I’m a big fan of architectural photography. There’s something about portraying the things we construct to enclose space that appeals to my sense of order. I really like the little details one can find on projects, some essential to the structure and some just there for the fun of it or to enhance the story being told about the purpose. I’m definitely just an amateur when it comes to these type of images but when something catches my eye I do like to see what I can capture about it. Have you ever looked at a building or other structure and felt it just belongs where it’s place? Sort of like nothing else would fit there or serve that purpose.
I’ve been fortunate to wander around the country quite a bit and take my camera with me. Here in no particular order or grouping are some architectural images I like. Click on an image to see the full picture.
Barn Structure, NebraskaWater Garden, Ft. WorthRoof Detail, MontanaBarn Detail, WyomingArt Installation, Ann ArborGrain Elevators, WisconsinHome Detail, MontanaSidewalk Lights, WyomingOffice Building, Battle CreekLutheran Church, WisconsinFront Detail, MontanaTrain Station, Montana
There’s a small wetland near here serving as a nesting area for blue herons. When the leaves are off the trees, from the boardwalk through the area, you can see the nests high up in the trees. Right now the birds are beginning to return and repair their nests, setting up shop for eggs and chicks. I took my 500mm lens there the other day to see if my fine-tuning would deliver the sharpness I wanted. It turned out to be a good day for it. The sky was cloudless and the sun was shining almost directly into the wetland and on the birds. This meant faster shutter speeds and apertures in the sweet spot for lens sharpness. A bonus was the bald eagle that was hanging around the area, probably more for the fish in the small stream than the herons. Although every time the eagle flew to a new perch the herons took to the air and circled their nesting area cautiously.
I was able to get images of the birds both roosting as well as on the wing, generally from 400-500 feet away. All images were made with a tripod. Getting good images of flying birds is a challenge for me but these turned out pretty good. Now that spring is showing up and the birds are returning there’ll be many more opportunities to work with this lens.
Watched a webinar today on making images that require a tripod to create. There are the obvious things – flowing water, nightscapes, motion blur, etc. – that are difficult or impossible to hand hold. In addition, though, there are other reasons to use a tripod to tell a story. Perhaps a long exposure is needed to bring enough light to the sensor, like a landscape image made long after sunset. Or a lightpainting exercise that also uses a long exposure to give time for select areas of the subject to be illuminated.
I’ve played around with these different ideas at various times in addition to using a tripod to ensure a sharp image. Looking at the images shown during the webinar reminded me of a couple of versions I made on the Florida coast. Here’s the one I like:
I was just strolling along the seawall looking at the sun setting and the light changing when I happened on this photographer stalking a heron. Obviously I needed a tripod to make this (1 second shutter speed, f/8 to give wider depth of field) but I noticed the photographer was also using a tripod. From the angle they are setting up for I believe they were trying to make an image with the heron in front of the setting sun. The magenta color cast was because the sun was setting behind a thin layer of clouds.
There are several images of this composition as the photographer slowly walked down the beach following the heron. The bird didn’t seem perturbed about being photographed; it took its time walking down the beach just at the waterline. I didn’t bother the photographer but would have really liked to see what the results of their efforts turned out to be.
Tripods are very important to both long exposure and sharp images. Modern ones can be found in very light weights and a variety of configurations. There are even versions for tabletop photography. Sure, it’s one more piece of equipment to haul around but having one expands the range of what’s possible for compositions and story telling.
Some people have said the vast majority of photography is derivative – there are no new images just replicas. Perhaps this is true, especially for outdoor photography. A casual glance in any number of magazines or on websites would lead one to believe every square inch of the planet has been photographed and presented for viewing in one form or the other. While this might deter someone from taking the time to create another image of a known scene I find another maxim of photography to be true. Send a dozen photographers to the same location and you’ll get a dozen different images.
To me this is especially true of scenes made famous by photographers of the past. Numerous people have worked hard to duplicate Ansel Adam’s images of Yosemite and the Tetons. In some cases an exact replica is impossible because the landscape has changed but in many there are very close examples of a person’s willingness to take the time and effort to understand what went into the original work. Sometimes it seems this endeavor is more important than the final image.
I find myself in the same situation sometimes, especially when confronted with a “famous” scene or location. I remember setting up and photographing Donner Lake from the top of the pass of the same name. It was a nice vista with some American history behind it. I didn’t doubt other photographers had made the same composition. After a little research, though, I found the same composition had been made by numerous photographers going back to the 1800’s! I told people I should have looked around for the tripod marks on the rocks.
