Re-visioning an image
As part of prepping the images I donated to Images Without Borders, I decided to reprocess them from scratch and see if I could make them as good as I could given what I know about post processing in Lightroom and Photoshop — consider it a pop quiz on how much I’ve learned in producing quality images in the last few months…
I find some of the differences fascinating. My image of Morro Rock at Dawn, which is one of my favorites (ever!) got a major makeover. Here’s the image as I originally processed it, literally on my laptop in the auditorium at Morro Photo Expo waiting for George Lepp to talk:
I like that version a lot (except for the bird dots in the sky; I later removed them for the version I used to print out for christmas gifts), and the glow on the rock well simulated what I saw when I took the image; I felt I could do better now, though.
So here’s the new image:
The glow on the rock isn’t as noticable, but the coloration is more the golden tone that was evident that morning, and I much prefer the coloration of the water and sky and the better detail in the boats. And there are no bird dots or other junk in the sky…
If nothing else, it’s a very vivid example of how photos may look “photo realistic” but really are heavily tied into the interpretation of the photographer in post processing. it’s always been that way, by the way — the tools in a wet darkroom were just different ones.
Which one do I like better? I like aspects of both, actually, for different reasons. I’d kind of like at some point to take the rock in the original and move it into the image I just finished. Maybe some day I will — but to be honest, I like the new version of the rock as well…But I definitely — today — prefer this new one and how the boats have some detail visible. I was for some reason doing a lot of sillouette imagery last october when I was in Morro Bay…
Another image I redid today, the night herons, better shows how much better I am at this than I was when I originally did it (about 8 months ago):
To me, it now looks soft and grey. The new version of the image has whiter whites, better contrast and stronger blacks, and is much sharper and generally an improved image.
All in all a muc superior image, and I think in this new one the eyes really pop, and they really are the focus of this image, where in the previous version, I now think it came across rather muddled.
To me, it’s good to sometimes go back and re-vision your previous work and see what you can do with it; it can be a really positive way to see the progress you’re making in becoming a better photographer. The bones of that night heron image were always there, I think. Now, I think, the rendering I did allows you to see them.
Supporting Doctors without Borders through Images without Borders
A project I’ve been working on in the background for a while has finally all come together and I’m thrilled to be able to talk about it. After the Haiti earthquake I donated some funds to support the rescue efforts there but I realized there was going to be a long-term need there and started looking at the right ways to get involved. One of the organizations that I’ve considered donating to for a couple of years is Doctors without Borders, which fits the kind of organization I look to put my donation money into (low bureaucracy overhead, low marketing expenses, high percentage of revenues “on the ground” and not in the home office, etc..).
Then I ran into another organization trying to create a place where photographers could donate images for sale to generate revenue for Doctors Without Borders. Images Without Borders seemed like a cause I wanted to get behind, so I did some research, decided it was doing the Right Things, and contacted them to see if I could donate some images.
I’m happy to announce that five of my images are now available for purchase through Images Without Borders, and all profits for their sale will go to Doctors Without Borders. Each image is limited to ten prints and will then be retired. I want to encourage everyone who reads my blog to support Doctors without Borders, either by going to Images Without Borders and buying a print (mine or one of the other donating photographers), or by donating to the organization directly.
I will sweeten the pot further — if you buy one of my prints via Images Without Borders, I will send you a free 11×14 signed print of any image in my portfolio as my thank you for doing so. Simply email me a copy of the receipt on the purchase and we’ll work out the details.
Here are the images I’ve made available:
To help spread the word, I’ve created some free mobile phone wallpapers of these images. You are welcome to make copies of these and pass them around or install them on your phone. I will also be doing desktop wallpapers of some of my images, including these, to help support this cause — stay tuned for that.
I hope you all will consider supporting this organization and cause, either by buying a print, by donating directly, or by publicizing this and spreading the word to others. Haiti needs our help, and this organization is there on the ground trying to make a difference, and it deserves our help.
Thanks,
Chuq
(p.s. observant geeks will probably notice that my photos are being hosted on Smugmug and not flickr. I’ve been working towards creating a portfolio site where I can start selling prints and licensing images, and Smugmug was the site I decided to use for this (Photoshelter, the site hosting and donating its services to Images without Borders, came in a close second). I’ll be using Smugmug as the site for my professional portfolio the way I use (and will continue to use) Flickr to distributethings more casually and socially. I’ll talk more later about my plans for Smugmug and how this all ties together, but this situation was a great opportunity to fire up the new site and get this next phase of my photography going….)
