Sunday, July 20, 2008
Still Alive
I just wanted to make sure everyone knows that I haven't fallen off the face of the planet. I've simply avoiding contact with the outside world while I relax in Hawaii. (And by relax I mean photograph everything). So far the trip has been great, and I have a bunch of posts planned for when I get back. This is my first trip to the tropics with an SLR and on top of that my first attempt at geo-tagging all of my shots. Get ready for some interesting posts in a week or two. However, until then, I'll leave you with this awesome panoramic shot I took on the eastern cost of Oahu.
Lord of the Flies
There is a photographic deity -- a creature of glass and whirring motors. Infinitely sharp, perfect image quality, it sees and exposes all.
Tonight, this deity gave me a gift. This evening, I was uploading a handful of really mediocre macro photographs from my garden, and then I noticed something buzzing around -- a fly that had gotten in from when I left the door open from earlier. As if guided by some occult hand, the fly landed on top of my monitor, and remained immobile there. Sitting next to my computer was my d300, with my 105mm f/2.8 macro mounted, and a 5T Nikon diopter (Ebay -- they don't make 'em anymore). Beside it was my SB-800, still in remote mode from the macro shots early in the day. Carefully and quietly, I picked them both up, afraid I would have just one shot...
And the fly didn't move! Nor it did continue to move for the 30 odd shots I took thereafter (even after I got the second flash out of my trunk for some Strobist action). I'm not going to say I blinded this fly with my flashes, but by the time it did buzz off, it looked a little drunk in the air.
More on what little I know about taking macro shots to come, but the chance for live fly photo blogging doesn't come along that often...
For the complete fly photos, check here.
Tonight, this deity gave me a gift. This evening, I was uploading a handful of really mediocre macro photographs from my garden, and then I noticed something buzzing around -- a fly that had gotten in from when I left the door open from earlier. As if guided by some occult hand, the fly landed on top of my monitor, and remained immobile there. Sitting next to my computer was my d300, with my 105mm f/2.8 macro mounted, and a 5T Nikon diopter (Ebay -- they don't make 'em anymore). Beside it was my SB-800, still in remote mode from the macro shots early in the day. Carefully and quietly, I picked them both up, afraid I would have just one shot...
And the fly didn't move! Nor it did continue to move for the 30 odd shots I took thereafter (even after I got the second flash out of my trunk for some Strobist action). I'm not going to say I blinded this fly with my flashes, but by the time it did buzz off, it looked a little drunk in the air.
More on what little I know about taking macro shots to come, but the chance for live fly photo blogging doesn't come along that often...
For the complete fly photos, check here.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Failure to Launch
A few weekends back, Mike and I went to the Sonoma County Hot Air Balloon Classic -- SCHABC as their website calls it (they need to work on their acronyms). It's in Windsor, a little town in Sonoma, out in wine country. I'm not sure what's wrong with hot air balloon people, but apparently, their big deal is to launch balloons around sunrise -- which at June in California means at or before 5 am. Ugh. We forced ourselves up at 4 am, and hustled down to the park where the balloon event was happening. I arrived, psyched up by pictures of balloons I'd researched on Flickr, ready with my polarizer to capture the graceful ascent of balloons as they soared into the limitless blue Bay Area heavens, and...
Fog and smoke filled the sky, which was featureless. The cloud ceiling was at 700 feet, and balloons need 2,000 feet to get clearance to launch. As a result, we got a purple sky at sunrise with balloons firing up, some tethered balloon for the kids, and that was about it. Still, I went around, taking shots of everything, hoping to catch one of those 'ah-ha moments', and I think I learned a few lessons which are hopefully worth sharing.
Lesson 0: Backup Religion and recovering files from a CF card
Normally, I'm atypically good (per human norms) with backing up data. Data goes from card to laptop, and from laptop to usb drive, and eventually to a NAS with a raid 1 to have multiply redundant storage for photos. This time, I forgot my usb drive at home -- so I copied everything to the laptop, and started processing at the end of the trip.
Two days later, my laptop's hard drive died. My.. four month old.. laptop.
The lesson is: If you care about your photos, be religious about having at least two copies of them at any one time. If you're really serious, you can start to worry about site-based redundancy (what if there's a fire? or an earthquake?), or you can calculate the mean time to failure of all the spinning disks in your life, and then try to guess how many copies you need before catastrophic loss in your lifetime is unlikely.
I got lucky -- I shoot with three CF cards, a Sandisk 16gb and 8gb, and a Transcend 32 gb. I hadn't deleted the stuff I shot on the 32 gb card, so I mainly had photos taken on the 16gb card. The bad news was, I'd deleted everything on that card, and was halfway through it, taking photos of friends up in San Francisco. The better news is that CF cards just seem to be running a Fat 32 file system -- very widely used, and very easy to recover from if the files weren't actually overwritten. I used a tool called PhotoRec, which is open source, only 23% cryptic (my mom couldn't use it, but any high school kid today could), and worked flawlessly.
Lesson 1: Don't be afraid to fiddle with that exposure compensation
This is a bit of a 'Let go, Luke!' thing for me, that I've only really come to appreciate in the last few months. I think it's true that most modern cameras are so good at exposures that you generally only have to decide if you want to spot or matrix meter. At least, for 90% of the photos you take, that's the case. And, for the really low light stuff, I would always manually meter, and it'd work out fine (modulo chimping).
But I find that having the ability to have the camera meter for you, then offset it just a nudge does really come in handy. This is obvious advice if you're an expert (or just plain not clueless), but it took a bit for me to realize it. Watching balloons launch in the early morning light, I found there were two things going on:
- Fire from the balloon
- Ambient light bouncing off the low-hanging clouds from the not-yet risen sun.
Spot metering on the sky made the sky too bright, and left the fire uninteresting.
Spot metering on the fire made everything else way too dark (the fire is bright).
Matrix metering still made everything too bright (mainly picking up the 'big sky').
The best compromise I could find was too take the results from the matrix metering, and dial it down -.7 - 2 stops. That gave me something a lot closer to what I was looking for -- purple-deep blue skies, and some detail in the flame-lit areas underneath the balloon.
