Website Update - finally

I finally updated my website with some new photos from the past six months or so. Please take a look!

Homepage
New Photos Gallery

Hopefully in the next day or two I will begin posting some of the photos here for you to look at and discuss, but that will have to wait.

Discussion - Star Trail

I really need to get back on task with my "Photography Basics" posts. Hopefully soon. Even though I haven't talked about that stuff yet, I hope that you can get something out of my discussion concerning a handful of my more recent photos. Granted, it might be nice to describe the photos that didn't work out, but since I didn't get those photos scanned it would be hard to do that!

Click photo to see full size
a14 - 15 Minute Star Trail, Joshua Tree National Park

Comment: Point your camera at a clear night sky, open up the aperture, keep the shutter open for a while and see what happens! I have tried taking these photos throughout the years with varying levels of success. You have to be someplace with minimal or no light pollution and have a location that will not have extraneous light falling on your lens. If you can get the photo to work, I love all the different colors that are actually present in the stars!

Technical aspects: These photos are actually not that hard to shoot, but you do need to have a few things - however if you are serious about your photography these are standard anyway. The first thing is a camera that allows you to keep the shutter open for as long as you want. My camera is an old manual camera and after 1 second on the shutter ring there is a "B" for "Bulb". This keeps the shutter open for as long as the release button is pressed. However, I do not want to be standing with my hand on the camera for 15 minutes so I have a locking cable release. This little device screws into the shutter button and I can lock it open for as long as I want.

The next choice that needs to be made is what lens to use. Zoom lenses are fine as long as they are tight enough to not change their focal length while pointing straight up for a long period of time. Another thing to consider is the "integrity" of the shot. Light pollution is a problem in a lot of places and usually the closer one gets to the horizon that light is present. Depending where you are in the country, airplanes might also be flying around which would ruin a photo with a nice straight line or blinking dots across your frame. If light pollution on the horizon and airplanes are a problem, then wider-angle lenses might not be the best choice so that you can isolate a particular patch of sky. Since stars are not really all that bright you will also want a decently fast lens to capture as much of that light as possible. Using a lens that is f/4 or above might not get the fainter stars. Personally I like my 50mm f/1.8 normal lens for this work.

Another must is a good tripod, and one that will allow you to point your camera where you want it and keep it steady throughout the shot. Strictly speaking it doesn't matter how tall the tripod is, but if you want to look through the viewfinder to compose the shot then having one that is taller than you is nice. Another good reason to have a taller tripod is to keep out unwanted, extraneous light. All it takes is one person to shine a flashlight across your lens or a car to go by to ruin the shot. Elevating the camera (and using a lens hood) will keep that problem to a minimum.

Finally, you need film (assuming you are like me and still using the stuff). Since we are dealing with faint subjects, the faster the film the more stars will be recorded on film. This photo was shot on Fuji Velvia 100 film, which isn't fast, but it still did a great job getting the stars and since it is Velvia, the colors are rich and saturated. I have tried Velvia 50 film and it didn't work. Provia 400 film is great because it is fast, but not as rich of colors as the Velvia.

Composition: Actually in a way this photo didn't turn out the way I would have liked it. There is one element missing that I would have liked to have, and that is something else in the photo to anchor it, something that doesn't move relative to the camera. I actually tried putting other stuff in the photo, but where I was at I didn't like the options and just gave up and shot this. One suggestion for composing a shot with a foreground object is to use a flashlight to illuminate the object so that you can actually see it through the viewfinder. One problem that I run into since I usually do these photos in or near a campground is my foreground objects being lit up, even for a second, by a car or flashlight. This is fine if that is what you want, but I want to have a dark, silhouetted object to anchor my photo.

The only other thing to think about when composing these shots is that the farther you get from the North Star the less of an arc your star trails will be, and vice versa. Just something to think about!

