With a stop over in Istanbul (a while and crazy town), Sharon and I boarded our Turkish Air flight to Nairobi. It was a great flight and as we’re coming down into Nairobi, the sun was coming up. It’s just a simple shot out the window with the Nikon V3, but it was gorgeous light. It got me all excited cause there is nothing better than great light! mtc
(click to see larger pano)
Sharon & I are very fortunate to live in what many call, paradise. The Eastern Sierra is a gorgeous place, what John Muir name the Range of Light. Naming it such wasn’t a real stretch for Muir because hardly a day goes by when the light doesn’t play in some unique way on the landscape. But it seems that just before we take off on a long road trip, it really performs. Some of my favorite shots come then so I make it a practice to travel with my camera. And this time was no exception. The God Beams bounced around Mt Tom again and the afternoon thunderstorm gathered its forces to make us wet. A simple three image pano, shot with the Df / 24-120VR made quick work of it. I knew I was going to B&W with the pano, so assembled and did the majority of the finishing in ACR then used Silver Efex Pro to do B&W conversion. You can see a video on how I shoot and finished panos with the latest ACR in the Pg 28 videos in the current issue of the BT Journal. It makes it hard to leave home knowing what we’re leaving. And it always sends us off with the message, don’t forget me!
Lines, our eyes love lines in all their flavors and complexities. And when it come to arranging elements in a frame, many like to lean on lines to move the eye around the frame. I’m no different except for maybe, I look for curves more than straight lines. The problem with curves is, they are typically a line that brings the eye right back to where it started. That makes using curves a pain in the butt but when they work, a beautiful thing. Where’s the line? Huh .. a funny pun.
Cruising Brandon Beach in Or with the D750 / 18-35AFS, there are lots of lines, most being real angular. But when you work the tide and the lines the water makes around the boulders, you find circles. How do I make the most of those circles? The first is to get REAL close to them, as in as physically close as I can be, within inches. At that distance, you gotta wide, as wide as possible. And when you go wide, you make even more of that curved line. Once that is established cause it will be the foreground, you gotta work the middle and background. If they aren’t working for you, the foreground falls apart. So in these two examples, the top photo has the middle and background and the bottom photo, doesn’t have the middle ground. Without that middle ground, no matter how nice the curve might be, the photograph isn’t. And when you’re looking through the viewfinder, how do YOU know when it works or doesn’t work? Look at those three planes, the foreground, middleground and background. If you see elements in each one that are strong, you’re good to go. If one is weak though, the whole photo will be weak. Easier said then done, but just something to ponder over.
So there we were on the top floor of The Great Hall. Being in that health mode, we walked up the stairs so we walked back down them. The stairs we went up were on one end of the hall and were pretty dark and dismal. I had no idea of the photo opportunity I was walking into, it was a total happy accident. The stairs we went down on the other end had a magical light to them. As soon as we opened the door and entered the stairwell I saw the glow. Off to the races I went, heading down to the bottom to catch the light before it changed. I’ve always wanted one of those cool stairway, glowie kind of shots and the opportunity to get one of a square stairwell, I wasn’t going to miss it!
How do approach such a photo? Since I’d never had the opportunity for sure, I didn’t really know. What went though my mind are those killer black and white line drawings that when you look one way, they look like a castle and when you look another way and they look like a staircase going to heaven. So I was thinking of leading lines which mean I need light to go from dark to light to give a visual depth to the photo. I lucked out, what a happy accident!
The light was PERFECT in my book! I made it down to the very bottom of the stairwell and looked up in total ah! I stood there looking up through the Df / 14-24AFS and went click. Then I turned a couple of degrees, click. Turned again, click. After doing that shooting horizontal, I look through the camera vertically and went, click. I was in LIGHT heaven! The light, the tones, the lines, the pattern, it was just gorgeous! Now I have no clue what I’ll ever do with these photos other than share them here with you, but I do love them. When you have this kind of light and color, you gotta shoot no matter what your main genre of photography might be. It’s just one of those things I love about photography, those photo accidents.
In April, we had the opportunity to spend some time on Ellis Island. Really a fascinating place with intriguing history. We spent hours wondering around, reading, listening, learning about a very special part of our history. Looking at all the old B&W photos with all those faces took hours. Wonder where they all went, what they did and who they became? You can’t help while you’re exploring The Island not ending up in the Great Hall!
The hall is aptly named, it really is great! We were lucky to be in the hall when an overcast floated in really giving the hall a glow. It was dark enough that the lights in the hall were able to cast their warm glow over all the tile. I was cruising with the Df / 14-24AFS which was perfect, I looked like just another tourist. The light in the hall was killer so I shoot it all nice and squared up. Loved that shot. Then I looked up, actually, I did that a lot, a whole lot and most of the time, I found a photograph. This is one of my favorites from the Great Hall. Now it’s well known I don’t do flowers, but this is one I can go after. Now getting the symmetry perfect was a challenge even using the Grid Screen. I had to get directly under the center lamp to make it work. It took a few shots and wiggling small movements but finally got the “flower” I wanted. If you’ve not been to Ellis Island, head there and do some learning, playing tourist and take come clicks. You’ll love it!
Ever since I posted Creativity in the Lost & Found, I’ve had more emails stating, help! One person said, “I feel like I’m running out of gas!” That made me think of this photo, a two image pano I took a little while back and something else to give a try when the clicks just aren’t coming. Give something in the computer a try you’ve not tried before. This pano is an idea. With it so easy to assemble in ACR, take a pano of your room and assemble it. You have no idea where that might lead. You might need to try some extra lighting. You might need to use a different lens. You might need to learn something you simply don’t know and that might shake the cob webs loose. You might shoot a pano and need to reshoot it. For example I shot this scene the first time with a Df / 24-70, three image pano but after assembling, went back with the 80-400 to get tighter and do just a two image pano. All of these things make you think and feel and that just might put gas back in your tank!