View allAll Photos Tagged lowangle
Olympus E-M10 MarkII with Pentacon 50 mm 1.8, manual focus, handheld. March 2018, Regensburg, Germany.
Jane has found a new spot for napping. She is on a box on some model trains on a table. Thus, she is not technically breaking the rule about not being allowed on the table, and she's in a box. To her, this is a win-win. Plus, this gets her up high, and she loves that aspect, too.
Captured with a late 19-teens lens from a VPK: Vest Pocket Kodak. Based on the patent info on the lens, mine appears to be from the later series called: Vest Pocket Autographic Kodak (1915-1926), and this was known as "The Soldier's Camera" due to its use in WWI. Selling nearly 2M units in that decade of production it was a very popular compact camera. This "Autographic" version sported a small door on the rear of the camera that allowed the photographer to scribble a little onto the reverse of the film thus making for effectively the first "data back" camera. They effectively scraped off some of the emulsion on the film.
My lens has been removed from the VPK camera and installed into a M42-mount lens shell. The lens shell happens to be from an Asahi prime and retains its aperture. The original Kodak lens has its aperture, too.
The lens is somewhere in the 70mm range and is somewhere around an f/7.7, so a lot of light is needed for decent exposure.
The lens was never meant to be a close-focus lens, but with the new mount, I am able to focus this close to the cat.
I took my time at Mugu Point the last visit, trying hard to get better composed shots as well as a variety of shutter speeds. It had been very cloudy all day and unlike usual, they didn't seem to be going anywhere. As a result, I knew I had plenty of time to get both surface shots and sky shots, especially as it got closer to sundown.
As I've mentioned, I really don't feel comfortable near the edge of any dark water--whether oceans, lakes, ponds etc. This cove was my starting point on both visits to this beach and I navigated in a similar route though the large waves kept me about 10ft further back than the first visit. As a result, some of the great places I set up on last time were regularly under water and I had to find different areas to shoot. There's so many amazing vantages from here and directly behind that it wasn't an issue.
There's something very relaxing about getting to the location you planned to shoot early, moving methodically and slowly to different areas and getting most of the shots off you wanted. When I rush, I make mistakes and this happens most when I arrive late and try to squeeze the last bit out of the sunset. The amount of relaxation for me increases at the ocean (and further when shooting long exposures). It's like being inside of a white noise machine with a nice, steady breeze blowing. Maybe next time I'll bring a beach chair.
Point Mugu Beach
Malibu, California
June 11th, 2016
SETTINGS:
Canon T4i
EF-S 18-135mm IS STM
@50mm
ISO 100
f/13
23 seconds
ND1000
CPL
Goose, ducks and swans around the shore by Lake Windermere. I had great fun photographing them as they where used to the people, giving me opportunities to capture some urban habitat. I used a shallow Dof to isolate the Goose in the foreground. I also like the mood giving with the Dof. I took lots of this and there's more to come. Happy weekend to you all!
Jane is in love with the warmer spring weather we are experiencing and the back porch, with all of the glass windows, is the best place to be if you are a cat.
Vivitar MC 28mm f/2.8 Ai-S
Descansando tras caminata.
Resting after trekking.
Foto tomada durante el trekking hacia el Toubkal, Marruecos.
This photo was taken during the trekking to Toubkal, Morocco.
Feels good to be back where I belong: at the throttle of a steam locomotive. It has been about two weeks since I ran a steam locomotive, the last one was a little smaller than my favorite which is good old reliable number 90.
Tommy Defrogo...
In the canal at Wildwood Park. Dauphin County, Pennsylvania.
Reference Goodfellas...
Thanks for looking!
Fall foliage on a beautiful day in Somerville, MA.
This photo falls under "you don't just take the photo, you make the photo." While I do take plenty of quick snapshots, this one took planning and work and post-processing. This spot is right by the course of my daily work routine, though near a less-used route so I hadn't seen it before. One day, I noticed the bright blue chairs and the orange leaves and the beautiful lighting, and I quickly took some photos, trying to get a nice low perspective as if you're being invited to sit in the chairs and relax. You can see the result of that quick photo session here: flic.kr/p/zMtzVo - and also my comments about how while I liked the scene, I was unsatisfied with how the first set of photos came out.
