editorial, lifestyle, travel, and architecture photography & fine art boutique printing
Can you tell that a couple of the members of the household are a wee bit obsessed with birds? Remarks on the 5D Mark III on loan from Canon Professional Services, as well as the recently announced Focus Tune from Michael Tapes Designs, intended to introduce a bit of automation to setting Autofocus Micro Adjustments with LensAlign to follow in the coming weeks.
Earlier this month we moved a scheduled trip to the mountains up by one week–changing colors in the mountains decided not to follow what we thought were the demands of our own work calendars! For four days, Summer and I traveled south from Boone, NC and worked out way to Asheville. The daily changes in the weather seemed to have a direct effect on the colors we were seeing. They would intensify with each passing night…even the morning after an epic rainstorm that tested the abilities of the rain fly on my ten year old tent. A couple drips on my head did substitute the alarm I had set on my phone!
The two lenses I found myself using most were my 70-200mm for isolating subjects, and my 24mm TS-E for the lens movements that it enables me to make for maximum sharpness and distortion-free framing. My only regret several days into the trip was that the majority of my panorama photography equipment had been left at home. For the most part, my move to the 5D Mark II in 2009 changed the way I approached landscape photography; I began to make fewer panoramas as the larger mexapigel count of the camera enabled to me to make large prints from a single file. However, the wide and short panoramic format is befitting much of the scenery in the area. Given that my preference for the Blue Ridge Highway and the Smokies in general is car camping, the panorama rails will be sure to make the cut for the next adventure!
More to follow!
I returned on Sunday afternoon from photographing Alissa and Paul’s wedding at the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort, Kentucky. One of the items on their “wish list” of photographs was a portrait that highlighted the industrial look and feel of the distillery. Here, we photographed them adjacent to a warehouse, standing on the tracks used to roll barrels of aged bourbon to the bottling plant.
We used three lights for this portrait: the key was in an umbrella on camera left, with a fill held by my partner on camera right. The yellow backwash for the brick was created with a flash behind the bride and groom (their wedding colors were yellow and orange.) I think this light really helps to separate them from the wall behind them and gives the image more of a three-dimensional appearance.
More to come!
The same day that I explored Medoc Mountain State Park with my partner and rescued a slider on the return home, we discovered an amazing botanical gardens. Marked with a simple sign on US 401 , we had no idea what was beyond the small parking lot. Allen DeHart, who created the space with his wife and recently bequeathed the property to Louisburg College, found us as we were making our exit. Little did we know that DeHart was the author of a book on our shelf at home, Trails of the Triangle, and also participated in the creation of the Appalachian Trail as well as North Carolina’s Mountain to Sea trail. While we were not there for the most ideal light, this is an amazing place. This is place to which we will return.
More to come.
On our way home from Medoc Mountain State Park, Summer exclaimed “Pull over!” This happened just as we were passing an abandoned church in Louisburg, and I dodged into the old dirt driveway. Before the car was off, she had already bolted out the passenger door and was running up the road where a turtle had been attempting to cross. Before setting him down safely on the side of the road he was trying to reach (and in the general direction he was pointed before our intervention) I made a quick portrait with his distinct red patch. Hopefully he found where he was trying to get to.
More to come.
This weekend we went exploring a bit. Rain pushed our plans back a bit but we arose early Sunday morning and headed out towards Medoc Mountain State Park, about ninety minutes northeast of the Triangle. Once a volcanic mountain, the “peak” is now 325 feet above sea level and is entirely forested. All the same, it was a gorgeous, cool (if humid), overcast, and surprisingly minimally-buggy morning hiking in the woods.
As with a lot of hiking in the East, I find myself looking down at my feet a lot. This has the benefit of avoiding (most) roots and errant rocks, but it also gives me the opportunity to see things that others might easily miss. The small details are often just as interesting as the whole.
While I packed several lenses for the trip, I found myself hiking the majority of the time with my new 50mm f/1.2L. Some of that is the “new, shiny” effect of a new lens, but it’s also that I’m trying to work within the limitations of a fixed focal length: using the “human zoom” of getting closer or backing away from my subject, and thinking a bit outside of the box.
When we returned to the trail we found a cluster of Tiger Swallowtails sitting on the ground. I did not expect them to stay put while I ran to the car to grab my macro lens, but sure enough one let me approach! It was a good day for walking in the woods.
Last month we spent a few days in the Florida Keys and worked our way northward into the Everglades before embarking on a two-day road trip home to North Carolina. I had borrowed a 300mm f/2.8L IS II lens from Canon Professional Services and was field testing it as a potential replacement for the 400mm DO IS lens. This was also the final trial for my Canon 7D before making a decision to keep or sell the body.
I will admit that I was impressed by the new 300mm, but while it is wickedly sharp and the Image Stabilization system is incredibly good, the lens does begin to “feel” heavy in hand rather quickly. This is especially true when in an awkward position to begin with, as in the image above, where I was crawling through the grass in the parking lot to Anhinga Trail (hence the blurred/hazy green effect on the lower part of the Ibis’ body) and keeping the front element of the lens propped up on fingertips became trying after a few minutes. This lens weighs a full pound more than the 400mm DO, although it is a full stop faster. That same Image Stabilizer is the reason that on a tripod this lens can do some amazing things.
The exposure information in the image above is accurate: I shot this at 1/15 second on a tripod, at f/8, for an effective 960mm (with the 7D’s 1.6x factor.) And the results are sharp, to boot! So, while I’m not actually convinced that optically the 300mm f/2.8 is any sharper than the 400mm DO in real world testing, the Image Stabilizer runs circles around the sibling that is ten years its senior.
For birds in flight the 300mm seems to be a great combination with the 7D. Even in lower light and backlit situations, like this silhouette at sunset, the two in combination yielded several “keepers.” That said, while I came away impressed with the 300mm f/2.8 and the 7D, I have decided not to keep the latter (and at the moment I simply cannot afford the former.)
The 7D is a very capable and versatile camera, but I simply do not use it enough to justify holding on to it. It’s a camera that I think would have been more frequently in my bag had it been equipped with a smaller (and less noisy) sensor. It’s my hope that its next owner will find more use for it than I have.
What has become a go-to favorite, for me, is my 5D Mark II and the 50mm f/1.2L that my partner encouraged me to acquire after field testing one from Canon back in May. Everything it produces has a special “look.”
More to come.
The week before I helped Summer settle in for a month-long internship in Florida I borrowed a 50mm f/1.2L lens from Canon Professional Services. Over the time I had the lens in my possession, she commented numerous times that I was using my camera more since I’d gotten that lens than in the entire time she’s known me. While I thought it might break the budget, I am now considering acquiring one for myself before the Canon rebates expire at the end of the month of June. While you can read plenty of reviews online that pan the lens for a myriad of issues (many of which can be resolved with focus calibration) the reality is that this lens makes really beautiful images. Bokeh is soft and creamy…it just has a special “look” that it’s f/1.4 brother simply doesn’t share. And is it worth the cost? I don’t know if it’s worth it to anyone else, but if it keeps me in the game–makes me want to pick up my camera and make more images–then it’s worth it to me. It’s worth it to us.
Sometimes the people you photograph bring their own energy to a project and you find that in post you have to make those images adapt. In this case, the natural color of the image took away from the expressions, but I found this slightly bleached effect to make the light moment between Anna and Ben stand out all the more. More to come.