Lesson 2: Always shoot the reaction
I think of this as a "Joe McNally" lesson. I read this passage from him where he described his time shooting for Sports Illustrated: He'd go to cover a horse race, and end up shooting a circle of people betting in some dark alley.
The part that made this lesson easy was that the balloon show actually had a lot of people really excited about balloons, and willing to do the really immense amount of work needed to get one up in the air. The part that made this lesson hard is that I find it pretty difficult to photograph strangers. It feels vaguely invasive, and I think, "Oh god, I'm the creepy guy with a camera", and of course, if kids are around, I sit around thinking that someone's 7', 300 lb father is going to beat me to a pulp, or (worse) start breaking glass. I don't have a good answer for this part yet, but when I need to, I just force these feelings down and take the picture. I'm not going to say here is "it helps to not have a conscience", but maybe it helps to just think of it as what it is -- photons getting counted on a tiny little piece of silicon.
Lesson 3: Always take your angle where you can get it
One of my first odd experiences with my SLR was on Hamilton Island, this little but surprisingly touristy island on the Great Barrier Reef. I was at the highest point on the island, ready to take a picture of a gorgeous sunset vista over some Australian sea, and the sky had turned into featureless gray mush. Behind me, a limo rolled up, and a bride & groom get out, and behind them, a shabbier car shows up with their photog. He has them pose, do their thing, then he sprawls down on the ground, in nice vest and cumberbund, and shoots up at them.. because it worked!
Sitting back and watching all the tethered balloons rise, I realized I wasn't getting the angle I wanted. I wanted to be up and under, to get what I affectionately thought of as the 'math textbook cover look' (which always have balloons -- somebody explain why?). So, I threw myself on the slightly damp grass, and started shooting up and over, and I got more than I bargained for:
The sky was basically white/gray fog here, so I metered on the balloon. That seemed sort of 'blah' though, and it seemed to be blowing out the balloon a little (maybe reflected light from the fog?), so I dropped it by about -.7 on camera. That darkened the balloon a fair amount, but not super shadowy. It also was just about enough to still blow out the sky, which already had almost no detail, into being very close to pure white -- leaving me with a balloon drifting in a white sky. In post, I was a little disappointed that it wasn't darker (I wanted more detail on the orange fire). I bumped up the blacks and fiddled with the exposure, and this popped out. For me, this was the best photo of the trip -- just out of control colors, and this wild, pop off the page balloon soaring away into nothingness.
So, don't be afraid to roll around on the ground.
*
I really was bummed that there was no balloon launch. My research on Flickr indicated that you could get amazing shots if you slapped on a polarizer, and composed a swarm of balloons in the sky just right, but it was not to be. Still, every trip I take like this, I feel like I learn stuff, and that's what this post is hopefully about. :)
Relevant links:
My complete gallery of keepers from the balloon festival.
Mike's gallery from the same event.
Some amazing shots people on Flickr got (or have gotten in previous years);
http://www.flickr.com/photos/digitaltrav/193810099/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/digitaltrav/195550847/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/spiicytuna/190320676/
Gear primarily used in taking balloon shots:
- Nikon d300
Comment: The excellent ISO 1600 helped me get enough shutter-speed pre-dawn to get some interesting shots. Also, it's my baby.
- Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8
Comment: You're going to want to go wide with balloons, because they're big. You also want it if all those balloons go up in the sky, so you can get a constellation of them floating around. It also helped me get more light in early morning -- it's plenty sharp at f/2.8, and I was shooting before sunrise with lots of people moving around. Mind the distortion at the edges though.
- Nikon 70-300mm VR f/4.5-5.6
Comment: You're going to want to zoom in on balloons high up in the air (which didn't happen), but you're also going to want to see detail with what's happening with the balloon crew, and to shoot the crowd to get reactions.
- Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8
Comment: Once the tethered balloons lifted off, I used this to capture individual balloons 40' or so up. It has better controlled distortion than my wide angles, and the perspective is more suited to the balloons up in the air but low, and I always love the image quality on this lens.
- Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 D
Comment: Used to shoot some portraits of people in the crowd. Most of those were lost when the laptop died and went to heaven, but using this lens wasn't strictly 'necessary' -- it's just arguably my favorite lens, and nothing beats it for shots of people's faces. Also, it's laser sharp -- just gotta control that depth of field when you shoot at 1.4.
- Gitzo 1540T Tripod
Comment: Very useful in the pre-dawn shots of the balloons. Probably would have been useful if I were shooting some amazing shot of all the balloons in the air that I wanted amazing sharpness on. Once the sun was up (albeit behind clouds), I didn't use it -- just folded it away (yay for Carbon Fiber).
- Adobe Lightroom 2 (beta)
Comment: I do 99% of my photo processing here. A little pokey at times, but I like it.
What would have helped:
Something like the d3 or the d700 would have given me 2-3 more stops of ISO in early morning, meaning movement of the crew would have been crisp. As it was, I was hovering around 1/15-1/40th -- wanted just a bit more.
Fog and smoke filled the sky, which was featureless. The cloud ceiling was at 700 feet, and balloons need 2,000 feet to get clearance to launch. As a result, we got a purple sky at sunrise with balloons firing up, some tethered balloon for the kids, and that was about it. Still, I went around, taking shots of everything, hoping to catch one of those 'ah-ha moments', and I think I learned a few lessons which are hopefully worth sharing.
Lesson 0: Backup Religion and recovering files from a CF card
Normally, I'm atypically good (per human norms) with backing up data. Data goes from card to laptop, and from laptop to usb drive, and eventually to a NAS with a raid 1 to have multiply redundant storage for photos. This time, I forgot my usb drive at home -- so I copied everything to the laptop, and started processing at the end of the trip.
Two days later, my laptop's hard drive died. My.. four month old.. laptop.
The lesson is: If you care about your photos, be religious about having at least two copies of them at any one time. If you're really serious, you can start to worry about site-based redundancy (what if there's a fire? or an earthquake?), or you can calculate the mean time to failure of all the spinning disks in your life, and then try to guess how many copies you need before catastrophic loss in your lifetime is unlikely.