So then, I kept staring at that photo and thinking about why it wasn't quite right. So, I went back the next day (when I had a break in the workday) and I started moving the chairs around and trying different angles and settings, and waiting for the clouds to cover and uncover the sun to get different lighting. I lucked out that the bright leaves were still there, and the lighting was just as good or maybe better with a few clouds in the sky.
In the end, I took about hundred photos to get this one (depending whether you count when the camera saves HDR and normal as one shot or two). Then, once I picked the HDR shot I liked best, I did some processing on it in Snapseed on my iPad to improve the overall lighting and to make the leaves and chairs pop. I feel like after processing, it looks more like how the scene looked in person when it caught my eye. The un-processed version had a lot of dark shadows because of the backlighting, which mess up the camera shot more than the human eye in person.
The other funny thing is that this scene looks really peaceful, but actually, that spot is surrounded by construction, and it was a lot of work for me to frame the shot with no people or machinery in it. Near the end of my photoshoot, someone started mowing the lawn, and I took a few more in between his passes, getting the one of the final shots that I liked just moments before he moved the chairs out of the way and got rid of all the fallen leaves. Probably the loud construction noise is the only reason those chairs were empty for me to photograph on such a beautiful day.
Maybe later, if people are interested, I'll post some behind the scenes stuff: unprocessed and/or non-HDR versions, shots at a different angle showing the construction, etc.
Update Nov 7, 2015: I posted a collage showing some behind the scenes shots on the framing and processing that went into this: www.flickr.com/photos/jesspictures/22457349309/
Update Feb 5 2016: check out the winter version! flic.kr/p/Dp4Bj7
I have so many heron pictures lol. Found 3 separate herons this past Saturday. I particularly liked the background foliage in these ones.
One day solargraphy (2016-07-14). Sun path is recorded as incomplete arch, because sunny afternoon has changed to heavy overcast. On evening camera got much rain, and the traces of rain are visible in photo.
Taken with cylindrical anamorphic can on Kodak Polymax 6x24cm paper, developed in D-76 1:1. Exposure 24 hours.
When I went to Venice last week to shoot, I had planned to mainly ditch the neutral density filters and slow shutter speeds and instead focus on panoramas and reflections along the shoreline at sundown. I came relaxed and organized (for a change) and managed to avoid running from the boardwalk to my spot on the beach, even after I got past the buildings and finally had an unobstructed view of the sky. I also stayed surprisingly patient despite having some difficulty getting both shutter speed and my timing correct early on. A handful of times-- with shutter speeds too slow-- a great shot was ruined by a well placed blur or blob but at least it wasn't too tough to fix that with some quick adjustments.
Back in Maryland, it never occurred to me to try panoramas. In fact, it wasn't even on my radar. I simply assumed panorama was a cropped landscape. I had no other references. I think when you are teaching yourself manual photography from the ground up, there's a tendency to try a lot of things at once but really only practice whatever has your main interest at that particular moment. For me, the progression started with some of the very basics of manual photography. I started shooting with a tripod and remote shutter first and then tried to learn a bit about night photography and how to deal with low light conditions. This led to a more concentrated focus on the time around sundown and sunsets became my primary subject. This also marked when I started bringing my camera and tripod everywhere since I was in the car a lot and seemed to always be driving when the sun started to fade. I tried to learn how to be more efficient and began going on longer and longer roadtrips with Scotch, marking areas on my GPS to return to and taking some notes on observations and conditions. It's easy in the beginning to underexpose sunsets and lower light shots but it was still a lot of fun working out the kinks on my own.
Next up on my list was long exposures since it was the first time photography started to seem more like art to me and the amount of control over the results seemed endless. My interest came initially after I got more involved on Flickr and was able to see how incredible and unique long exposure photography could be. That obsession became my default setting by mid August of 2015 and I always tried to get a long exposure more than anything else, even if fundamentally unnecessary. I'd often remove my lens cap and still have whichever ND filter I was using last on it. The interest in long exposure led me on my search for water and waterfalls which accounted for most of my shooting from early Fall through mid December. I'd been getting a little frustrated that, despite the ND filters, I couldn't always get the exposure length I wanted during the day so I purchased a 10 stop ND filter for my trip and most of my standard ND filters have been collecting dust in my bag since.
