Grasses

I have always found tall grasses appealing. When I was young they were a great place to play and hide. I don't do that anymore. Now I like to make pictures from them.

There are two things I'd like to point out. First is the colour. This image was made in the late afternoon sun; when it's light turns a goldish colour. This is why it is called 'the golden hour'. Scenes take on a wonderful warm feeling because of the light colour. Look for it.

The other thing is depth-of-field. We can see that the grasses on the left are in sharp focus, but those on the right and a little further away are not. The trees in the distance are lightly blurred. This is a result of the f/2.8 aperture that was used for this image. The blurry background is one way that photography differs from your eyes. We don't perceive the world like this (unless we aren't wearing our glasses!). The effect simplifies the image by not providing detail to draw our attention.



1/500 f/2.8 ISO 200 EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM @ 145 mm Canon EOS 40D
Victoria Square,Markham,Ontario

A Different Perspective

A recent conversation with a colleague over focal length and wide angle lenses inspired today's posting.  I happened to find two images in my fall collection which illustrated some of these concepts.

A 'normal lens' is one that is said to approximate normal vision. For a full frame camera, that is best approximated by a 50mm lens with a small aperture for a large depth of field, but that is just an approximation. This first image was taken at 54mm with a crop-frame camera which works out to about 83mm (full frame equivalent - 54*1.6). So a little more 'zoomed in', that is tighter than what the eye might have perceived. 


1/80 f/8 ISO 100 18.0-55.0 mm @ 54 mm Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL

This second image was taken at 18mm. It intentionally includes a lot more sky - the clouds at a lot more drama. It also included a lot more ground, but I though that to be boring so cropped it out. You can see the same stand of trees in the middle of the frame.
 
1/125 f/8 ISO 100 18.0-55.0 mm @ 18 mm Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL


If you would like to learn a little more about the effects of different focal lengths, Canon has an excellent tutorial - it doesn't matter what brand of camera you use, the ideas are the same. The numbers may vary based on your sensor size, but that is a topic for another day.

Two more things:

1. Bonus points for anybody who can identify where these images (above) were taken, and
2. It is a beautiful weekend in the GTA - get out there and take some pictures.
   

Get a LIFE

LIFE magazine brought photography to the masses. It was not about photograph, but broke much ground in the space of photojournalism. Looking through their photo-archieve you would likely spot many pictures that you would recognize - or should. It was published weekly between 1936 and 1972.

Google books has recently released the complete contents of those issues online. Here is the March 1st, 1968 edition. I point this one out in particular because the cover article is about Georgia O'Keefe. She was an artist more than a photographer, but her husband was Alfred Stieglitz; an infamous gallery owner and influential photographer. Both of them have helped shape the way we see images today, as has Life Magazine.


If these historical topics interest you, then I suggest you subscribe to Jeff Curto's "History of Photography Podcast". An excellent overview of the topic and pretty easy to listen to as well.

P.S. Sorry for the gap in posts this week past - it has been a busy week.

Sunset over Kailua

As I said before one of the images I really wanted to capture was sunsets. But our excursion schedules didn't always line up with the perfect sunset opportunities.
On this day, we didn't get to the lookout until after the sun had set. Many people go home as soon as the sun has disappeared. Photographers should stick around and catch the colour show that happens next. The images you capture won't be 'what you saw' because the camera and our eyes work differently. The camera can see the subtle and muted colours much better than we can. This photo was taken about 40 minutes after sunset with a 10 second exposure.

10" f/3.5 ISO 250 EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 18 mm Canon EOS 40D

Kailua-Kona,Hawaii

As it gets dark you need to increase your shutter time. You can increase your ISO to reduce the effect of cloud movements and such but no need to go into high ISO modes. Open up your aperture as well.

I like to use wide angle lenses. Since the colour tends to get sprayed over a larger area of sky.

Don't forget to position yourself to have something of interest in the foreground. Grab a flashlight and try light-painting some foreground elements.

Use a tripod or find someplace solid where you can rest your camera.

Does your camera have mirror-lockup? Read the manual and find out. If it does, learn how to use it. It is a good tool to improve sharpness.

Finally, the photographers spouse should bring a book.

Terry Picasso - Underwater Challenges

My wife and I did two things we had not done before during our trip. We went snorkeling and we did underwater photography. Today I want to discuss three challenges about underwater pictures and today's image is a fun illustration of one of the problems we faced. Disclaimer - this image has been digitally manipulated but it is representative of my state before coffee. The three challenges are light, colour and motion.

It is substantially darker underwater than above the surface and the deeper you go the darker it gets. What tools do photographers have to address this? We can increase the ISO, slow the shutter, open the aperture, or add more light. There are trade-offs with each of those actions, but it is the last one I want to focus on.

One of the most obvious solutions might be to use the on-camera flash. If you follow Rick Sammon's advise you will know that one of his rules is 'take the flash off the camera'. In my case, the Panasonic TS-1's flash cannot be removed - it is built-in. There is an additional problem with using the built-in flash underwater that requires you to force the flash off. Sea water is not pure - it is well sprinkled with suspended material. If you use the flash on-camera, all of those particles will light up like a snow storm. This is illustrated in the area surrounding my head in today's photo. This was taken at close range, the further you are away the worse the problem will be (within flash range). If you want to use flashes underwater you will need to get them off-angle from the lens axis. Conditions do vary so give the on-camera a try but be sure to verify you are getting an acceptable image.

I did expect that white balance would be a problem. But I was surprised by how much of a problem it was. I expected to determine the best colour settings in Lightroom and then apply them to all of the pictures I took underwater. That didn't work as the colour of light within an image was highly dependent on which direction I took the picture and how deep I was. Duh! This is one challenge for which I don't have a good solution- any suggestions?

Motion is something we always deal with in photography. Sometimes we want to convey the sense of motion within a still frame. Other times we want to freeze the motion of a moving subject. In my underwater situation, my challenge was my own motion. The standard answer - when earthbound - is to use a tripod or like device. However that would not be viable on coral reefs - if at all. Although the bays we were snorkeling in were somewhat sheltered from the open Pacific, the surf was moderately strong so we were constantly being tossed about. Diving deeper would help a bit, but my TS-1 is only good to 3m underwater and like all things photographic there is a trade-off. The deeper you go, the more light you lose.

So now let me explain today's image. Barb wanted to take a picture of me underwater. The combination of us both being new to snorkeling and being tossed about by the surf meant that every time we got framed up for the shot, one of us would move and the resulting image was not what was expected. She would only get a piece of me. While reviewing our images I was about to delete all of those 'mistakes' when she suggested 'Terry Picasso' - a portrait composed of all of those mistakes. If Pablo had created it, it would sell for a million, wouldn't it? Who wants to open bidding at $500,000?

Panasonic DMC-TS1, Hawaii