I got lucky -- I shoot with three CF cards, a Sandisk 16gb and 8gb, and a Transcend 32 gb. I hadn't deleted the stuff I shot on the 32 gb card, so I mainly had photos taken on the 16gb card. The bad news was, I'd deleted everything on that card, and was halfway through it, taking photos of friends up in San Francisco. The better news is that CF cards just seem to be running a Fat 32 file system -- very widely used, and very easy to recover from if the files weren't actually overwritten. I used a tool called PhotoRec, which is open source, only 23% cryptic (my mom couldn't use it, but any high school kid today could), and worked flawlessly.
Lesson 1: Don't be afraid to fiddle with that exposure compensation
This is a bit of a 'Let go, Luke!' thing for me, that I've only really come to appreciate in the last few months. I think it's true that most modern cameras are so good at exposures that you generally only have to decide if you want to spot or matrix meter. At least, for 90% of the photos you take, that's the case. And, for the really low light stuff, I would always manually meter, and it'd work out fine (modulo chimping).
But I find that having the ability to have the camera meter for you, then offset it just a nudge does really come in handy. This is obvious advice if you're an expert (or just plain not clueless), but it took a bit for me to realize it. Watching balloons launch in the early morning light, I found there were two things going on:
- Fire from the balloon
- Ambient light bouncing off the low-hanging clouds from the not-yet risen sun.
Spot metering on the sky made the sky too bright, and left the fire uninteresting.
Spot metering on the fire made everything else way too dark (the fire is bright).
Matrix metering still made everything too bright (mainly picking up the 'big sky').
The best compromise I could find was too take the results from the matrix metering, and dial it down -.7 - 2 stops. That gave me something a lot closer to what I was looking for -- purple-deep blue skies, and some detail in the flame-lit areas underneath the balloon.
Lesson 2: Always shoot the reaction
I think of this as a "Joe McNally" lesson. I read this passage from him where he described his time shooting for Sports Illustrated: He'd go to cover a horse race, and end up shooting a circle of people betting in some dark alley.
The part that made this lesson easy was that the balloon show actually had a lot of people really excited about balloons, and willing to do the really immense amount of work needed to get one up in the air. The part that made this lesson hard is that I find it pretty difficult to photograph strangers. It feels vaguely invasive, and I think, "Oh god, I'm the creepy guy with a camera", and of course, if kids are around, I sit around thinking that someone's 7', 300 lb father is going to beat me to a pulp, or (worse) start breaking glass. I don't have a good answer for this part yet, but when I need to, I just force these feelings down and take the picture. I'm not going to say here is "it helps to not have a conscience", but maybe it helps to just think of it as what it is -- photons getting counted on a tiny little piece of silicon.
Lesson 3: Always take your angle where you can get it
One of my first odd experiences with my SLR was on Hamilton Island, this little but surprisingly touristy island on the Great Barrier Reef. I was at the highest point on the island, ready to take a picture of a gorgeous sunset vista over some Australian sea, and the sky had turned into featureless gray mush. Behind me, a limo rolled up, and a bride & groom get out, and behind them, a shabbier car shows up with their photog. He has them pose, do their thing, then he sprawls down on the ground, in nice vest and cumberbund, and shoots up at them.. because it worked!
Sitting back and watching all the tethered balloons rise, I realized I wasn't getting the angle I wanted. I wanted to be up and under, to get what I affectionately thought of as the 'math textbook cover look' (which always have balloons -- somebody explain why?). So, I threw myself on the slightly damp grass, and started shooting up and over, and I got more than I bargained for:
The sky was basically white/gray fog here, so I metered on the balloon. That seemed sort of 'blah' though, and it seemed to be blowing out the balloon a little (maybe reflected light from the fog?), so I dropped it by about -.7 on camera. That darkened the balloon a fair amount, but not super shadowy. It also was just about enough to still blow out the sky, which already had almost no detail, into being very close to pure white -- leaving me with a balloon drifting in a white sky. In post, I was a little disappointed that it wasn't darker (I wanted more detail on the orange fire). I bumped up the blacks and fiddled with the exposure, and this popped out. For me, this was the best photo of the trip -- just out of control colors, and this wild, pop off the page balloon soaring away into nothingness.
So, don't be afraid to roll around on the ground.
*
I really was bummed that there was no balloon launch. My research on Flickr indicated that you could get amazing shots if you slapped on a polarizer, and composed a swarm of balloons in the sky just right, but it was not to be. Still, every trip I take like this, I feel like I learn stuff, and that's what this post is hopefully about. :)
Relevant links:
My complete gallery of keepers from the balloon festival.
Mike's gallery from the same event.
Some amazing shots people on Flickr got (or have gotten in previous years);
http://www.flickr.com/photos/digitaltrav/193810099/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/digitaltrav/195550847/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/spiicytuna/190320676/
Gear primarily used in taking balloon shots:
- Nikon d300
Comment: The excellent ISO 1600 helped me get enough shutter-speed pre-dawn to get some interesting shots. Also, it's my baby.
- Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8
Comment: You're going to want to go wide with balloons, because they're big. You also want it if all those balloons go up in the sky, so you can get a constellation of them floating around. It also helped me get more light in early morning -- it's plenty sharp at f/2.8, and I was shooting before sunrise with lots of people moving around. Mind the distortion at the edges though.
- Nikon 70-300mm VR f/4.5-5.6
Comment: You're going to want to zoom in on balloons high up in the air (which didn't happen), but you're also going to want to see detail with what's happening with the balloon crew, and to shoot the crowd to get reactions.
- Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8
Comment: Once the tethered balloons lifted off, I used this to capture individual balloons 40' or so up. It has better controlled distortion than my wide angles, and the perspective is more suited to the balloons up in the air but low, and I always love the image quality on this lens.
- Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 D
Comment: Used to shoot some portraits of people in the crowd. Most of those were lost when the laptop died and went to heaven, but using this lens wasn't strictly 'necessary' -- it's just arguably my favorite lens, and nothing beats it for shots of people's faces. Also, it's laser sharp -- just gotta control that depth of field when you shoot at 1.4.
- Gitzo 1540T Tripod
Comment: Very useful in the pre-dawn shots of the balloons. Probably would have been useful if I were shooting some amazing shot of all the balloons in the air that I wanted amazing sharpness on. Once the sun was up (albeit behind clouds), I didn't use it -- just folded it away (yay for Carbon Fiber).
