Personal Experiences Page 2

The images on this page deal mostly with composition problems.

Basin Runoff: I took this picture from a floating dock on a lake fed by runoff from the Snake river basin in Idaho. I was drawn to the image by the contrast in colors between the clear blue-green water and the red and yellow foliage along the shoreline. Unfortunately, I didn't put anything into the foreground to round the image out. This image would have worked out much better if I had shot from the shore and included some of the cattails there or a rock or really just anything in the foreground. The image, as I took it, has a huge open space in the foreground just begging to be filled. Photo data: Canon Elan II and Sigma 28-70mm f/2.8EX lens in Av mode from tripod. I adjusted the aperture until I got a shutter speed fast enough to stop the movement on the water while at the same time keeping the foreground and background in focus. I also used a Circular Polarizer that I held in front of the lens by hand as I always do. I never carry or use a filter holder because it takes too long to get set up on the front of the lens, makes vignetting worse, takes more space in my camera bag, adds a little more weight to the bag, and makes it more difficult to precisely position the filter. On the other hand, I have to hold the filter steady and up against the front lens element without moving the filter edge into the image area or bumping the lens and causing the image to blur.

Blur Flower 1: I came across this group of flowers alongside an inland road on Terceira. They were growing on an angled road shoulder which made the setup for this photo difficult. I had to constantly struggle with the tripod to keep it sturdy and also keep the camera from falling over on the steep, uneven surface. I used a 20mm wide angle lens and put it right up against the flowers in order to get as many of them in the frame as possible. But the extreme depth of field of the lens didn't help me for this picture. A slight breeze was blowing from time to time and I happened to trip the shutter just before one of the gusts. I don't think I had a shutter speed of over 1/2 second but it was long enough to catch the motion of the flowers. I usually shoot a few frames of a subject when there's a breeze and, in this case, I actually did. But I include this picture on these photography problem pages for the other problems it has. Did you notice that strange gray thing in the bottom left of the image? It doesn't belong there because that's my tripod leg! Finally, the middle right of the image is empty. In my opinion, I should have moved the camera to a different location where the flowers would have filled more of the frame. Photo data: Canon Elan II and Canon 20mm f/2.8 lens on a tripod (as you can see) in Av mode and with the mirror lockup/2-second timer enabled. I use the mirror lockup with nearly every photo I take off the tripod. The only time I don't do so is when I'm shooting action and can't afford to wait two seconds before exposing the film. For this photo it probably would have been worthwhile to not use the mirror lockup. Even though that would potentially have produced a slightly blurry image overall, it would have allowed me to better time the tripping of the shutter between the gusts of breeze. In other words, I wouldn't have had to wait two seconds before exposing the film. Of course I never use the mirror lockup when shooting hand held, either, because there really would be no point in doing so.

Blur Flower 2: Here's another take on the group of flowers. This one at least caught the flowers when the wind wasn't blowing. But I messed up again. I framed this one poorly because I let the shadow of the tripod and the camera cover portions of the image. The worst is the shadow over the flower in the bottom left. I don't think the shadow in the bottom right of the image detracts from it too much and I would have accepted it. But not the one on the flower. On a lesser note, the horizon line between the sky and the ocean in the far background is crooked. What would have worked better for me in these two pictures would be to have tried for the standard macro lens shot of one flower or a small group of them. Instead, I tried to fit too much into the frame with a wide angle lens on a steep incline under a breeze. I could have backed off to eliminate shadows and got the tripod more stable if I had used my 180mm macro lens. But I didn't and instead ended up with a few mediocre photographs. Photo Data: Elan II and Canon 20mm f/2.8 lens on a tripod using mirror lockup.

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