How I Shot That - Late Afternoon Marsh Bench

How I Shot That - Late Afternoon Marsh Bench

Get This Photo
Lens: Sony 50mm 1.8 OSS - http://amzn.to/2tT6LvK
Camera Sony a6000 - http://amzn.to/2FFH6fF

Golden Hour... 

Besides the fall, spring can give you a magnificent glow.  Morning and evening will give different properties so you want to choose your times wisely.  This article will discuss the ending time of light.  

Usually, shooting into the Sun isn't going to be helpful to your photo.  But, like you will find so often in Photography, rules are more like guidelines. And in this case you can find the exception in this: the shadows are not too much.  

Some of this is because many of the latest sensors like the one in my Sony a6000 have great dynamic range.  That means it can bring out the details between shaded and lit areas very well.  I did need to sacrifice one thing, the sky.  

But what happened to me today?  How did I come up onto this place, it could almost be cropped further for different aspects to give a new outcome.  This spot could be used for different types of portraits, nevermind all of the foliage and wildlife that surely must be near this.

By my nature, I'm a very distractible person.  (I try to keep these posts short because of it.)  But this time when I went out with my camera, I used that distraction.  In fact, I had been shooting what I could of wildlife and random people.  This was part of a path that forces you to turn around and head back as it becomes a dead end.  But photography is almost always a matter of perspective.  And walking a path in multiple directions helps me release my distractions and swim in them at the same time.  

So I was heading back from the dead end, and I realized the sun had produced an extra glow due to all of the pollen in the air.  This location was probably one of the richest in pollen thickness in the air... you could smell everything (if it didn't overpower your nose).

And the glow struck me that the shade never was completely dark.  The glow made me wonder because a portrait would give an air of magic to the subject.  The glow made it possible to break so many 'rules' you could find in photography.  

If I had to come back to one thing, that is to explore... even if you can't travel, explore the same places.  Probably more important when you are new than anything, because it gives you experience.  It gives you ideas for the future.  Explore the same thing at different times of day and of the year.

If that skill was good for Ansel Adams (autobiography, http://amzn.to/2FFC96i), I'm sure it will help me out here and there too.

How I Shot That - Thirsty Robin

How I Shot That - Thirsty Robin

shot with: E. Zuiko 135mm f3.5 - http://amzn.to/2DjNoeZ
Beschoi OM-M43 Adapter - http://amzn.to/2DjMU8F
Camera Olympus OM-D E-M10ii - http://amzn.to/2Fu1wb8

Robins are the bird that herald in the first breath of spring.  This little guy came up on the middle of this park path in front of me.  All I had was my Olympus OM-D E-M10ii with an old film lens of 135 mm lens stuck on it.

I didn't want to scare off the bird.  I backed up slowly a few steps and soon realized I had to get down low. After getting down low, I needed to do two more things on my camera to make sure I was as sharp as I could get.  First, I activated focus peaking.  Doing that gives an outline around everything that is sharp.  Then I used a magnify button to make sure I can see the finer focus points.

The lense I used was an adapted lens.  It wasn't originally designed for my camera.  It was an old Olympus film lens E.Zuiko 135mm f3.5.  The nice thing about it, the lens has a big focus ring on it, and it is so easy to operate when you have any kind of gloves on your hands.

So I got low.  But for a while, I think the bird was trying to figure me out... neither of us moved.  Then the robin moved closer to the water of this puddle.  I just checked my focus one more time and started shooting.  Eventually, many times the bird got down to drink.  This photo was probably the sharpest I got.  But the shot was still cropped in a bit, even with the equivalent full frame focal length of 270mm.  That's what you get when you need to step back a few.

Technical detail of this photo:  f3.5, ISO 200, 1/640 sec.

How I Shot That - Returning the Favor, Guitarist and Drummer

How I Shot That - Returning the Favor, Guitarist and Drummer

Lens is the Sony 50mm f1.8 - http://amzn.to/2F96Kcc
Camera is Sony a6000 - http://amzn.to/2ELLKIr
Venue - http://thebrickhouselacrosse.com/
Get this photo

This was maybe a year ago, I had gone out to a new bar that opened.  This was The Brick House with a great space for bands to play.  They have a ton of can and LED lights around the band platform.

Returning the favor (FB page here) has a lot of their own music that is a range from folk/blues to rock/pop with a little reggae sprinkled in for flavor (Reverbnation page here). They have a rather big cast of musicians.  So while They were playing it was a little hard to find a shot that looked good with all of them in it.  Either equipment would hide one of them, or another person did that.

Here is the lead guitarist (also does some vocals) with drummer.  Just the two, but it was a feeling the guitarist was portraying with drummer that caught my attention.  The shot is a little dark with highlights around them for a reason that made love the Black and White treatment I used with this.  Part of what I liked in monochrome was that I had fewer distractions.

But there was another challenge, in Color, the lights were such pure red or blue or green (or whatever color) that it seemed to easily overpower my camera's sensor.  But re-introducing it as B&W gave me all of the detail I saw that night.  And I actually love it.  Specially since it seems so sharp and full of detail to me.

Get this photo

That isn't to say I won't find a color option too!  Such as this one of the drummer with the other guitarist.  This photo also required some treatment in post... but to accentuate some colors but then muting it just a little bit on the drummer, so we can see his face.

But putting that aside, the day I shot these, I couldn't get a decent shot of all of this 5 person band.  Sometimes the reward is gained during a lesson in cutting your losses and in not getting greedy for that 'one' shot.  By moving around and keeping my eyes open I was able to find other wonderful positions.