- Adobe Lightroom 2 (beta)
Comment: I do 99% of my photo processing here. A little pokey at times, but I like it.
What would have helped:
Something like the d3 or the d700 would have given me 2-3 more stops of ISO in early morning, meaning movement of the crew would have been crisp. As it was, I was hovering around 1/15-1/40th -- wanted just a bit more.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
The Next McNally Book
I just heard that Joe McNally's next book The Hot Shoe Diaries: Creative Applications of Small Flashes
is due out before the end of the year! This is the time to pre-order NOW! For those of you who weren't lucky enough to grab The Moment It Clicks before it flew of store shelves everywhere, this is your chance to be one of the cool cats and get a copy first!!
I absolutely can't wait to see this book in print. I read his last book cover to cover, word for word, the same day that I got it. It was just so good that it was a little sad to reach the last page. I don't think I can recommend this enough!
is due out before the end of the year! This is the time to pre-order NOW! For those of you who weren't lucky enough to grab The Moment It Clicks before it flew of store shelves everywhere, this is your chance to be one of the cool cats and get a copy first!!I absolutely can't wait to see this book in print. I read his last book cover to cover, word for word, the same day that I got it. It was just so good that it was a little sad to reach the last page. I don't think I can recommend this enough!
Going Tropical
So I've finally caved and decided to use up some of that vacation time I've been stockpiling for the past two years. In less than 36 hours from now, I'm going to be on the beach in Oahu, Hawaii. Yeah, that's right. No work, just play, and lots of GORGEOUS things to take pictures of, of course! Hopefully I can strike the right balance that won't make Sara get annoyed with me too much. :-D
If anyone has any advice or tips for the best places to go and see while on Oahu, please please please leave a comment on this post with the info! I've read a bunch of travel guides and I've been there before, but it's so stunning and gorgeous, it's hard to recall it all.
I'll try and post summaries of each day's photos, but that might be a bit lofty. So, let's aim for a few posts while I'm recovering from oodles of relaxation and shooting.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Not to be Missed
Joe McNally has a post on the fate of a life-sized set of polaroids (taken with a polaroid the size of a room!) he made of the people who he saw as the heroes of 9/11. The shots are truly amazing, and it's a great story of the photographic community coming through in a pinch.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Serendipity Now
I mentioned I try to carry my camera with me wherever I go. This is not because I necessarily lead this ultra-exciting life where lions, tigers, and bears are on parade every day [note: if only!], but that if you do carry your camera every day, you find yourself seeking out things that make justify lugging it around all worth it. After a while, you start noticing things you didn't see before -- or, blind chance and old man Bayes puts you in the right place at the right time.
Today, I've got three shots to show that only happened because I had my camera with me All the Time:
I left the office late one day, and the sky was on fire. Saw nothing before or like it since then. I reached into my bag, slapped on my Sigma 10-20mm, and then ran to my car, only to discover I'd left my tripod at home. What then? The sweet spot for the composition was at 20mm, which meant I "ought" to be shooting at around 1/30th of a second. Unfortunately, at iso 1600, the camera was telling me that I needed 1/4th of a second. Just over two stops slower -- not a great result.
So, I used two tricks I've learned when I'm in low light, and need to shoot sharp(ish):
- I leaned against a tree
- I shot in continuous mode
My experience is that the tree is like a poor man's monopod. For a small tree, I find you can get about a stop's worth of shutter speed leaning against it -- larger trees where you can really nestle in between branches might get you more, but I pay a clumsy tax. Continuous shooting is less reliable -- I can generally squeeze out a one third to one stop advantage in shutter speed, but it's pushing your luck.
In this case, I was able to get something relatively sharp (it being clouds and bushy trees silhouetted helped!), and managed to capture that crazy sky.
This is actually shot in the same place as the previous image, in that period of time after sunset that I call the 'Blue Period'. The sunset has set, and absent any reflecting clouds, the sky turns a deep, deep blue -- I love it! Unfortunately, you really need to have a tripod, or (modulo brightness) a steady hand and a camera that looks good at ISO 1600+.
The reason why I took this photo was because the foreground was illuminated by a parking lot light, ensuring that the foreground wouldn't just be this dark blah area -- and the sky has the below-the-horizon sun to illuminate it. Plus, you've got these trees with the vivid green leaves, quasi-framing the blue sky. And, if you shoot it on a tripod for 25 seconds, it looks like you're on a medium-budget alien word on Star Trek.
I got off three exposures for this shot, and then the parking light flickered off, and the sprinklers came out -- had just packed up my camera and nearly got wet. So, not only did I only get it because I happened to have my camera, if I hadn't stopped and taken it right then I would have missed it. Carpe Photographum and all that.
My company runs a shuttle service between offices in San Francisco and the peninsula, and one day I took the shuttle to SF. At the same time, California is, um, on fire. Not the place where I live, but there are zillions of fires all around me, puffing soot in the air. Net result? Some really weird, gray skies during the day. The sun is just a smidge warmer and dimmer, and you occasionally get some crazy things happening like the sun turning blood red for the last few hours of the day. In this case, I was on the way home, and I saw the sun peeping through these gray clouds (which I assume were laced with things like soot and ash). I wanted to get a shot of the guy sitting next to this window peering out through it, sort of a 'dude gazes out in horror over post-apocalyptic San Bruno', but being as I was bouncing up and down and frequently clueless, I under-exposed the guy and overexposed the window a smidge. Thankfully, it was fixable in post -- and I love the shot precisely because it is so weird.
Today, I've got three shots to show that only happened because I had my camera with me All the Time:
I left the office late one day, and the sky was on fire. Saw nothing before or like it since then. I reached into my bag, slapped on my Sigma 10-20mm, and then ran to my car, only to discover I'd left my tripod at home. What then? The sweet spot for the composition was at 20mm, which meant I "ought" to be shooting at around 1/30th of a second. Unfortunately, at iso 1600, the camera was telling me that I needed 1/4th of a second. Just over two stops slower -- not a great result.