When your workflow implodes, bad things happen…
One of the reasons I’ve been somewhat missing from the blog is that my photo processing workflow imploded — I came to realize it was broken beyond repair, and I didn’t know how to fix it.
That’s not a fun place to be.
The final straw was trying to integrate some more complicated processing techniques into the workflow, specifically handling multi-image processing for panoramas and HDR. The way I had everything set up in Lightroom just didn’t work for managing all of the pieces well, and everything I tried — well, all of the solutions were ugly and I realized they wouldn’t scale.
Ultimately I came to realize a decision I made when I first migrated to Lightroom was the failure point; I made a decision to use collections to store groups of photos instead of folders. Collections are a virtual grouping, folders are a physical grouping. I felt it made sense to import into a YYYY/MM/DDDD folder, and then use collections to pull related images together. Overall, that worked well (for a while).
Lightroom, however, has a — quirk — a design decision that is impacted by this, and that’s how sets can be used. Sets is another virtual collection that work within folders, but sets are incompatible with collections. that means when you pull everything together, you have to chose collections or sets (but not both). I chose collections. That works, until you need sets. Then all hell breaks loose. It really does make sense to use a set to pull all of those pieces together and tag them with the resulting image as the top image.
Unfortunately, you can’t do that if you use collections. sigh.
In researching options on how to do this (and more importantly, how to do this without tearing it down to ground zero and starting over), I finally decided the workflow I liked best was one outlined by Hal Schmitt at Digital Photo Experience as part of his Panorama screencast. But that meant — of course — starting from ground zero.
So I finally decided I needed to, and I’ve been spending my evenings recently taking everything in my Lightroom libraries and converting all of the collections to folders, one at a time. Of course, once you decide to open up the hood, you don’t just fix what’s broken, you start tinkering, and I did, restructuring my keywords, rethinking a few things in my metadata presets. Little things that flit in and tweak everything to some degree.
This, by the way, makes Time Machine crazy. That reminds me that I need to start planning to upgrade my disks to larger sizes soon. This means I have to think about my backup policies, and… and down the rabbit hole we go again. Fortunately I have a couple of months before I have to worry about the disks, and I’ve got everything back under control (well, mostly. I have a couple of thousand photos flagged with special keywords defining various “needs to be looked at and fixed” to-dos). It seems to work with panoramas:
I’m happy with the structure of the files on disk and how the workflow gets me from import to flickr, and with the keywording and metadata (to a point; there’s more detail that I’m still thinking through and implementing, that’s the “to do” on a bunch of images…).
And I’m pretty happy with the quality of the end image now, but that’s a different blog post. That also wasn’t true recently…
What I haven’t yet done is take it from “post to flickr” stage to the full portfolio, but that’s the part I’m starting to work on now. Most on that, hopefully soon…
The lens is back..
I’m a bit surprised, but my lens is repaired and back in my happy little hands. Total turnaround time is under a week. Tota cost was about $115 including diagnosis and shipping costs. According to the return info no new parts were needed so whatever broke was likely a screw that came loose and let everything slide out of position, and the tech pulled it apart, put it back together and did a full optical alignment and cleaning.
Hopefully will get out a bit tomorrow and take some test shots and see how it goes…
Mac Netbooks
Ben Long talks about using a Hackintosh (a netbook hacked to run Mac OS X).
For the last year, I’ve been using a hacked MSI Wind as a netbook, but its keyboard played havoc with my repetitive stress injuries. Something about it made me hold my hands in a way that ultimately caused pain. I recently had the chance to type for a while on a Dell Mini 10v and found that I had no pain issues at all, so I sold the Wind and picked up a Mini 10v on sale for only $275.
Compared to my 13″ Macbook, the Mini 10 is considerably smaller and lighter, making it very usable for backcountry trips – something I would never do with my Macbook. With it, I no longer need to carry my Digital Focii FotoSafe for offloading, and I’m not stuck trying to type emails on my iPhone keyboard.
Obviously, if you’re a Windows user, you can use the Mini 10v right out of the box. If you want to use the Mac OS, though, you’ll need to perform a quick and simple hack.
