Now is a perfect time to stretch your wings, talent and imagination by learning video! I just love, love this program Nikon has in place! That’s right, you can rent a complete Z6 Film Maker kit for $99 for THREE days! $149 for a full week! This is a brilliant, brilliant program! Everything you see below you get to test drive, shoot projects or make money with at a killer price!
The kit is available at Bedford Camera. Even if you’re not thinking about shooting video, this is a great way to check out Nikon mirrorless before you buy.
You will be out shooting again, sooner than you think. Will you be ready to hit it hard and fun? “How do you plan a trip when you’re going to someplace new?” This is a very common and VERY valid question I’m asked all the time. I’m sure everyone has their own methods of doing this, I want to share mine. It all starts with selecting the location itself, how do you do that? Since most of my friends are road warriors like myself, word of mouth usually starts the process. Quite often, I’ll see a photo of a location that captures my imagination and that’s how that location gets on the list. That’s a big part of this, finding a location, critters, aircraft, subject that grabs your imagination! Once the location is selected the planning begins.
The first thing that needs to be set for a location is when to visit it. If you’re working a 9-5 job, often you go when you can get vacation time so then timing is predetermined. With the luxury of picking the date, I go with the time when that one classic shot, the photo perhaps I saw that made me want to go to that location was taken. Here’s the problem with that kind of planning, it kind of is an all or nothing proposition! There is no way you can guarantee what the conditions will be when you’re on your trip. For example this past winter. You might have planned to be somewhere when there was snow but for much of the mountains this past winter, there simply was no snow. That’s all part of the photographic adventure.
If you’re planning for fall color, as a veteran of many a fall color trip that ended up staring at twigs, the best planning doesn’t guarantee a thing. How about planning specific locales at your location, how do you find them? Before I leave on a trip, I’ll do my homework online looking for photographs from that area. From that, those photos I see which intrigue me are locales I’ll try to research and make a list to remind me of them once on site. One of the ways we found locations for our DLWS events when scouting was using Google Maps, Hybrid mode. I would look at the topography, its direction and then head off on roads to those places where those elements would come into play. For example, want to shoot sunrise, you need a location looking to the east. If you want water, you need to find water where you can look to the east for sunrise.
The biggest part of planning where I think most photographers fall short is in the photographer themselves. The number one mistake is putting pressure on yourselves that because you have taken this trip, made all these plans, you MUST come back with the photographs of a lifetime. It doesn’t work that way. As a veteran of thousands of trips in my years, just because you plan doesn’t mean the clouds come out, the leaves turn red or the critters appear. Even in planning aviation work, I can show up and the plane might have mechanical issues. There simply are no guarantees so you, the photographer must plan on this and have an open mind to go with the flow.
So in a nutshell, look at photographs to find the locations. Look at photographs to plan the timing. Look at the photograph to determine the locale at that location. Look at photographs to determine the gear to take, the time to be behind the camera and remember, it is just a photograph. The journey can and often is a bigger reward than the destination! You’ll be out shooting once again!!!
OK, we should be cleaning our gear a whole lot more than once a year. Right now, you might have some time on your hands which is a great time to do a deep clean of all your camera gear. Cleaning of our digital camera sensors has plagued photographers for centuries (ok, a couple of years). Just like our cameras, some aspects of cleaning our sensor have changed and some have remained the same. This video (which means it supersedes all others of mine) reflects what I’m doing today to clean sensors which include mirrorless. These are the tools I use to clean the sensors of my cameras:
VisibleDust Ultra MXD-100 Green Sensor Cleaning VSwabs
VisibleDust Ultra MXD-100 “Green” Corner Swabs
VisibleDust Zee Pro Sensor-Cleaning Bulb Blower
VisibleDust Quasar R 5x Sensor Loupe
Optic Cleaning Solution
This video expresses my methods for cleaning and it’s up to you if you follow it or not. It, in some cases, does not follow the recommendations in the camera’s instruction book. There is a risk in cleaning your sensor so if you are uncomfortable doing it, don’t do it!
When it comes to cleaning the rest of my gear, here’s what I do.
Mentioned in this video: Lens Clens I’ve used this for 40 years on everything BUT the sensor.
VisibleDust Ultra MXD-100 Green Sensor Cleaning VSwabs
VisibleDust Ultra MXD-100 “Green” Corner Swabs
VisibleDust Zee Pro Sensor-Cleaning Bulb Blower
VisibleDust Quasar R 5x Sensor Loupe
Optic Cleaning Solution
And when I say deep, my class on Camera Gear Care over at KelbyOnecovers it all. I hope it helps you get the most out of your gear and extend its life in service of your photography!
Rocky Mtn Bighorn Sheep captured by D5 / 180-400VR
Many years ago, I made a conscious effort to stop using the word “Tricks” when talking about photography. While I slip into using that old, comfortable and VERY misleading word every now and then, someone said to me lately that I should explain why I don’t like the work Trick when talking photography. We all see these advertisements that say “Tips and Tricks” which infer a quick shortcut to something better. But used as a noun (Warning, warning, Moose talking English here) trick means, “a cunning or skillful act or scheme intended to deceive or outwit someone.” And use Trick as a verb it means, “deceive or outwit (someone) by being cunning or skillful.” The common word in both definitions is, deceive. Just who are we trying to deceive with our trick in our photography, ourselves, the viewer of our photograph? What I’m suggesting is we focus on other words in that definition, skillful.
Success in photography is a long haul venture. There are plenty of shortcuts or “tricks” but the problem with the majority of them as they don’t build your skill base. Rather, they weaken them so when you do have that big challenge, you’re not up for it. And when that happens, frustration at the very least sets in. The old saying, no pain, no gain, I always thought was meant for photographers. So when you read those catchy, shortcuts, always ask yourself if your photography needs more tricks of craftsmanship.
Rocky Mtn Bighorn Sheep captured by D5 / 180-400VR
The background is everything and in this case, radically changes the end results. Here’s a Rocky Mtn Bighorn Sheep ewe standing on a promontory. The lower photo, the bright white snow in the top right corner not only visually pulls your eye from the subject (in a really big way), it also vastly increases the range of light in the entire scene. This puts the ewe in darker shadow altering the white balance. My physically moving to the left just a couple of feet to exclude that bright white in the background creates a vast improvement in the photograph. The eye now takes in the gorgeous rim lighting on the ewe (not lost in shadow) and the white balance warms up. It’s such a small thing, moving to the right but you can see instantly the change in the story being told. Take the time to check the background, because, in photography, there is visual power in the background!
Rocky Mtn Bighorn Sheep captured by D5 / 180-400VR
There is this mythical land where I love to go but like those places, it’s far away. Thankfully, they come to me throughout the year. Grays of Westminster is where Nikon is celebrated from its first days to present in the finest English form (the store is Winston Churchill old barbershop no less!). I’ve known Gray and done business with him since the ’80s and the passion Gray has for photography and Nikon fills his lovely shop and their Nikon Owner magazine. I’m very honored again to grace their cover and have an extensive, 10pg spread on the Nikon Z. Whether you already own a Z or contemplating getting one, I’ve got ya covered. Just as Gray and his team have you covered … a mythical land!