So, I used two tricks I've learned when I'm in low light, and need to shoot sharp(ish):
- I leaned against a tree
- I shot in continuous mode
My experience is that the tree is like a poor man's monopod. For a small tree, I find you can get about a stop's worth of shutter speed leaning against it -- larger trees where you can really nestle in between branches might get you more, but I pay a clumsy tax. Continuous shooting is less reliable -- I can generally squeeze out a one third to one stop advantage in shutter speed, but it's pushing your luck.
In this case, I was able to get something relatively sharp (it being clouds and bushy trees silhouetted helped!), and managed to capture that crazy sky.
This is actually shot in the same place as the previous image, in that period of time after sunset that I call the 'Blue Period'. The sunset has set, and absent any reflecting clouds, the sky turns a deep, deep blue -- I love it! Unfortunately, you really need to have a tripod, or (modulo brightness) a steady hand and a camera that looks good at ISO 1600+.
The reason why I took this photo was because the foreground was illuminated by a parking lot light, ensuring that the foreground wouldn't just be this dark blah area -- and the sky has the below-the-horizon sun to illuminate it. Plus, you've got these trees with the vivid green leaves, quasi-framing the blue sky. And, if you shoot it on a tripod for 25 seconds, it looks like you're on a medium-budget alien word on Star Trek.
I got off three exposures for this shot, and then the parking light flickered off, and the sprinklers came out -- had just packed up my camera and nearly got wet. So, not only did I only get it because I happened to have my camera, if I hadn't stopped and taken it right then I would have missed it. Carpe Photographum and all that.
My company runs a shuttle service between offices in San Francisco and the peninsula, and one day I took the shuttle to SF. At the same time, California is, um, on fire. Not the place where I live, but there are zillions of fires all around me, puffing soot in the air. Net result? Some really weird, gray skies during the day. The sun is just a smidge warmer and dimmer, and you occasionally get some crazy things happening like the sun turning blood red for the last few hours of the day. In this case, I was on the way home, and I saw the sun peeping through these gray clouds (which I assume were laced with things like soot and ash). I wanted to get a shot of the guy sitting next to this window peering out through it, sort of a 'dude gazes out in horror over post-apocalyptic San Bruno', but being as I was bouncing up and down and frequently clueless, I under-exposed the guy and overexposed the window a smidge. Thankfully, it was fixable in post -- and I love the shot precisely because it is so weird.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Commenting on Photos
I just finished reading this blog post about how to post useful comments on Flickr photos.
Too many comments are like "Great Job!", "Nice!", "Wow, come join my group!" These comments aren't really that helpful, are they? Are you guilty of leaving meaningless feedback too? I know I am! Read the post above and make a resolution to only post constructive comments in the future!! We'll all benefit from this.
Too many comments are like "Great Job!", "Nice!", "Wow, come join my group!" These comments aren't really that helpful, are they? Are you guilty of leaving meaningless feedback too? I know I am! Read the post above and make a resolution to only post constructive comments in the future!! We'll all benefit from this.
An Unexpected Turn of Events
Recall when you were in kindergarten, remember how you'd be given some xerox'ed page out of a 1960's coloring book of some random thing that you really didn't care about, with the instructions to color it in? I hated coloring while in kindergarten, and I still do. Even worse, you'd come home and your parents, no matter how horrible it was, would act as if it was a check from the Publisher's Clearing House prize patrol, they'd affix it to the refrigerator to hang for posterity, or until you brought home another god awful mess, that, would hopefully show some sign of improved coordination.
Well, I'm still at that level, 22 years later, trying to show some signs of improved coordination. My wife thinks my photos have reached the point where they won't make our small apartment look like the house from Sanford and Son. Do you know what that means? We are going to frame and hang up some of my prints. (Dear God, what is she thinking?) After much discussion, we decided that we'd put 3 "city themed" photos in our entryway. (These photos will also serve as warning to all those who enter that they should expect to be flooded with stories of my latest random photo trip.)
Unfortunately, we only have two photos (in our theme) that we thought were worthy of being put up for guests to see (NYC skyline shot and one of the Golden Gate). However, our original plan called for three, so we needed to get another one ASAP.
After reading Thomas Hawk's blog post on the top 10 places to photograph in San Francisco, I felt the urge to go up to the Mandarin Oriental hotel in SF and sneak up to the top floor sky walk. After monitoring the weather forecast for the past few days, Brandon, my wife (Sara), and I trekked up to San Francisco Sunday night on a crusade to fill the blank spot on my wall.
Now, the Mandarin Oriental is one of the swankiest hotels in San Francisco. The three of us are typical Silicon Valley folks. We're rocking the jeans, the t-shirts, and random backpacks full of camera gear (well, typical save the last part). There was unanimous concern we'd get cornered by hotel staff and sent to a Chinese prison camp as we tried to go up to 48th floor at 11PM on a Sunday night to take pictures.
So there we were, this traveling road show of photographic misfits, leaving the comfort of our warm valley dwellings and companionship of sandal wearing kinsfolk, to explore the world of people who spend more money on shoes than I have on cars. Now I’m not sure if it was either our suave Silicon Valley demeanor, our unsuspicious nature, or plain ignorance that got us past the virtual armada of people waiting at the front desk to stop folks just like ourselves from wandering their fine establishment at all hours of the night.
Okay, maybe that's a bit dramatic. We pretty much just walked in, hit the elevator button, and went up to the 48th floor without so much as anyone giving us a second look. We got up to the skywalk, and the view was just magnificent. Unfortunately, the windows were dirty on the outside, and there was enough low level fog to make every light have a giant halo that screamed, "Go shoot somewhere else!"
Afraid of overstaying our welcome at the Mandarin, we decided to hop in the car and head over to Treasure Island for some night shots of the city skyline. We drove around TI a bit and eventually pulled onto the side of the road and started unpacking our gear. Now one of the great things about San Francisco, is the plethora of completely shady people who seem to live in the shadows and remind you of Jack the Ripper. I quickly noticed that such a man was behind us! Yay!