NetbookInstaller is an application that will take care of the hack for you, and using it is very simple. You’ll need a copy of Snow Leopard, and a USB stick with at least 8 gb of capacity. Detailed instructions on the NetbookInstaller site will guide you through the installation. You’ll image your Snow Leopard disk onto the USB stick. and then boot off of that. The NetbookInstaller application will modify the installation to allow it to work on the Netbook.
When you’re all finished, you should have a Mini 10v running the latest Mac OS (at the time of this writing, I’m running 10.6.2). The trackpad supports tapping and two-fingered scrolling, and sleep, restart, shutdown, the web camera, and SD card reader all work fine. The model I got has a gigabyte or RAM and a 160gb drive, though both of these are upgradable. The computer weighs in at 2.6 pounds.
It’s definitely a viable option if you want to depend on an unsupported computer environment, but he neglected to mention a couple of important points:
- If you don’t buy a copy of Mac OS X or have a family pack, you’re pirating the software. Photographers need to be really sensitive about violating the licenses of others, or else we should shut up when people ignore our copyrights and rip off our photos. Can’t have it both ways, folks, although I know a lot of people who try.
- Even if you do buy a copy of Mac OS X to run on your Hackintosh, you’re putting it on hardware that isn’t allowed by Apple’s EULA for Mac OS, so you’re violating their T&Cs, which depending on how you want to rationalize it means you’re pirating the software whether or not you have a paid license for it.
- If neither of those keeps you up and night sleepless over the moral quagmire of violating Apple’s legal agreements while being hard-ass about protecting your own, it’s still an unsupported and mostly untested hardware/software configuration which may break at any moment (or which at any moment Apple might choose to “make no longer compatible” with a software update, and no matter what breaks — you have no tech support except your own sweat equity and whatever friends you can buy pizza for. And you’re using this computer in a production environment on deadline?
Wherever your choose to draw the lines in the sand in the great “How dare you do that with my photos; but I”ll do what I want with this software!” moral quagmire, you should at least stop long enough to think about it so you know how to explain it if it gets brought up by a client — or by the other party if you happen to end up in court fighting a copyright and this is mentioned to the judge. Whatever you think of them, these EULAs have been mostly upheld by courts. How are you going to react if someone uses the same rationalization for using your photos that you used for choosing to build a Hackintosh?
But I’m not judging. I have enough challenge manging my personal ethical compass, I don’t need the karma of managing yours. But I felt it was important to point these issues out so that photographers understand that this is more complications than “this is unsupported hardware”.
I, personally, would hate to be in a conference room negotiating licensing terms with a client and taking notes no a machine that has unlicensed software on it, or is running software that I knowingly installed in violation of the licensing terms. That to me seems like I’m tempting the karma gods, and they already have me on speed dial, they don’t need excuses to ring me up. You know?
A few thoughts on lenses
Just a few quick notes on lenses, I finally sent off my broken Tamron 28-300mm f/3.5
I didn’t do a lot of work with the lens and I certainly didn’t do the kind of work that would let me make “scientific” evaluations. If you want lines per inch geeking, there are places for that.
Here, just opinions. Maybe even somewhat informed (maybe not).
The reason I bought the Tamron was that I wanted a big zoom ratio and a compact footprint so I could use a single lens as a carry around street camera. It normally lives on my Canon Rebel, and my Rebel lives in the Tamrac 3385
But the lens has some tradeoffs, and I’m starting to really understand the compromises using it brings. For one, I’m constantly fighting the fact that (for me) that a 28mm on an APS sensor (1.6x magnification, 44mm equivalent) just isn’t wide enough. I want wider. (WIDER! WIIIIDDDDDEEEEERRR!!! BWAHAHAHAH!); by cutting off the wide aspect to get the long aspect, I’ve limited the utility of the lens for what I’d like to do at the magnification end that is the lens’ primary purpose. that’s enough of a mistake that I found myself quietly thinking to myself that the Sigma 10-20mm f/4
But that really defeats the purpose of having a single lens, no? (not that I’m complaining about having more lenses!), so that made me sit back and rethink the problem from the start not as a “how do I patch what I have” but “what is the right answer?”. Renting the Sigma 18-200mm
I was right, the difference between the 18mm low end and 28mm low end was significant. I much prefer the wider available angle. I also prefer the Sigma build quality. Ignoring that I broke the Tamron (hey, it happens), the Tamron has the heft and feel of a consumer lens (plastic construction, light weight) while the Sigma lens feels more “professional” — I’d call it more of a prosumer style lens. It and the other Sigma I own (the 180mm macro) both impress me with the quality of the build and their heft, they feel sturdier and stiffer and generally come across to me as more able to take the kind of banging lenses that live with me sometimes go through. The Tamron is a nice lens — but I like the Sigma lenses better. The Sigma lens seems (subjectively) crisper, but I need to also remind myself that it’s not trying to be such a mega-zoom. the two lenses aren’t directly comparable in performance or intent in simple ways. But all in all, I like the Tamron, I like the Sigma more.