One final thing if you are using film for these shots. Before actually taking photos of the stars, take a few photos of something brighter. This will help whoever mounts your slides figure out where the frames are and not cut anything off because they can't see what is going on! It might also be nice to let them know what these photos are so that they don't assume they are blank frames at first glance.

Please comment if you have anything else concerning this photo!

Site Update!

I have just updated my website with some new photos! These photos are from Daley Ranch back in November as well as some photos of our friends' daughter Mollie.

I am always looking for critiques of my photos so feel free to discuss here or drop me an e-mail!

New Photo Gallery

Website Update!

I finally updated my website after almost a year. Check it out!

http://www.mvpol.com

In the Field

Daley Ranch, morning of November 6, 2007

After thinking about it for a couple of weeks and just not finding the opportunity, I finally got out and took some photos Tuesday morning! For some reason I really wanted to go out and take some close-ups of subjects with dew on them, but the past few days I didn't see any dew on things around my house so I wasn't sure what I was going to find if and when I actually went out. This morning a moment of doubt set in around 4:30am when I was in bed pondering whether or not to get up, then again around 5:00am when I was leaving the house in the fog - should I even go out?

I arrived at the Daley Ranch Cougar Pass Parking lot in the dark around 5:20am, obviously I was the only one around! My plan was to try and make it to the top of Engelmann loop before the sun actually rose. I was hoping by then that I would be above the fog and able to take some nice photos of the sun and mountains over the fog. So I got all my stuff together and headed out in the dark with the aid of a flashlight. I immediately knew I had made the right decision to go out this morning. I could see water droplets hanging in the air from my flashlight beam, and in the trees it sounded like it was raining with all the water droplets falling. Because it was dark, I couldn't really see if all that moisture collected on the grasses, shrubs and spider webs, but things were looking good so far!

Well around ten to six I was getting closer to the top, but off to the side were some shrubs full of dew drops. This is what I wanted to see and it was light enough to start taking some photos. I had a great time exploring the immediate area and working on my macro-photography techniques attempting at getting the dew on the bushes. I did get some photos of some trees in the fog early on, but after that all my focus (literally!) was on close-ups.

One funny thing happened. I was working on a particular drop of dew and was taking some time in getting everything set up and composed right. After a few minutes I was almost ready when the cable release slipped out of my hand, swung down, and hit the branch I was working on thereby knocking all the dew off!

In my photography books I have always been drawn to the photos of dewy dragonflies. They just look so neat covered in thousands of drops of water. I had never seen a dewy dragonfly out in the field, and therefore have never taken a photo of one. As I was walking the other day I was looking down off to the sides of the trail to look for things to photograph - then something white caught my eye about a foot of the ground in a bush. It was a dewy dragonfly!! I know this might not excite a lot of people, but I certainly was! One thing about dewy insects is that because of all the weight of the water on their bodies, they really cannot move until they dry off so there usually is plenty of time to photograph them - even so I was trying to get set up as quickly as possible and was almost nervous! I ended up starting with a photo of the dragonfly in it's context (on a branch, and then working my way in until all I could see was pretty much just one wing. I really hope these photos turn out, because I always wanted to take photos like these.

In case you are interested, below are some comments that I have from my little outing. While I am waiting for my film to be developed I always think about what I did, and sort of "debrief" myself as to what I did in the field. Once I get my film back I can see if I was successful, and learn from my mistakes as well as successes. Some of those things I would like to reflect on now and I hope that these things too will stimulate your thinking about photography and the process behind taking a (hopefully) good photo.

Tripod

Having a good tripod is an absolute essential for a nature photographer and I came to appreciate my tripod all the more Tuesday morning. The reason a tripod is essential is because quite often you must deal with shutter speeds that are not able to be "hand-held." This is due to a number of factors including: low-light situations (pre-dawn, dark forest, etc.), the need for good depth-of-field, the desire to get motion in the photo (water flowing, grasses swaying), and film speed (I usually use ISO 50 or 100 film - even digital camera users have to think about this). Because of these types of things, I usually have shutter speeds in the range of 1 second to 1/4 of a second - way too long to hand-hold!