So there we were, 2 software engineers and a school teacher, taking photos of a slightly foggy San Francisco skyline being watched by this strange homeless man wearing US Army camouflage garb. He was standing there with his hands in his pockets, which for some reason, made him 10 times more shady. I started thinking whether or not my 40D attached to my Manfrotto ball head + tripod would make a decent club. I surmised it would, but decided not to test the theory. I quickly shuttled everyone back into the car and we drove a mile down the road. Now, at this point, I was hoping I'd get one decent city shot. However, it never happened. In fact, the only shot I got of the skyline was this zoom effect I did of the Ferry Building on the SF side of the bay. It’s not a bad shot, but by no means is it “wall worthy.”
It was really really windy, and even with a heavy aluminum tripod, my 70-200mm lens was just catching so much wind, I couldn't get any sharp shots at all. I was about to call it a night, when Sara screamed, "Look, raccoon on the rocks!" Brandon and I looked down, and there was a raccoon standing on the rocks about 10 feet from us. I grabbed my speedlite, threw it into E-TTL mode, and started firing away.
The raccoon quickly disappeared, and then reappeared from a crevice between two rocks with 4 baby raccoons. It was obviously a mother raccoon scouting out things for her children. These little guys were pretty dam cute. I ended up taking a good 15-20 shots of these little bandits before they wandered off in search of breakfast.
So what started out as a trip to fill a blank spot on a wall, ended up with a blank spot on my wall. However, we did get some shots of some adorable little creatures, in one of the most unexpected of places. I guess that just goes to show you, no matter how much planning you do in advance, things will almost always turn out in a completely different way. Just be ready to adapt and see what happens.
Well, I'm still at that level, 22 years later, trying to show some signs of improved coordination. My wife thinks my photos have reached the point where they won't make our small apartment look like the house from Sanford and Son. Do you know what that means? We are going to frame and hang up some of my prints. (Dear God, what is she thinking?) After much discussion, we decided that we'd put 3 "city themed" photos in our entryway. (These photos will also serve as warning to all those who enter that they should expect to be flooded with stories of my latest random photo trip.)
Unfortunately, we only have two photos (in our theme) that we thought were worthy of being put up for guests to see (NYC skyline shot and one of the Golden Gate). However, our original plan called for three, so we needed to get another one ASAP.
After reading Thomas Hawk's blog post on the top 10 places to photograph in San Francisco, I felt the urge to go up to the Mandarin Oriental hotel in SF and sneak up to the top floor sky walk. After monitoring the weather forecast for the past few days, Brandon, my wife (Sara), and I trekked up to San Francisco Sunday night on a crusade to fill the blank spot on my wall.
Now, the Mandarin Oriental is one of the swankiest hotels in San Francisco. The three of us are typical Silicon Valley folks. We're rocking the jeans, the t-shirts, and random backpacks full of camera gear (well, typical save the last part). There was unanimous concern we'd get cornered by hotel staff and sent to a Chinese prison camp as we tried to go up to 48th floor at 11PM on a Sunday night to take pictures.
So there we were, this traveling road show of photographic misfits, leaving the comfort of our warm valley dwellings and companionship of sandal wearing kinsfolk, to explore the world of people who spend more money on shoes than I have on cars. Now I’m not sure if it was either our suave Silicon Valley demeanor, our unsuspicious nature, or plain ignorance that got us past the virtual armada of people waiting at the front desk to stop folks just like ourselves from wandering their fine establishment at all hours of the night.
Okay, maybe that's a bit dramatic. We pretty much just walked in, hit the elevator button, and went up to the 48th floor without so much as anyone giving us a second look. We got up to the skywalk, and the view was just magnificent. Unfortunately, the windows were dirty on the outside, and there was enough low level fog to make every light have a giant halo that screamed, "Go shoot somewhere else!"
Afraid of overstaying our welcome at the Mandarin, we decided to hop in the car and head over to Treasure Island for some night shots of the city skyline. We drove around TI a bit and eventually pulled onto the side of the road and started unpacking our gear. Now one of the great things about San Francisco, is the plethora of completely shady people who seem to live in the shadows and remind you of Jack the Ripper. I quickly noticed that such a man was behind us! Yay!
So there we were, 2 software engineers and a school teacher, taking photos of a slightly foggy San Francisco skyline being watched by this strange homeless man wearing US Army camouflage garb. He was standing there with his hands in his pockets, which for some reason, made him 10 times more shady. I started thinking whether or not my 40D attached to my Manfrotto ball head + tripod would make a decent club. I surmised it would, but decided not to test the theory. I quickly shuttled everyone back into the car and we drove a mile down the road. Now, at this point, I was hoping I'd get one decent city shot. However, it never happened. In fact, the only shot I got of the skyline was this zoom effect I did of the Ferry Building on the SF side of the bay. It’s not a bad shot, but by no means is it “wall worthy.”
It was really really windy, and even with a heavy aluminum tripod, my 70-200mm lens was just catching so much wind, I couldn't get any sharp shots at all. I was about to call it a night, when Sara screamed, "Look, raccoon on the rocks!" Brandon and I looked down, and there was a raccoon standing on the rocks about 10 feet from us. I grabbed my speedlite, threw it into E-TTL mode, and started firing away.
The raccoon quickly disappeared, and then reappeared from a crevice between two rocks with 4 baby raccoons. It was obviously a mother raccoon scouting out things for her children. These little guys were pretty dam cute. I ended up taking a good 15-20 shots of these little bandits before they wandered off in search of breakfast.
So what started out as a trip to fill a blank spot on a wall, ended up with a blank spot on my wall. However, we did get some shots of some adorable little creatures, in one of the most unexpected of places. I guess that just goes to show you, no matter how much planning you do in advance, things will almost always turn out in a completely different way. Just be ready to adapt and see what happens.
Pixels may be Free, but Attention is Priceless.
Some concerned readers have written in, concerned that I'm involved in some sort of elaborate Nikon suicide pact, owing to the fact that I've taken about a fifth of the number of exposures the d300's shutter is rated for. Also, as one friend put it,
"Good God, that's like 150 photos/day!"
It's not quite that bad -- I go out on trips on weekends, and shoot a lot then. But it is the case I've made a religious observance of bringing my camera with me everywhere possible. Like a lot of things, I'm sure there's a Right Way to do this and a Wrong Way.