But having played with the 18-200, that made me ask myself how to ‘fix’ my dilemma. Replace the tamron? Supplement it? Something else? SO MANY QUESTIONS! No easy answers.
What I decided, though, was that the idea of a “street kit” made a lot of sense and the Tamron is a good lens for the street kit, but for my “serious” kit, that lens has compromises I’m not really satisfied with; it’s not wide enough or sharp enough for things I’d like to do. So I think it makes sense to plan for an upgrade to the “serious kit” to live full time with the big lenses and make the Tamron a full time street kit lens. Since I think I’m close to buying a 7D, this seems to make sense. (yes, I’m using “seems” a lot tonight, because these plans aren’t final. your feedback welcome).
One change I’d make in buying a lens to fit this need is to do away with the mega-zoom; that causes compromises in the optics that I can accept when I’m carrying a low-profile camera around a city in a walk-about, but I’m not so happy with those compromises when I’m taking landscapes on a tripod in the middle of Yosemite. I can also go wider, but if you push the zoom on the wide side, you start forcing those compromises in the other direction (and besides, I need an excuse to BUY THE SIGMA 10-20! MORE GLASS! NEED MORE LENSES!) — so I’m considering a lens with a more “normal” zoom ratio, and one that’s got a high sharpness and quality.
I’ve been researching lenses that the photographers I follow are using, and one that seems to keep popping up is the Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5 and so that seems to be my leading candidate. I need to rent it and take it out for a spin and see what I like. it gives me a tiny gap in zoom coverage (15-85, 100-400) but that’s more than acceptable to me. It’s also something I can find used if I want to. Dave Cardinal has a nice piece on the Sigma 24-70, and that looks interesting as well. If the Tamron isn’t back for my next trip, I’ll likely rent that and take it with me to try it out.
So we’ll see. No need to make this decision right away or in haste. The fun part of these challenges is that you can solve a problem in a number of different ways.
But right now, if I were to make these decisions again, I wouldn’t buy the Tamron again — I think there are better options. If I wanted to do something similar I’d use the Sigma 18-200 and give up that last ounce of zoom capability, but my general feeling now is that a better option for that street camera is the Canon G11
Three rules “they” tell new photographers — and why “they” are wrong.
There are three rules that seem to be thrown out “by the pros” at new photographers all the time, ideas repeated constantly as part of the “how to be a better photographer” lectures.
- You Must Shoot Every Day. You Must Carry Your Camera Everywhere
- You Must Shoot in Manual Mode (and turn off autofocus, too!)
- You must shoot early in the morning or late at night, not in the middle of the day
And they’re wrong.
Okay, they’re not completely right — cliches are cliches because they are truths spoken until you’re tired of hearing them. These are truths that aren’t really true any more because they need to be updated to the current state of the art in photography. And so I will:
You Must Shoot Every Day. You Must Carry Your Camera Everywhere
This rule has a good intent — to get you in the habit of taking photographs and learning to see with your camera. In the day when people shot film and sent their film off to labs to be developed and printed, this rule mostly made sense.
Today, the photographer is also the lab; to be a really good photographer, you have to not only be strong behind the camera, you have to be strong behind the monitor; you have to work on both your capture skills and your processing skills — and because of this, telling people that they have to shoot images every day is a bad idea. It sets the mental mindset that the capturing of images is what matters, not the creation of the best possible images (this is, by the way, my only possible criticism of The Best Camera, and it’s a minor one as its strongest).