Fast forward to now and besides the reflections on shorelines, I've had a huge desire to try and create a fuller framed image by merging 2-3 wide angle shots into a panorama so I can showcase as much of the sky as I possible without having to post 2 separate but extremely similar images. While the novelty of long exposure will never become old (or a novelty) for me and I still intend to focus a lot on that when the cloudy skies return, I finally decided it was time to try and learn panoramas a bit better. I never spent more than a few thoughts on them in the last 6 months and typically I'd be in a great location and think "i'll pan a bit to the right and left and see if they will merge later" and that was that. In the beginning, 3 out of every 4 half hearted attempts ended with "...unable to merge" pop ups in lightroom. I got lucky with Venice back in the beginning of the year when a few tries worked pretty well and it seemed that Venice was one of the few beaches I visited that afforded this opportunity. The long, straight pier served as a great common object for the pan and the detailed clouds, sky and flat reflective shore made merging fairly easy. The only issue was timing the waves.
Last week I focused mostly on fast shutters and tried to give myself 3-5 overlapped scenes for merging and I often took 4 shots at each position, hoping to get a full set done within 2 minutes. It was always so frustrating before when everything worked great in the pano merge except the waves and surf were so off, it would be impossible to blend. Most of the attempts from Monday matched well enough to only require a tiny jab with the healing or clone stamp to completely blend.
With all that said, this was a 3 shot panorama from just beyond the start of the pier to well beyond the end, facing the ocean where the sunset is just beginning to creep into scene. The first two frames were no problem and fortunately 1 of the other shots matched up with the 2nd panel so I could include more of the colorful sky. As much as I'd love to have added even more sky to the right, it just didn't really work and the perspective and distortion was quite distracting. In this image, I managed to get a couple walking their baby in a stroller off in the distance on an otherwise empty looking mirrored shore. Most of the people were just behind me facing more towards Santa Monica for the incredible sunset which I also enjoyed as soon as this couple passed by me. The golden hazy days out here aren't much to look at but when there's a colorful, cloudy sunset, Southern California is extremely hard to beat.
▪️WHERE & WHEN▪️
•Venice Beach and Pier
•Venice, California
•September 19th, 2016
▪️SETTINGS▪️
Canon T4i
•EF-S 18-135mm IS STM
•3 shot panorama
•@18mm
•ISO 200
•f/8
•1/8th second
•CPL
Stokksnes is a headland on the southeastern Icelandic coast, near Hofn and Hornafjördur. This photo was taken during a sunset in Stokksnes , one of my favorite locations for coastal photography along the south east coast of Iceland. A stiched use of my 18mm gives this view of an ultra wide lens.
Scotch and I took our time between New Orleans and Arizona but after leaving the Petrified Forest, I set the GPS to Vegas and decided to just get some sleep, wake up early on Christmas Eve, and arrive in Hollywood. It was sunny but extremely windy through Nevada and into California by mid afternoon, I just wanted to stop driving.
I pulled off I-15 to let Scotch out and realized we were at the entrance to the Mojave National Preserve. I think this was Hinkley, California but am not 100% sure. The one gas station was packed with tacky items out front and a line of people inside for the bathroom and snacks.
We drove slowly down the road that led to the Preserve for a few miles before turning around as my LA arrival time was starting to get really close to rush hour. Usually on open rode and no cars in sight, I'd drive extremely slowly looking for things to photograph. The landscape was pretty barren and not all that pretty (though admittedly we didn't really go anywhere out of sight of the highway), but the road itself was nice. I don't recall seeing a road this color but it worked really well with the surrounding colors. We only stayed over here for about a half hour but didn't see another sign of life (or cars) until we got back to that gas station.