It is fun to look at the work of past photographers who were very serious about their efforts to tell a story or capture an emotion. One of my favorites is Eliot Porter. And one of my favorite images of his is this one:
This is Red Bud in Bottom Land, photographed in the Red River Gorge of Kentucky. It’s a typical scene anyone would see in the early spring driving through the gorge. But Porter was a person to stop and create an image of it, giving the rest of us the opportunity to share with him what he saw on that day.
It was this image that was on the poster announcing Porter’s exhibit at the New York Metropolitan Museum, sometime in the 1970’s I believe. The exhibition was one of the first of color photography at the Museum – people then still didn’t consider photography, especially color, to be actual art. Porter’s work changed their minds. I mention this only because I have a copy of that poster, purchased years before I knew who Porter was. I just liked the scene – it jumped out at me while flipping through a bin of posters in a shop.
And it stuck with me over the years. So much so that one day while wandering through another southern forest I saw a similar composition and made this image:
This is dogwood, not red bud, but I get the same emotion from it as I do from Porter’s image. I’m sure had I not looked at Porter’s image hanging on my wall for several years that I would have just walked by this scene in the woods. But I didn’t because it caught my somewhat prepared eye and I thought about what Porter may have felt when he saw his composition.
Looking at this now I’m critical of the image quality: the exposure could be better, the focus is slightly off, the color balance seems not quite right. But that’s judging from a digital perspective. This image is from a Kodachrome slide, made with a manual 35mm camera while I was guessing about the proper exposure because I was still a novice. Still, it captures the essence of what I wanted to portray, all because I remembered Porter’s image.
I have a couple of books of Porter’s photography. He made several images of Glen Canyon before it was flooded by the dam, and he’s pretty famous for images of birds he made in the wild. There are other landscapes he made but this one, the red bud in a spring forest, remains my favorite. I continue to look whenever I’m out to see if there are similar compositions but so far nothing. At least I have one that recalls the vision of a master photographer.
Local camera club recently had a session where members could play around with light painting. This is a cool way to creatively portray subjects, usually still life. You put the camera on a tripod, set the mode on Manual, focus on the subject and then hold the shutter open for 10-20 seconds. Oh, yeah, this all happens in the dark because once the shutter is open you take a small light and “paint” on the subject to bring out the elements you want to highlight. Each image is unique as it’s very hard to duplicate the pattern of light you put on the subject. And the result is very difficult to replicate with flash or continuous lighting systems. It’s lots of fun to try different types of lights and different durations of shutter speed. Here’s an example:
The expert at this is Dave Black, who has been working with this technique for years. You can see his work and read about how he does it here:
This technique doesn’t require a lot of specialized equipment. All you really need is a dark room, tripod, camera with Manual exposure mode and a source of lighting. Nice way to spend an afternoon or evening creating something uniquely yours.
Last fall finally got around to visiting this national park after a couple of previous attempts. It’s such a spectacular place I didn’t want to short-change it so got to spend a week on the south rim. There’s plenty to see, wandering up and down the rim from one end of the road to the other. Thought it would be the “off” season but there were plenty of people there enjoying the sights. It seemed most of them weren’t from the US – I guess that European fall vacation thing is real as the different countries empty out to so sightseeing!
I thought I’d posted these images on the other blog that was standing in for this one but I can’t find an entry for this trip on that site. If you’re seeing these images for the second time I apologize, although I don’t think scenes like this are good for just one viewing! You should be able to click on an individual image to see it bigger.
The birds are California condors, sitting in the sun to warm up. Some of these birds were transplanted from California once their numbers grew large enough and they now call the canyon their home. You can see them floating on the thermals around the rim. It’s difficult to appreciate just how big they are until one comes soaring by close to the edge. That seven foot wingspread is amazing.
The ground squirrel is one of many running around the rim trail. They didn’t seem particularly disturbed by all the people milling around and I didn’t see anyone feeding them. They were pretty fearless about walking along the edge of the rim. Behind the squirrel in this image is a straight dropoff of several hundred feet.
As I expected a photographer can just sit in one place all day and get different images of the same view as the light and clouds change. Even after sunset, with a long exposure, the scenery is amazing.
The weather here since fall has been off and on for actual winter. There was a really big snowstorm that gave us close to our annual amount of snow at one time. Since then not much, just a dusting here and there along with some fairly cold, then warm, weather. I thought all the wind would have stripped the leaves completely off the trees but there were a few hanging around long enough to get stuck in the lake ice. Get the right angle of sunlight on them and the result is an interesting in look at the past few months.