What we should be telling photographers is not to shoot images every day, but to work on their craft every day — although even that bothers me, because if you turn this into a grind, you’re going to turn people off on it. Weekends exist for a reason, and you shouldn’t be setting tasks that remove the joy from it.
What this rule is really trying to do is create the habit of thinking and acting like a photographer: that means spending the time to improve your skills and learning to see and think through your photography, to build the habits that allow you to be ready when a photo opportunity happens — and have your gear handy so you can capture it.
And THEN go back to the digital lab and create the best possible image out of that capture.
The core of the rule is good: becoming a better photographer takes time and commitment, you must be willing to invest in improving yourself, and that takes time behind the camera — but it also now takes time in the digital darkroom, and in many ways, the darkroom can be more important to taking that step from “pretty good” to “wow” as the capture.
Don’t just carry your camera around and take random pictures of random things and think that’ll make you a better photographer. Honor the intent of the rule, which is to commit the time and energy to your craft, both in the field and in the lab. Time spent taking pictures outside of your comfort zone and of subjects you don’t normally shoot is a good idea, but spending time honing your photoshop skills is at least important, and honestly, I think it’s more important to shifting the quality of your images to that next level.
You Must Shoot in Manual Mode (and turn off autofocus, too!)
The intent of this rule is good — if you just stick your camera in “P”rogram mode and let it make the decisions, it will save you (mostly) from taking really crappy pictures (mostly), but it will also prevent you from taking really great pictures, because it’s going to navigate the capture into the safe, conservative areas. As good as digital imaging is getting these days, no camera can make decisions that lead to the best possible images — not without help.
But the idea that photographers have to shoot in manual mode comes from the days when cameras were stupid; that’s far from the situation now, and if you follow this advice blindly you will be hurting your ability to take the best possible images because you will be cutting yourself off from taking advantage of the intelligence being built into modern digital cameras.
The more I read the writings of today’s top pros and the more I hear them speak, the more I realize that THEY are spending less and less time in manual mode. This rule isn’t wrong, but it needs to be updated.
The core of this rule is this: you can’t be a great photographer on autopilot. If you don’t let the camera control the capture, it will not try for a superior image but to avoid a disasterous one; you’ll get mediocrity. This is less true with every generation of digital camera coming out, but ultimately, it’s about who’s in charge.
If you let the camera be in charge, your images will be “safe” and safe images are rarely great.
This does NOT mean you have to shoot in manual, though. What it means is you have to spend the time and energy to learn what the camera can do — all of it. And then take advantage of what it can do and adjust it to make it do what you want. That doesn’t mean shoot manual, but it does mean know WHEN to shoot in manual. It also means knowing when to shoot in Aperture mode, or Shutter mode, or using exposure compensation or bracketing.
It means knowing when to adjust white balance and when to leave it alone, it means knowing how to take advantage of autofocus and when to shut it off and use manual focusing. It means understanding aperture and depth of field, it means knowing the noise characteristics of your camera so you use the proper ISO setting to eliminate that noise — or accentuate it.
There are a lot of capabilities in that camera body — learn them and learn how to take advantage of them. If you are shooting in manual mode, you are making your job harder than it has to be, and in fact, you aren’t putting yourself in control of the camera.
“shooting manual” is the code for telling the camera what to do. Today, there are many ways to do that beyond turning off the camera’s brain and doing it all yourself. If you aren’t taking advantage of them, you are hurting your ability to create the best possible images. In some ways, this makes your job more complex, because there are more variables and options to learn and consider. In practice, once you understand what those options can do and how to take advantage of them and once you learn the quirks of your specific model of camera, many things open up and your life as a photographer becomes easier.
What’s important is that you teach yourself how to take advantage of and control the features, so they don’t control you, and to do it so it becomes part of your habits of creating good images. It’s not enough to be able to think about how to take the next image, you have to just know and do it — otherwise, images will be lost before you get the camera set up.
It’s not about manual mode any more, it’s about not being in that green P of Program mode, and it’s about knowing how to adjust how the camera thinks so it does what you want, not what it thinks you want. Once you and the camera learn to think together, though, you’ll make many beautiful images.
Me, personally? I spend 95% of my time in Aperture mode, and 90% of the adjustments I might have used manual mode for five years ago I do via exposure compensations instead.