When I first started taking photos I had a very cheap tripod (the kind you buy at Best Buy for $25.) I actually attempted to adapt it to meet my needs, and it served its purpose decently, but once I was able to get a real photographer's tripod I don't know how I lived without it! I am able to put my tripod in almost any position that I need: from just an inch or two from the ground, to over my head, or even sticking my camera into a bush from the side. I love it!! In this case I used almost all the potential configurations to get to the shots that I wanted.

Fog

Overall, I haven't had a lot of opportunities to shoot subjects in the fog. Before getting to all the dewy shrubs there were some trees that looked really nice silhouetted in the fog. Because the trees are overall dark I metered an area just off the tree that was just fog so that I could get an accurate reading of the fog. Then since fog isn't "middle-toned", it is more white than that, I opened up my camera 1 to 1.5 stops, composed the shot with the tree, and took the photo - bracketing 1 stop on both sides.

This is a good example of not letting your camera do all the work. It wants to make everything "middle-toned" whereas there are things you that aren't. You have to constantly be thinking about what you want to actually appear on the film and then tell your camera to do that! I hope that I was successful with the fog.

Patience

If you know me, then you probably know that I can tend to be impatient. This makes itself all the more evident when I am taking photos and something I am constantly fighting against! The first way this makes itself evident is in finding the right subject. Too often, either in taking close-ups of dew or broad landscapes, I tend to jump on the first photo opportunity without taking the time to make sure that it is the best photo. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, because that first opportunity may be your only one, but more often that not it is just one of many.

On this day, I really didn't look around at all the dew drops on the shrubs, but started to set everything up on the first one I saw. Even while I was doing this I was telling myself that this wasn't the best subject, but I wanted to just take a photo so bad that I continued. This is the one where I hit the branch with my cable release, and I was in a way glad because it forced me to actually look around for another subject - which I did with more care.

The other thing that really tested my patience was the presence of a slight breeze. Since I was working at higher magnification and longer shutter speeds, any movement at all would ruin the photo. Sitting with the shutter release in your hand, watching a little branch, and waiting for it to stop will try anybody's patience! I know there are some photos where I was pushing it and probably got some fuzzy photos!

Thinking about Procedure

One of the most frustrating things about taking film photos (even digital to a point as well) is getting back home, looking at the shots, and realizing that you missed something basic and that you should have caught that before. Things like intrusions into the frame, blown-out highlights, improper metering, etc. This happens to me all the time. Usually it is because I don't think about metering the whole scene (and just go with my camera's center-weighted value) and I don't take the time to look at the other things in the frame. I can get so focused on the one subject I want to capture, but don't see the element off to the side that will eventually ruin the shot.

Some other things that I usually forget about are what is the mood I am trying to convey in this photo? How are people going to look at this photo? What is their eye going to be drawn to and how? What do I want them to think of when looking at this?

This time I was trying to be as conscious as possible of all the procedural "rules" and technical aspects of the shot. Taking meter readings of what I wanted to meter off of and adjusting those to how I wanted them to appear on film, making sure the composition was correct and not allowing extraneous elements into the shot, and finally making sure that I was using the correct equipment. On this final point I kind of missed something early on, but it shouldn't effect things too much; when it is overcast the photos tend to be a little "cool", to combat this there are "warming filters" (81 series). I completely forgot about this and it wasn't until later that I put on an 81B filter. There might not be a lot of harm done to the earlier photos, they just might be a little "cooler" than I would have liked.

A lot of these types of things I would like to talk about in my "Photography Basics" blogs in the near future, but this should give you some ideas of the things that one needs to think about.

If you couldn't tell I can think about these things for a long time, and if you got this far I thank you for bearing with me! Happy shooting!