by tmoffett | Apr 26, 2010 | Black and White, Composition, Landscape, Photo tips
Entwined, Lake Lowell
This image is part of an ongoing series of images that I have been creating around our local reservoir, Lake Lowell. The lakes primary function is to provide water for agriculture, however it is also the home of the Deer Flat National Wildlife Refuge as well as much summertime recreation. Ample opportunity abounds to create beautiful images around the lake. It has become one of my favorite local places to photograph.
Last Spring, Christeena and I arrived about an hour before sunset to explore this area where we had not been before. I explored and made photographs through the sunset. I was really excited about what I had made, then on the way back to the car I spotted these vines. Earlier, with the sun up, I had walked right past this scene, but now, illuminated by nothing but the the blue sky, I was totally taken aback. The dark shadows opened up while the light leaves jumped out at me. I quickly set up the tripod and camera, looked for the most interesting composition, calculated exposure to capture what I felt and then enjoyed the results!
Lesson to be learned: just because the sun has set does not mean it is time to stop photographing. Often the best light happens after sunset. This was more than 15 minutes after the sun had dropped below the horizon. With a tripod long exposures are easily doable. In order to maintain sharpness throughout the image, I shot at f/22 with a 5 second exposure.
by tmoffett | Apr 19, 2010 | Color, Composition, Landscape, Photo tips
Sunset, Ecola State Park
This is another image from my Oregon Coast series. This was our second night on the coast, and that day the marine layer moved in and left it hazy for us all week. At first I was disappointed, but realizing that it wasn’t going away I tried to find images that worked with it. One good thing that it did do was create great color as the sun lowered in the evening sky. I am a black and white shooter, but when you get color like this… well, what else can I say. It did set the stage for some wonderful, romantic evenings.
I love the strong horizontal composition in this image paired with the wonderful warm tones of the sunset suggesting peace and tranquility, warmth and comfort. Capturing a silhouette like this is not to difficult a technique to master. Using a spot meter, meter the sky and increase the exposure about 1 stop. In this case, my meter read f/16 at .6 seconds, so I shot at 1.3 seconds, obviously with the camera on a tripod. To avoid camera shake I always lock the mirror up on my Canon 5D and use a cable release.
by tmoffett | Jul 2, 2007 | Photo tips
Being 2 days before the 4th of July, I thought I would give a few tips on creating great images of your local fireworks displays. One of the first things to consider is vantage point. Where should you be set up? Do you want to include any buildings in your images or do you want a clean sky? Is there a river, lake or pond that would create interesting reflections? these are a few questions to ask yourself before the show, so that you can get set up while it is still light. One other consideration is that I would always recommend that you be upwind from the fireworks, otherwise smoke will be a problem.
One mistake that I commonly see is the improper selection of film or ISO speed on a digital camera. Even though it is dark outside, the fireworks are quite bright. I would recommend using ISO 100 or slower speed film. The images posted here are all made at ISO of 100. I am using an aperture of f5.6 to f8 and my favorite shutter speeds of 2 to 4 seconds. The brightest bursts tend to blow out if I go slower than 5 seconds.
One other thing that I commonly hear is to use a tripod! I disagree here! While a tripod is useful to capture fireworks as we tend to think they should be, and I am a big advocate of using a tripod whenever possible, experiment without one as well. My favorite images of fireworks have been made without a tripod.
Most of all, have fun and enjoy the holiday!
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