You must shoot early in the morning or late at night, not in the middle of the day
This is “the golden hour” rule; that time just before and after dawn, and before and after sunset when the light when you avoid the worst of the glare and shadowing and the oblique angle of light brings out the colors of your subject.
The reality is this: the golden hour can definitely enhance photos. If you can shoot then, do so. I certainly do. That’s assuming you don’t get up at 4AM to find your dawn shooting fogged out or a lack of any cloud cover giving you — well, blah, boring dawn sunrises.This also presumes THAT YOU CAN re-arrange your schedule into the golden hour. If you are a photographer who isn’t a full-time photographer, that’s not necessarily easy and sometimes not possible.
I take a different view. For many of us, simply being able to go out and shoot is sometimes a challenge. I’m lucky to get to the Grand Tetons, spending a week of dawns and sunsets there waiting for the “right moment” is practically speaking impossible; in fact on my yellowstone trip, we got down to the Tetons for a partial day starting mid-morning. If you follow the “golden hour” rule, I might as well have not brought the camera.
Yeah, right. Fat chance.
So I turn this rule on its ear. It’s not about shooting only during those golden hours. Instead, I think of it in terms of what can I shoot that is compelling when I’m able to shoot. As it turns out, I think my Teton landscapes turned out pretty well, but there were other shots I was hoping for — especially the fall foliage aspens — where it simply didn’t work; in fact there was only one shot I took I felt worth keeping:
And that’s the key to rethinking the “Golden Hour” rule: don’t lower your standards because of the timing of your photography; instead, find the photography that works given the timing. Maybe that means going into the trees and shooting macro instead of landscape, or focusing on animals or birds instead of trees or mountains. Maybe it’s using a different filtration to cut the glare, or a different look to the location, such as my “blue” shot where I went for the distant hills and emphasized the blue haze instead of fighting it. For my Mt. Moran shots, I not only added both a polarizer and an ND, which allowed me to go with a slow shutter speed, which cut much of the ripples and accentuated the reflection — moving the emphasis away from the mountain with the fairly flat lighting. Is it a killer photo? It’s not Galen-Rowell-Alpenglow killer, but I rather like it (although I overdid the sky in post and want to fix that some day, a bit too much polarizer), and I really like the blue photo as probably my favorite of the day’s shoots.
I think they hold their own, even if they were taken mid-day in the glare of a full sun. And it sure is better than not taking the photos. This rule teaches the mindset that if you aren’t doing it “by the book”, you might as well bother. And some days, that’s true. If I’d visited this spot in mid-June instead of late september, the lighting would have been a lot harsher and it probably wouldn’t have been worth pulling out the camera.
Which is my point. What I don’t like about this rule is that it’s defeatist. My rule is different; it’s that you should pull out the camera whenever you can, and then go find the pictures that are worthy of being taken. This rule is, in fact, in direct conflict with the first rule, which says you should be shooting every day, because it’s telling you not to shoot unless conditions are perfect.
Me? I shoot whenever I CAN shoot, given I have a “real” job and a life and all of the complexities that keep me away from the camera. I’ve been trying, frankly, to get to Mono Lake for three years now and still haven’t seen the damn thing, much less photographed it. Maybe in 2010. Think I’m going to only take the camera if I can do the golden hour dance? Fat chance. If I can get there, I’ll have my gear in hand and find shots worthy of being there for.
Or maybe not. Some days it happens. But as in my Teton’s trip, if I’d followed the common wisdom of only shooting in the edges of the day and avoiding the glare of mid-day, I’d have zero shots of the Tetons. I broke the rules going for my aspen foliage shots, too, and while I threw out almost all of the shots, I kept one, which is better than ZERO.
So here’s why these three rules are wrong: it’s not about shooting bad shots every day just to be shooting, it’s about working on your craft on a regular basis to become a better photographer, but not working so much you grow to hate doing it. It’s not about “shooting manual”, it’s about being in control of your camera and bending it to your will to get the image you see, not the image the camera wants to hand you. And it’s not about the Golden Hour (although, dammit, if you can do it, do it!), because if you wait until conditions are perfect to shoot images, you own’t shoot very often. It’s about thinking about how, when you do pull out the camera, to take images that are up to your standards.
The “Golden Hour” rule really bothers me, because there’s an implicit “it’s okay to not bother” approval given. It’s never okay to not try; it’s okay to fail, it’s okay to throw out 100% of the day’s shoot if what you try didn’t work — but it’s never okay to not try.
