Oct 19, 2018 | Landscape Photography
Fall in the Eastern Sierra is fading quickly. The Aspens in our meadow are meer silver trunks testament to a great year. While the hillside might not be carpeted in yellows and oranges, there are still patches of color calling us and our cameras to immortalize them. It’s a challenge I take up every fall, shooting fall color when there really isn’t any fall color. I love the walks I have to take to find that last vestige of fall.
This year I’m going real light in search of fall color. I’m just carrying with me this weekend the Z7 / Z24-70 along with the 60f2.8micro attached to the FTZ. I tend to walk toward the sun in search of the photograph because I prefer backlit fall color. The light is a large part of the photograph. Once I find a grove with a hint of color, I’ll take my original photos and then make a circle looking for those hidden treasures. That’s how I came across the frost-crusted leaf on the edge of falling. It’s those little treasures that make the whole adventure worthwhile. And if I come back with no photographs, that’s OK too. Walking in a forest in fall is simply good for the soul!
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 17, 2018 | Wildlife Photography
I refer to all deer as “Bambi” for one reason, nearly everyone has seen the movie, Bambi. That powerful imagery can affect how viewers of our deer images look at our photographs. Preconceived visions are the “rose-colored” glasses we look through at the world, our own built-in filter. When it comes to critters, this is important to consider if you want that cute and cuddly appeal of critters to come through in your photographs. So with deer, here is the biggest element to never forget!
You gotta have those ears pointed forward! Why? That’s a darn good question! It starts with the movie Bambi and the preconceived idea of deer being innocent, playful, and full of life. Those ears of the Mule Deer are HUGE! They can pivot independently taking in the sounds surrounding the deer. The direction of their ears can communicate visually all sorts of emotions and if you wanna grab heartstrings then you have only one option, ears pointed at the camera. Standing there in Roosevelt Nat’l Park hand-holding the D5 / 180-400VR after the sun had set, I watched their ears and once all were pointed at me did I think about firing off some frames.
An additional benefit of having those giant ears pointed at you is being able to have other body parts hidden. With the “Bambi” syndrome conquered then the mind tends to fill in the rest of the story. For me, it permits setting the stage where the critter lives because, without that habitat, they disappear, sometimes for good! You can see that in one photo nearly everything is missing except one eye, but I have both ears. So the challenge and ease in which we can visually tell the story of deer we can thank Disney and Bambi.
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!
