Tag Archives: Shooting

Going Small

Posted by dkrashb on

Macro photography is one of those fun things I love to do but rarely find the time for.  This is not because it actually takes longer than shooting anything else, but rather because the possibilities expand infinitely as I keep finding subjects that I would never find interesting at a normal distance.  I have spent an hour shooting a single link of a chain.

Not only does shooting up close allow me to extract out a single shape from a conglomeration, but an extremely shallow depth of focus creates an even smaller view of what’s in focus within the frame, creating all kinds of interesting effects.  In “Spiny Plant”–only one small area of the top edge of the plant is in focus because I shot perpendicular to the plant:

“Blossom” also shows this effect:

I almost scrapped this picture because only the very edge of the blossom is in focus, but I kind of liked it after experimenting quite a bit with editing.  “Flower Cluster” shows how this effect puts only one of the berries (or whatever they are called) in sharp focus:

 

“08 The world in a single drop” is one of those shots I really want to be spectacular, but it’s not:

I would prefer to fill the frame with just the drop against the pink background.  I am excited to try some of the tools discussed in the workshop (a close-up lens and extension tubes) to see if I can, in fact, fill the frame with a water drop.  I suppose it will only reflect my lens at that point, though.

I’ve often struggled with the depth of field issue.  As much as I like the effect of a wide-open aperture in macro shots, when I’m shooting something living and moving this way, I find I often get the focus just in front of or just behind what I actually was trying to focus on.  I learned three important things about this last night:  1)  Don’t use autofocus when shooting macro, 2) Shoot parallel to the subject if you want more of it in focus, and 3) Make use of the diopter on the viewfinder if you need it.

The milestone of reading glasses is something that no one really celebrates.  I usually rely on autofocus to solve my vision limitations.  I found when I was shooting the moon (I love saying that) and I was forced to focus manually, I got my sharpest focus by using the LCD on 10x magnification and wearing my reading glasses.  Unfortunately, this doesn’t work well for a subject that moves faster than the moon or that doesn’t accommodate the use of a tripod.  I’m going to have to do some googling on photography, focus, and reading glasses.

Don’t Want to Miss This Syndrome

Posted by dkrashb on

Once again, I find myself shooting the sunset.  Every time I sit down to process photos of the sunset taken from our building, I promise myself I will find a new perspective and not create yet another 100 shots that look like the thousands I’ve taken before.  But then, I look out the window, see amazing things, and grab my camera.

There are several problems with this.  For one thing, I tend to get a very busy foreground with a lot of crap in it I’d really like to get out of my pictures.  I can’t crop the crap out because I would lose much of the sky, which is the whole reason I wanted to shoot in the first place.

The choices that must be made when shooting!  Wouldn’t it be nice if I could just arrange the buildings and landscape with a remote control to best fit my vision?  More realistically, I keep thinking I will run across the street and up the mound so I can shoot over the trees.  But do I ever do that?  No.  I panic when I see the sky and don’t want to miss the perfect color even though I almost always end up deleting the first 10 minutes worth of shots because the color gets better as the sun disappears.

I believe I suffer from “Don’t Want to Miss This” syndrome.  Besides shooting sunsets from bad view points, I also find myself eating foods that no human should ever touch, attending events that are of no interest to me, and taking unreasonable risks (ask me how I once ended up in an ultralight crash).  I wonder if I were in a flock of sheep I would follow them over a cliff just to find out what that was like?

Restraining myself to the subject of photography for the purposes of this post, I find the “Don’t Want to Miss This” syndrome causes an all or nothing kind of pursuit of photos.  It just depends on whether my phobia of missing a shot is outweighing my phobia of missing an experience because I’m too wrapped up in camera gear to participate.  What I need is balance.

The thing about sunsets is that it’s easy enough to find out what time the sun will set.  And, I’m getting pretty good at predicting when we’ll have a great one (which is pretty much about 75% of the time), so seems like I should be able to just plan to go across the street at the right time and shoot.  Perhaps scheduling shoots a few times a week would help balance out the equation?  While I might still grab shots when I notice a sunset, at least I wouldn’t always be shooting from the same place.

Is it too late to change my New Year’s resolutions?