So here are my three rules, the ones I think “we” should be telling new photographers instead of these three rules:
- Commit yourself to being the best photographer you can be. Spend as much time as you can with a camera in your hand, but spend what time you have on practicing creating the best photo you can at that time.
- Learn as much about your gear as you can, and understand how to use the capabilities to create the image you want to create.
- There’s always something worthy of a photograph if you choose to look for it. It is better to take photos at a “bad” time than take no photos waiting for a “good” time. When you take photos, take the best possible shots available rather than bad photos of what you planned to shoot. Flexibility and an open mind wins out over giving up.
I mean, seriously, who in their right mind does bird photography in a white-out fog, anyway? Wouldn’t it be better to head for the Starbucks and wait for better weather?
In search of winter birds…
Some thoughts on last weekend’s birding trip to the central valley, but more from a photography point of view….
When the winter birds arrive, it’s time for some special photography. Special and sometimes challenging. For me, the special winter bird is the Sandhill Crane, which winters in various locations along California’s central valley. We also get large numbers of geese, including Snow, Ross’s and the Greater White-Fronted as well as our dear friend, the Canada Goose (aka “Flying Pig”), as well as a few zillion ducks.
But it’s the Cranes that I find most fascinating and challenging to watch and to capture. This is my third winter photographing in the refuges in the central valley, and this is the first year I’ve really gotten photos of the Sandhill Cranes I like:
It was also the first opportunity I’ve had to get some really good shots of the greater white-fronted goose, because at Los Consumnes I ran into a small flock that was close to the trails and not overly freaked at having people nearby.
So by all accounts, the trip was a success. When I was at Merced I got some nice flock shots, but to date, getting up close and personal with Sandhill cranes has been a real challenge, especially since I’m only shooting at about 400mm (plus crop factor) and not someone who carries around one of the 500/600/800mm behemoths with me. Anyone who wants to donate a 500mm lens to the cause, feel free to drop me email…
What you don’t see if you browse through my flickr sets from the merced and lodi/galt trip is how many images got thrown away….
I ended up throwing out every image taken at Woodbridge Road and Isenberg Crane Refuge because they were flawed. Every damn one.
When you go through your day’s shoot, one part of the processing workflow is rejecting dings. All photographers have dings, and I’ve found as my eye has matured my percentage of dings actually goes up, because I’m fussier about what I keep than I used to.
When you’re editing your photos and tossing out the dings, do you ever sit down and analyze why they’re dings? understanding what’s failing helps you understand the weaknesses in your technology and technique, and through that learn how to improve yourself as a photographer. Photos aren’t “magically” bad, they’re bad for a reason, and a little analysis and introspection can help you understand how to make better pictures.
The first time I raelly sat down and analyzed my failures in detail instead of just tossing them was during a winter trip to Yosemite. Yosemite Falls had some interesting ice formations, and about every 20 minutes, chunks of ice would break loose and create an ice fall — I spent a wonderful couple of hours watching and shooting.
And 99% of the images were crap. unusable. Almost a “toss the camera in the river” moment, because I had no idea why, but I sat down and started going over the dings in detail looking for insight, but after about 30 minutes, I came to realize what I was seeing was camera shake — despite being locked down on a tripod like a good photographer does. It was one of the first times I’d done winter photography, and while I did most of it right, I neglected to use a remote shutter, and it was cold, so I was wearing gloves, which were thick enough that handling the camera and pushing the shutter button was causing me to bounce the camera around, causing motion blur; what finally caught my eye was that the blur was vertical — artifacts were in focus, but elongated.
I’m very good at using a remote shutter release now, and this is frankly one of those things where if you’re used to hand-holding a camera and shooting moving things, and you shift to tripod work shooting relatively static things (especially through ND filters for motion blur) you have to rethink your technique, because what makes it possible to freeze a goose in mid-air also protects you from motion blur and camera shake by freezing the motion of the camera; with really slow (10-30 second) exposures minor shake issues tend to disappear as well, but when you get in that middle ground around 1/4 second, it can be brutal. And the first time it bites you, it’s probably going to be a big surprise…
And that’s part of what happened to me last weekend. I made a couple of mistakes in my technique, both of them quite avoidable. The first was immediately obvious on edit: it was brutally cold (36 degrees) on site when I got there, and what was I doing? Driving around in my nice warm car with the heater turned up, rolling down the window and doing the car-blind thing taking photos of sandhill cranes, through a lens that immediately dewed up with condensed moisture when the nice cold air hit it from outside. oops.
