was different, though, in that instead of traveling with my sister, I was with my friends. One big implication was that I knew I would not have time to focus on my photography. The other is that with the high heat index, I would not have wanted to take my camera, in any case.

So why am I terming this a dress rehearsal? I am planning a trip to various Southern California beaches next month. I'm heading to three different locations with different personalities and settings. Spending the weekend in Ocean City helped me a lot. I was able to walk around and consider certain points, such as:

1) Generic water shots have only one purpose - test shots for my camera (settings, focus, etc.). Otherwise, I don't need literal shots.

2) I need to look for the small details - birds, other animals, and patterns.

3) I need to consider my themes. Ocean City is a party town. However, the places I'm visiting are not, at least not in that sense. Do I have any stock photography options?

4) How to incorporate my sister into some shots (because it's easy to get a model release from her) - what can I learn from doing that? Shooting people has never been my strength, but last fall's family shoot in NYC has encouraged me to practice, if only for the purpose of capturing our memories.

5) Speaking of people, how can I take hotel shots, something else I've considered, without the people in them? I need to make sure to scout the properties when I arrive. Then, I can wake up early the next day and take the pictures. In theory, anyway. I'm not the earliest riser while on vacation. :) But, at least I know to be aware of the people and to make sure to not take pictures with them in them.

I can't wait until my trip next month! Next time - a review and critique of my last few photo shoots. I haven't done that in a while!

A Fisheye Lens for Me!

I never went on the photo shoot that I thought I would go to - it was at 6:30 in the morning, and my allergies were acting up. So, it's been a quiet week, honestly.

I came across a new article in Popular Photography. A few months ago, I wrote that fisheye lenses wouldn't work on my camera body. I would have therefore to use Photoshop to create effects such as these:



A fisheye lens could do so much more than this, but this is the best I could do. By the way, all you have to do here is Filter->Distort->Spherize in Photoshop Elements.

Anyway, the latest issue of Popular Photography saved the day. A new Canon lens (the 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye USM) will work on full-frame cameras AND on my body! Unfortunately, at $1,400 (street price), it's not something I can just go out and buy. However, I will try to rent it in the coming months. And don't worry about me - there are plenty of other things I can see and do in the meantime!

Next time - some research for my upcoming trip.

Orchid Redux - Hillwood!

It's no secret that I love macro photography. I'd had a long week at work, and wanted to go out and decompress for a few hours. Naturally, I reached for what I love most - orchids. Where to see them? Hillwood Gardens.

Sure, I could have gone to the Botanical Gardens in the city, but what sealed the deal was the fact that Hillwood allows tripods, as long as they are not intrusive or disruptive. The website doesn't say so, but the nice man on the phone did, so off I went. The only issue was that there were far fewer flowers and orchids this time around. They aren't seasonal, per se (they're in a greenhouse), so I'm not sure what the situation was. I'll need to ask next time.

I've taken many pictures of orchids before, but have had to reject a large number due to camera shake, lighting, or issues with busy backgrounds. I decided to tackle as many of these issues as I could, but with a focus on the first item. Here are some of my hits:





Overall, I was pretty pleased. Here's what I liked:

1) I had much better control over my lighting.

2) The pictures are far more crisp, thanks to the tripod (though lugging the thing around was exhausting).

3) These pictures don't look like the ones I've taken in the past. They are original, for sure.

4) Composition has improved - given that I could keep my camera steady, it was far easier to work on that aspect.

Where I should have done better:

1) My saturated colors (the last two pictures) are still not as crisp or defined as I'd like. I think this is an exposure issue, so I need to do research on this for next time.

2) The backgrounds for these four pictures are still a little too busy for my liking. Here's an example of one that I took that turned out better:



Simple black - you can't go wrong.

As far as settings were concerned: ISO 10-200 most of the time. automatic white balance, f-stop at around 3.5 - also for the most part. I wanted to play with depth of field.

Next time - another tripod outing! I'm on a roll!

Adventures with Tripods

Some of you know that I strongly dislike tripods. I have always considered them huge and unwieldy.

Ever since I dipped a toe into the world of stock photography, I've been much more concerned about ensuring my work is suitable for actual licensing and use. The higher the resolution and the larger the file, the better. However, because of motion blur issues, the larger the picture, the less likely that it would be usable in such a context. The slightest blur is totally magnified when blown up to 100%.

So, for the work I like (butterflies), I've decided to break out my tripod and see if I could really see an improvement. I went on a shoot last week, and here are some good examples:





Observations:

1) Get to know the tripod before taking it anywhere. I had to wrestle with it a few times, even after I'd worked with it at home.

2) Butterflies move. A tripod won't solve that problem. However, there's no denying that all of these pictures are far more crisp, clear, and pretty than most that I took as recently as last month. The results do speak for themselves.

3) Tripods are not permitted everywhere. I had to use mine as a monopod, but I still got great results.

Settings and general advice: Auto white balance, ISO 200-400, and lots of experimentation with f-stops, ranging from 3.x to around 6.x. Keep in mind that the higher the f-stop, the more vulnerable you can be to motion blur. It's for this reason that the tripod helped me the most. Play with angles and move around - that's especially important here. Create shapes - the above are good examples. Above all, be patient. Keep trying.

Speaking of which, my next photo shoot will be at a place where I probably won't be able to use my tripod. I'm going back to Hillwood!.

Next time - today's butterfly photo shoot - I had to go back!