Mojave Desert
Hinkley, California
December 24th, 2015
Temp: 58F
Wind: 42MPH
Time: 1:05PM
SETTINGS:
Canon Rebel T4i
EF-S 18-135mm IS STM
@29mm
ISO 100
f/9
1/100 second
CPL
After ditching my plans to go to Laguna Beach due to the nearly 2 hour drive in traffic, I wandered towards Santa Monica before changing directions again when I was only 15 minutes away. I always read how Santa Monica Pier is one of the most frequently photographed locations in Southern California and this has always discouraged me from going. I prefer to shoot in a less hectic location with fewer distractions and easier parking. Most of my visits to the various other beaches were more in line with my prefered environment. Point Mugu (apparently pronounced "muh-goo"--i was finally corrected last night), Malibu Pier and even where I shoot in Venice are generally void of photographers. There's something pretty unappealing to me to shoot in a crowd of other photographers who are attempting to take the same shot or at least from the same vantage as me. When I went to Huntington Beach back in early spring, I was quite disappointed when dozens of photographers showed up right at sundown, taking most of the decent locations by the pier even though I had been there for hours and hadn't seen more than a handful of people wandering around. I suppose I simply got used to the countryside of Maryland and Pennsylvania where you would never see people or photographers and each time I shot, it felt like I was the only one capturing that particular moment.
I arrived with plenty of time to set up and I wasn't really in any rush. I was at a location well before sundown for the first time in a while and it was nice not having to hurry for a change. There were a few people taking shots of themselves beneath the pier and a few others wandering around the shore but no other photographers in sight. I mentioned in my previous post that I really didn't move from this one spot and that's true. I lined up the end of the pier with where the sun would eventually drop and hoped I could capture the sun as it hid behind the pier like I did at the neighboring Manhattan Beach Pier back in January. I moved only when the glare from the exposed sun was too harsh but mainly just stood here shooting between 18-35mm the entire time.
It had been really overcast all day but there were a few breaks in the sky where the sun was fully visible and I did have some difficulties dealing with that. The sky directly around the sun would clear up momentary and I was essentially shooting straight into the sun more frequently than I wanted. Sometimes the shift happened mid shot and those turned out predictably poorer than the shorter exposure shot or the longer exposures after the sun lowered. I purchased a hot shoe splitter on amazon about a week ago and a mount for my iphone so I could have video or light from the phone next to the remote shutter transmitter and got that angled right for the 6:08pm sunset. I always mean to videotape those few minutes when the sun starts dropping quickly and goes beneath the horizon but it's not easy to manual compose a shot, fire off the remote shutter and record steady video at the same time with only 2 hands. For about $15 total, i solved that issue finally and shot about 6 minutes of undisturbed video before I needed to change my position a bit. When the actual sunset arrived, there were maybe 5 other photographers spread out to my right with tripods but the majority seemed to stay for only a few minutes.
This was my first shot of the evening after arriving at Hermosa Beach and was somewhat overexposed out of camera. I was having some trouble as I mentioned with periodic glare from direct sunlight but it was mostly fixable. The colors were great beginning about 25 minutes before the sunset and it was hard to choose whether to take many quicker shots with wave action or take the time for long exposures but I tried to alternate between just the CPL and 10 stop ND. I often wonder if it's worth buying another cheaper DSLR (like the model I have) so I can shoot long exposures with one and snap shots like this with the other. The issues though are that I eventually want to go full frame which will cost a lot and require new glass but even with another T4i or similar, I'd need another tripod and possibly another lens since my other 2 are a 40mm for portraits and a 55-250mm which almost never gets used. Neither really allows me to get close to the wider angle shot I desire but it's always so frustrating when I take a several minute exposure and can't do anything but watch the fading light while my camera processes the image. I'm sure many of you have experienced the same agony of wasted time while waiting for the camera to finish a long exposure and it's a pretty helpless feeling.
The forecast still calls for cloudy skies and the possibility of a little rain over the next 2 weeks and I'd like to head back here during that time if I have a chance. I hope to spend the next really cloudy day at Laguna Beach or somewhere else I haven't been as long as I can get there a few hours before the sunset. I'm SO glad summer is over :)
WHEN & WHERE
Hermosa Beach Pier
Hermosa Beach, California
October 24th, 2016
SETTINGS
Canon T4i
EF-S 18-135mm IS STM
@22mm
ISO 100
f/10
1/25th second
CPL
The Copper (formerly known as American Copper Buildings and 626 First Avenue) are a pair of luxury residential skyscrapers in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. The buildings were developed by JDS Development and were designed by SHoP Architects.
The two towers are designed such that they appear to "dance" with each other. They are connected by a bridge approximately 300 feet from the ground, three levels in height