I'm sure The Wrong Way would entail something like this:
If you think about it, this is basically the 'vacation' model of photography. Take everything you see, come home, upload it all, except you'd be living it every day. I don't think it's a great way to learn, and you'll likely be frustrated if you try. Your friends will also likely de-friend you on Flickr, which is the closest modern-day equivalent to being drummed out of the camp because of your fresh case of leprosy that I can think of.
What's missing from the Vacation Philosophy of photography is two things:
Mindfulness is the biggie, but I hate to use it because it's something Zen posers are always saying. "Why don't you go to mindfulness training, Brandon?" "Practice a little mindfulness, and find inner peace!". "The quality of mindfulness is not lost on this one, oh Buddha". On and on and on, and since I live in California, I hear this sort of thing on a regular basis.
Lemme describe what I mean in another way. Some years ago, I embarked on a program to lose a lot of weight. The first thing I did was not to exercise more, eat less, change the number of carbs, or anything like that -- it was simply to write down what I ate each day. Studies show that simply doing this is enough to start losing some weight, and the people who bother to do this find it easier to actually start exercising or dieting.
Turns out, simply paying attention to what you're doing is often enough for our brains to perk up and realize something may be wrong (or right!) with your behavior. When it comes to photography, I get myself to pay attention by asking questions. The first, and most basic one is this: Why do I want to take this photo? There ae a lot of good answers to this question, but the only really bad one is: "I can't think of why." Just like dieting, you can ratchet up your expectations over time, and start asking yourself questions like, "Would I waste a friend's time with this photo? Would this photo be something I'd be happy to hang on my wall? Can this photo tell the story of this event? Could I use this photo to teach a class? Will this photo pay the mortgage? [Ok, that's a good joke]". But always start with why you want to take the photo -- and if, after reflecting, you don't have a reason, don't shoot the photo. :)
The second, and just as important thing you can do, is to throw photos out. Let's say you've taken your one hundred and fifty photos for the day, and are staring listlessly in your overpriced copy of Lightroom (or underpowered version of iPhoto). The first thing you want to do is to upload them to share them to everyone, right?
[Crickets]
There's a rule with digital photography that says, "Pixels are Free". It's correct, and only grows more correct in the limit as we get closer and closer to storing terabytes for pennies, petabytes for dimes, and exabytes for dollars, until our brains are all uploaded into a set of poorly written perl scripts that pilot post-human mechs around the surface of Neptune, taking glorious snaps of those icy rings. But like most things, PF has a dual principle, waiting to bite us. It goes like this:
"Pixels may be Free, but Attention is Priceless."
The old world -- the one with film, paper books, and big, clunky, one-room computers, had a different set of rules. Try, "This shit costs money!", or "There's only so much space on the shelf." The new world has a different set of limitations, but the most important one is that at the bottom of all those free pixels, fat pipes, and amazing low light performance, is us. Plain old human brains, evolved to not keep more than seven things in our head at once, and catastrophically unprepared for Modern Times. All that neat stuff, and a tiny, narrow little window of attention to grab someone.
So, if you're going to reach people with your photos, you're going to have to learn how to Cut. It's going to hurt, because anyone who does even the tiniest little creative thing marries it at least a little. But if you're going to learn from taking a lot of pictures, you're going to have to sit down at that computer, and ask yourself a new question: "Why did I take that photo? What was I thinking?". If you can't answer that question, cut it. Deleting it is best, hiding it in a featureless archive in the sky is a close second, but what you upload should be there for a reason. This doesn't mean you can't keep a 'gallery of monsters' around, to teach yourself why something was an epic fail, or nearly, but didn't quite work. But it does mean you have to have made that distinction in your head, and emotionally come to terms with that failure.
Processing my photos and throwing them away is one of the hardest things I've ever done, because I'm a pack rat. I love to hoard things. But throwing it out is the best thing there is for learning. It's both an object lesson -- "So wow, on camera flash really does look like ass", and a carrot: "If I don't do this next time, I won't have to throw it out!". Once you've done this, you can start asking yourself things like, "What can I do to fix this photo? Could I make it work in post processing if I just did this one thing?", and so on.
*
I dunno if these things will work for you (I don't necessarily advise taking 30,000 photos in seven months), but I think it's an invaluable way to force yourself to learn.
More to come in my next post, which is an example of the benefits of always having your camera.
"Good God, that's like 150 photos/day!"
It's not quite that bad -- I go out on trips on weekends, and shoot a lot then. But it is the case I've made a religious observance of bringing my camera with me everywhere possible. Like a lot of things, I'm sure there's a Right Way to do this and a Wrong Way.
I'm sure The Wrong Way would entail something like this:
- Bring your camera with you everywhere
- Shoot everything
- Download your daily 150 (or weekend-ly 2,000 photos)
- Upload them all to Flickr daily
If you think about it, this is basically the 'vacation' model of photography. Take everything you see, come home, upload it all, except you'd be living it every day. I don't think it's a great way to learn, and you'll likely be frustrated if you try. Your friends will also likely de-friend you on Flickr, which is the closest modern-day equivalent to being drummed out of the camp because of your fresh case of leprosy that I can think of.
What's missing from the Vacation Philosophy of photography is two things:
- Mindfulness
- A profound love of throwing things out
Mindfulness is the biggie, but I hate to use it because it's something Zen posers are always saying. "Why don't you go to mindfulness training, Brandon?" "Practice a little mindfulness, and find inner peace!". "The quality of mindfulness is not lost on this one, oh Buddha". On and on and on, and since I live in California, I hear this sort of thing on a regular basis.
Lemme describe what I mean in another way. Some years ago, I embarked on a program to lose a lot of weight. The first thing I did was not to exercise more, eat less, change the number of carbs, or anything like that -- it was simply to write down what I ate each day. Studies show that simply doing this is enough to start losing some weight, and the people who bother to do this find it easier to actually start exercising or dieting.