I’m happy to announce this blog is back. The technical issues that prevented me from posting here have been resolved (I had to buy a new laptop to get the most recent operating system and browser) so I’m able to post new entries. For those of you who were following me on my website blog (www.melmannphoto.com) I appreciate your loyalty. One advantage of posting here is any new content will send out an alert to you if you’ve signed up. No more checking my website blog to see if there’s something new. I’m hoping all of you who had signed up before are still active in this system. I’ll post a notice on my website blog about the return to this site so you can determine whether the automatic alerts from here are still working.
For my first returning post here I’ll put up the last entry from my website blog just to see how it’ll turn out going through the new operating system and browser. I expect to get back to posting more regularly and hope you enjoy what I’m seeing.
Details, details…
I’m always envious of wildlife photographers whose images are so sharp it feels like you’re right on top of the subject, able to see every feather or hair or scale. I’ve come to realize there are three aspects to achieving this level of image quality: proximity, focus, and equipment.
A TV commentator, talking about the images of the outside world portrayed on their show each time, said they had lots of film showing wildlife walking away from them. That’s how I feel a lot trying to get close enough to make the subject more than just a dot in the image. I’ve learned you can’t zoom into sharpness – you have to be where you can see the sharpness before making the image. Learning to be where the wildlife will come by eventually is a skill and patience to wait for them to show up and close is a virtue. Practice, practice.
The focus part is making sure the details that are really important are the ones the camera is paying attention to when autofocusing. I’ve many images where I put the autofocus spot right on the body of an animal or bird only to discover later that the head or eye is out of focus. There’s not enough depth of field to recover from making the mistake of literally focusing on the wrong thing.
What’s been the best lesson is that not all lenses are equal when it comes to sharpness. You just have to try them out, read about them, get recommendations from people who are more experienced with them, and then settle on the one that delivers what you’re looking for. I have half a dozen telephoto lenses and each one has a different ability to reach out and touch to the degree of sharpness I want. I’m gradually learning the quirks of each one and determining when the conditions are such that choosing this one over that one is the best way to get the image I want.
The latest member of this collection is the Nikon 500mm f/5.6 PF (there are lots of other letters in the designation but PF is how I describe it). From what I’d read, and the recommendation from a photographer who is much better than me, this lens provides me the focal length I want (don’t have to get that close) and the sharpness I expect. I’ve matched it to a Nikon D800 and am just wrapping up the fine-tuning of lens to camera. After some shaky starts I believe I’ve got it where I want it. Here are some of the latest images.
Each of these was made from 30-40 feet away. I’ve cropped out a significant portion of the image, probably close to 75%. The aperture was f/5.6 or f/6.3, which is not as open as I would use to get the best sharpness. My testing has shown f/8 or f/11 to deliver the maximum sharpness. I didn’t close the lens down that far because I needed to maintain a higher shutter speed without increasing the ISO. Shutter speeds ranged from 1/400th to 1/1600th sec.
I’m pleased with the degree of sharpness the lens is delivering in these images. The feathers are distinct, the eyes are clear and there is a realism to the images that I like to have. The D800 has lots of pixels to use so cropping doesn’t degrade the sharpness much. Unless wildlife just walks right up to me the proximity thing will always be a compromise but this lens definitely gives me options on where to set up.
Now that we can almost see spring coming here in the upper Midwest I’m looking forward to more birds and animals to be subjects for this system. Hopefully more pleasing images to come.
Due to changes by WordPress to their support for older browsers I am unable to continue this blog. I will be posting instead to my website: www.melmannphoto.com. On the home page in the upper right is a link named Blog. Click on that and you’ll be able to see my entries. Unfortunately there’s no way to subscribe so you’ll have to visit periodically to see what’s new. I regret this change and the inconvenience it causes but hope you will continue “following” me and my photography.
Thank you for your interest in my work. Have a very Merry Christmas!
WordPress, where this blog is located, has informed me their business model doesn’t support older operating systems and browsers. Due to this I’m unable to access my admin pages to post new images and content. This entry is being made using my phone, not a tool that is effective to manage the blog as I want. I will continue sharing images and content on the blog in my personal website. As promised, I will post a link to that in the near future once I have it set up.
Thank you for following this blog. It’s disappointing that technology companies abandon legacy systems and create dissatisfied users. Fortunately I have an alternative service to continue my sharing so I look forward to seeing your comments in the future.
Mel Mann Photography - The Blog 