My other problem? It was early morning, heavily overcast (and cold). I’m shooting at 400ISO, about as fast as I want to push the 30D, and I’m shooting my 300F4 plus a 1.4x, for 420 F5.6 before crop factor. And in the low light, I’m seeing shutter speeds of 1/250 to 1/400. It’s going to be tough getting really sharp images at that speed handholding that lens under the best of circumstances, and in this case, I was sitting in a running car, meaning the entire foundation of my shot was vibrating underneath me, and I was facing forward and shooting out the passenger window, meaning my ability to stabilize the lens was lousy. Bad shooting hygiene on a number of levels.
My worst mistake here? Not reviewing the early shots and catching the mistakes in the field. That’s why tools like the HoodLoupe
In retrospect, pushing to ISO 800 and accepting a bit more noise would have helped, but being more careful about holding the lens, or being more persistant about shifting the shot to the driver side and using a beanbag on the doorframe would have helped a LOT. As would have being less interested in warm than good photography. And in this case, I forgot my gloves and was wearing a jacket that wasn’t heavy enough for the weather — don’t neglect the details of comfort, because they can make or break a trip; and the condensation issue would have gone away if I wasn’t trying to keep from freezing my fingers off between shots…
These are all learning tools if you choose to make them so. Was the trip a failure? Far from it; I did get some nice shots of the cranes, and I got some really good shots of the geese, and even if i wish I’d gotten more (and better) shots, there’s always next time. And now I have a better feel for what I need to do to shoot well in those kind of field situations.
And that’s never a bad thing; and there’s always next trip.
I guess I’m a real photographer now…
I guess I qualify as a real photographer now. I’ve broken a lens. My Tamron AF 28-300mm
Oh well. it’s going to have to go off for repair. I’m tempted to open it up myself, but I think I’ll restrain myself and let the experts fix it. But this leaves me with a little problem — my widest lens is my 100-400; not a good lens for family photos for christmas.
So I think I’m going to rent; I have to decide what to take with. My as well use the time as an excuse to scout the replacement, or at least potential.
Do I like this lens? Absolutely. It fit exactly the needs I defined and wanted when I bought it. It’s a bit soft at 300mm, but that was expected and for my use is acceptable. I wanted a general “carry around” lens with a wide range that wasn’t too large and bulky and “obvious” — something I could put on the Rebel XT and carry around with me on a day to day basis with flexibility, but without screaming EXPENSIVE CAMERA everywhere I went.
It fit that role perfectly; now, if only I spent more time outside of my cube where I could take advantage of having a camera with me… (a quick hint to computer geeks with cameras, make your next computer bag a camera bag with room for your laptop. I replaced my laptop backpack with a Tamrac 3385
Having said that, would I but the Tamron lens again? No. Not because it broke, not because of any flaw with the lens itself, but because I’m finding there’s one aspect of it that I’d do differently. it’s not wide enough. I was too worried about getting the extra magnification in the zoom (the bird photographer in me) and not enough about the other side of the zoom range.
So if I were to do this over again, I’d choose a wider lens with a shorter maximum zoom range, because it fits the rest of my gear better. When I’m out shooting I usually hit a point where I want something wider than I have, and while the Sigma 10-20mm
Half Dome from Tunnel View
Working on things for the holidays, and here’s one of the images I’m making prints of:
This is a reprocessing of this shot from a 2007 trip.
Just a LITTLE bit better, I think. Why spending time on practicing your post processing is a good idea…
The good news is — I’ve finished christmas shopping. The bad news is: I have a bunch of empty frames that need things put in them before I can wrap them…
I decided after thinking about it not to do a calendar this year; instead, I’m doing some prints to give away to some people. It’s making me take a fresh look at some of my images, and I’m seeing I can take some things I thought were pretty good and make them a lot better.
At least, I think they’re better…
(updated. I realized this morning I patched in the thumbnail of the wrong photo; corrected to show the proper previous photo.. sigh)
and any purchases you made will be treated as referrals by us.