Turns out, simply paying attention to what you're doing is often enough for our brains to perk up and realize something may be wrong (or right!) with your behavior. When it comes to photography, I get myself to pay attention by asking questions. The first, and most basic one is this: Why do I want to take this photo? There ae a lot of good answers to this question, but the only really bad one is: "I can't think of why." Just like dieting, you can ratchet up your expectations over time, and start asking yourself questions like, "Would I waste a friend's time with this photo? Would this photo be something I'd be happy to hang on my wall? Can this photo tell the story of this event? Could I use this photo to teach a class? Will this photo pay the mortgage? [Ok, that's a good joke]". But always start with why you want to take the photo -- and if, after reflecting, you don't have a reason, don't shoot the photo. :)
The second, and just as important thing you can do, is to throw photos out. Let's say you've taken your one hundred and fifty photos for the day, and are staring listlessly in your overpriced copy of Lightroom (or underpowered version of iPhoto). The first thing you want to do is to upload them to share them to everyone, right?
[Crickets]
There's a rule with digital photography that says, "Pixels are Free". It's correct, and only grows more correct in the limit as we get closer and closer to storing terabytes for pennies, petabytes for dimes, and exabytes for dollars, until our brains are all uploaded into a set of poorly written perl scripts that pilot post-human mechs around the surface of Neptune, taking glorious snaps of those icy rings. But like most things, PF has a dual principle, waiting to bite us. It goes like this:
"Pixels may be Free, but Attention is Priceless."
The old world -- the one with film, paper books, and big, clunky, one-room computers, had a different set of rules. Try, "This shit costs money!", or "There's only so much space on the shelf." The new world has a different set of limitations, but the most important one is that at the bottom of all those free pixels, fat pipes, and amazing low light performance, is us. Plain old human brains, evolved to not keep more than seven things in our head at once, and catastrophically unprepared for Modern Times. All that neat stuff, and a tiny, narrow little window of attention to grab someone.
So, if you're going to reach people with your photos, you're going to have to learn how to Cut. It's going to hurt, because anyone who does even the tiniest little creative thing marries it at least a little. But if you're going to learn from taking a lot of pictures, you're going to have to sit down at that computer, and ask yourself a new question: "Why did I take that photo? What was I thinking?". If you can't answer that question, cut it. Deleting it is best, hiding it in a featureless archive in the sky is a close second, but what you upload should be there for a reason. This doesn't mean you can't keep a 'gallery of monsters' around, to teach yourself why something was an epic fail, or nearly, but didn't quite work. But it does mean you have to have made that distinction in your head, and emotionally come to terms with that failure.
Processing my photos and throwing them away is one of the hardest things I've ever done, because I'm a pack rat. I love to hoard things. But throwing it out is the best thing there is for learning. It's both an object lesson -- "So wow, on camera flash really does look like ass", and a carrot: "If I don't do this next time, I won't have to throw it out!". Once you've done this, you can start asking yourself things like, "What can I do to fix this photo? Could I make it work in post processing if I just did this one thing?", and so on.
*
I dunno if these things will work for you (I don't necessarily advise taking 30,000 photos in seven months), but I think it's an invaluable way to force yourself to learn.
More to come in my next post, which is an example of the benefits of always having your camera.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
From 1 to 30,643
Hi, my name is Brandon, and I just took my 30,643rd photo with my camera today.
For the last seven months, shooting with my digital SLR has constituted my consuming devotion to an unassigned project. I had a three week trip to Australia planned; I knew that the time had come to upgrade my camera in a big way -- something had gone 'snap' in my head and I was ready to buy an SLR. Being a great big nerd, I spent a month or more researching the problem. At the end of it, I had a healthy case of analysis paralysis -- ultimately decided by some social analysis of what cameras my favorite photographers used and just how good Nikon's d300 felt in my hands.
Basically, I blundered into picking a wonderful camera that was completely and utterly beyond my abilities.
Fortunately for me (and especially all my friends, who get bear the heavy burden of seeing my photos), I'm obsessive. There's something about taking your first good photo with your camera that makes you think, "Wow, you know, I sure would like another one of those". And then when you get another 500 (ok, 2,000) photos after that, you think, "Man, how can I get better at this?". Answering that question is a driving force for me at most of the things in my life -- and that explains why I'm here, 30,642 photos later, having acquired a few tiny grains of knowledge [knowledge is always stored in grains of sand on the beach] about what makes photos good.
My friend Mike and I decided to start this blog because we're still starting out with this photography stuff, but we wanted to share what we knew about that question: How DO you take that next good photo? We're going to bring a beginner's perspective to some questions, and plan to share all the stuff we find out while stumbling around in the dark, and have some fun doing it.
Oh, and FYI, Mike's probably a clinical obsessive too, and if there's anything better than a blog run by a crazy person, it's a blog run by two crazy people.
With that, here are two photos for your perusal: The very first photo I ever took, and the 30,643rd.
I sure hope I learned something.
Photo #1:
Photo # 30,643:
For the last seven months, shooting with my digital SLR has constituted my consuming devotion to an unassigned project. I had a three week trip to Australia planned; I knew that the time had come to upgrade my camera in a big way -- something had gone 'snap' in my head and I was ready to buy an SLR. Being a great big nerd, I spent a month or more researching the problem. At the end of it, I had a healthy case of analysis paralysis -- ultimately decided by some social analysis of what cameras my favorite photographers used and just how good Nikon's d300 felt in my hands.
Basically, I blundered into picking a wonderful camera that was completely and utterly beyond my abilities.
Fortunately for me (and especially all my friends, who get bear the heavy burden of seeing my photos), I'm obsessive. There's something about taking your first good photo with your camera that makes you think, "Wow, you know, I sure would like another one of those". And then when you get another 500 (ok, 2,000) photos after that, you think, "Man, how can I get better at this?". Answering that question is a driving force for me at most of the things in my life -- and that explains why I'm here, 30,642 photos later, having acquired a few tiny grains of knowledge [knowledge is always stored in grains of sand on the beach] about what makes photos good.
My friend Mike and I decided to start this blog because we're still starting out with this photography stuff, but we wanted to share what we knew about that question: How DO you take that next good photo? We're going to bring a beginner's perspective to some questions, and plan to share all the stuff we find out while stumbling around in the dark, and have some fun doing it.
Oh, and FYI, Mike's probably a clinical obsessive too, and if there's anything better than a blog run by a crazy person, it's a blog run by two crazy people.
With that, here are two photos for your perusal: The very first photo I ever took, and the 30,643rd.
I sure hope I learned something.
Photo #1:
Photo # 30,643:
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