Oct 18, 2018 | B&W Photography, Landscape Photography
B&W is such a romantic, complicated and magical way to tell our visual story no matter the subject. The colors of black, white and all the shades of gray in between intice our imagination to explore and ponder. The drama light can bring to our photography is heightened, intensified and brought to life by all of this. That’s if-if we have all of those colors in our B&W photo. So along with everything else we have to do as photographers, B&W complicates it all by requiring that clean black, that clean white and everything in between. Going back through the blog here, you’ll find a minimum of nine methods of turning our color images to B&W in post. I’ve constantly been in search of the fastest, cleanest and best method to bring B&W to my digital world. At the same time, have fun doing it!
With every new camera body, one of the first things I do is shot the Monochrome or B&W Picture Control. I then take the color file into post, do my current B&W conversion and print. And so it was with the Z7 and that’s when it all changed. I set the Monochrome Picture Control settings (as seen below) and shot. The B&W photo appeared as B&W in PhotoMechanic as usual. I hit Cmd E and the Nef launches in ACR in B&W! Not only that, my settings are there from the camera. But the best part, the image appears as I shot it, no conversion required. And other than perhaps a tweak, the image is done, as in, no more B&W conversion in post, done! I can only speak for myself and my own photography, but the Z7 has made my B&W not only easy, fast and simple, but fun!
Oct 11, 2018 | B&W Photography, Landscape Photography
The story of the Grand Tetons to me is often best told in B&W. Their size, majesty, and sheer beauty fly off the page in those tones. And when you add fresh snow, well I just gotta express that all in B&W. And if there is one thing the Z7 does extremely well, it’s B&W! It’s then no surprise that I’ve spent my week in the Grand Tetons with the Z7 shooting B&W, and I’m loving my results!
Playing dodge with the snow front, the Tetons pop in and out. And when they do that at the same time with the sun, I’ve got the 180-400VR trained on those spots. Since I want to use the Z7, I’m connecting the two with the FTZ and the combo as you can see works out beautifully! The best part as far as I’m concerned is the post-processing, that because there is none! If you’ve followed my blog for years, it seems about every six months I find a better way to post process my B&W. Now, I just take them out of the camera and go! And since the snow just stopped, it’s time to do just that, go! mtc
Oct 10, 2018 | Landscape Photography
Mt Moran & Grand Tetons
captured by Z7 / Z24-70
Wow, just wow! That doesn’t even really sum up our time so far in the Grand Tetons. The sun found us at The Oxbow watching as the snow started to settle in for the day. Before it closed in, the sun squeaked through to light up the peaks and fall color for a spectacular sunrise. I shot with just the Z7 / Z24-70 until the light was squeezed out then I turned to longer to capture some gorgeous B&W. Shooting hand-held at 1/25 was pretty darn easy with the captured by Z7 / Z24-70 which made the shooting not only fun, but successful. mtc
Oct 3, 2018 | Landscape Photography
You know that for me to think about, let alone actually do, macro photography, it must have been easy and fun. Well, it was just that! Fall color in one corner of our property is blazing so with the rain we were having and its soft light, I went out to see what I could find. So I grabbed the Z7 / FTZ / 60f2.8macro and explored. With the leaves at eyelevel and the lightweight rig (and almost no breeze!), it was fun looking for raindrops suspended on the leaves. The FTZ, 60f2.8macro combo worked great! That extra length added to the 60f2.8macro by the FTZ made it easier to hand-hold. So then it was just getting on my artsy fastsy funk to find the photo.
I personally like shooting the Z7 in Continuous H (extended) because I don’t loose site of the subject while shooting. I was shooting in Dynamic-area AF and with the Z7‘s 493 AF Sensors, I was able to select the AF sensor at the bottom of the frame to grab hold of the drop. That was so sweet! I shot at f/8 as I didn’t want a ton of DoF, just a tad. Then while standing in the rain, I shot a couple hundred images. Yep, the camera, lens, Sadie and I got pretty soaked. We all dried off just fine and while Sadie curled up in front of the fire, I checked out my images. I gotta tell you, this rig made shooting macro pretty darn easy and I really like the results. No, it’s not enough to get me to do macro photography regularly, but I might play with it just a little bit more now!
Sep 28, 2018 | Landscape Photography
My total enchantment with Roosevelt Nat’l Park just grows and grows! There isn’t really a corner you turn in the road that isn’t a new visual symphony of color, shapes, and textures. And with the coming of fall sprinkles yellows amongst the tan sandstone.
There are two units of Roosevelt, southern and northern. These photos are from the Northern which as a single, fourteen mile round winding through its landscape. It’s just gorgeous! mtc
Sep 27, 2018 | Landscape Photography
I’m up in North Dakota for the first time shooting in Roosevelt Nat’l Park. This place is such a jewel! On my list since the 70s, I’m so glad I made it here and really wish I’d been here decades before! The rolling tapestry of hills, grasses, big skies, and critters at Roosevelt is truly stunning!
In just 24 hours I’ve used everything from 8-15Fish to 180-400 working the landscape and critters. And that’s with the first day being mostly rain! In fact, this is going to be a real short post as I have today’s images to still get through before sunrise lights up the day. mtc
