Nantasket Car Show
Friends from the Duxbury Camera Club tipped me off to a car show being held at Nantasket Beach this weekend. I drove up and walked around for an hour or so and took a few shots. It was a nice, warm, late-summer morning and despite the direct sun, perfect for shooting. Lots of color. I used the Lecia SL3 with the 21mm APO and a polarizer for reflections. A sampling above and a link to more here.
Fashion Models
Fashion Shoot at the Cape Cod center ART CENTER
At a small photography conference on Cape Cod last weekend, the organizers set up a fashion shoot with some local aspiring models. I’ve never been very interested in fashion photography but I do like taking photos of people. So I gave it a shot. I tried to stay out of the way of the other photographers with their autofocus cameras (I was completely unprepared, with a rangefinder and a 35mm lens) as I focused away, off to the side. Here’s a link to a set of the individual images shown above.
A Place and Time for Street Photography
To me, the most compelling environment for street photography would have to be New York in the 70s and 80’s.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t there then. But I can enjoy the work of others who were.
One of those people is Ryan Weideman, who drove a taxi in New York for 35 years. He shot from his cab. Some incredible work shown at the Bruce Silverstein Gallery.
Cliff Diving in Boston Harbor
The Red Bull cliff diving championship took place recently in Boston, outside the ICA.
The event drew huge crowds on a beautiful spring day. I got there a little early and set up under the board.
I brought the Leica SL3 and old faithful, the 24-90 ASPH. I set everything to manual, including focus, mostly so I didn’t have to deal with tracking and auto-adjustment issues in the moment.
The SL3 isn’t known as a great sports camera but 6 FPS worked well enough for this situation.
I saw one woman shooting nearby with an old Hasselblad with a film back and winder. Props to her! Hope she got something good.
This is my favorite shot from the day. More photos here. Some were flipped for a no gravity effect.
Infrared
Last month I attended a presentation by Silvana Della Camera on infrared photography hosted by the Duxbury Camera Club. I can’t say I had much interest going in. Infrared photography always seemed like a gimmick to me.
But I found the presentation interesting and compelling. So much so that I sent an old Nikon D800 in to LifePixel for conversion to Infrared. I chose the 590nm conversion.
When the camera came back I struggled to get anything useable out of it. Focus was a problem. I knew that normal autofocus wouldn’t work properly because infrared light strikes the sensor differently than visible light. I tried to focus manually using Live View but it was hard to see the image on that dim, old LCD. I missed focus most of the time. Also, some of my favorite lenses were showing hotspots, a common issue with infrared and some lenses.
As I was on the verge of giving up, I dug out some old lenses from the basement and tried them. And this time I tried something new: using autofocus while in Live View. Strangely it worked. When I thought about for half a second it made sense. No mirror.
Now, back in business, I downloaded some IR white balance profiles for Lightroom and took a YouTube crash-course on IR processing and channel swapping. I’m struggling to get anything as good as I’ve seen other photographers produce, but it’s a work-in-progress.
I”m still not convinced that IR photography isn’t a gimmick. But maybe that’s because I haven’t quite figured out how to apply it yet. So I’ll keep at it for a while to see if what happens.
Skútafoss
Driving out of Hofn, on Iceland’s southeastern coast, heading up towards Egilsstaðir, I knew that there were a few places worth checking out and Skútafoss was one of them. It’s not the most dramatic waterfall in Iceland, but it is a nice one.
It was a short hike from the road. The rest of the group stayed behind to hang out with some very loud sheep and I headed up the ravine with my gear.
As you approach the falls you can see the two main streams. It was late August so not a lot of water was flowing. I set up the dreaded tripod and took a few shots. There was no one around — or at least I thought there was no one around.
As I was shooting and enjoying the solitude, two people appeared from off to the right under the falls. Apparently there was a small cave. They saw my camera and tripod and told me that I could get a better view in the cave. I followed their advice and this is the shot.
I used the Leica SL2 with the very versatile 24-90 ASPH. I do hate using a tripod but in this case it was necessary to get the streaming effect I was looking for.
Then it was back to the road and up through the Oxi Pass, which is a story in itself, but one for another day.
Foto Private Beta
Check out the Foto private beta!
I’ve been using the Foto iOS app as a beta tester for a few months now and they’re opening up the beta to additional testers until June 12. If you’re a photographer frustrated with Instagram, it’s worth checking out. Simple sharing and a nice way to discover great photographs and amazing photographers.
The app roadmap looks good. The software is a little rough around the edges now, in beta. But it’s steadily improving and I anticipate that some of the cool planned features will start to be introduced soon.
Windblown Trees
This photo was taken in the Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary in Marshfield, MA — a great place for a short hike. When I go I almost always bring a camera.
There was something about these asymmetric trees that caught my eye. I’ve returned to photograph them on a number of occasions, in different seasons and conditions. Maybe it’s because they reminded me of the apple trees in the Wizard of Oz. (Watch out, they might reach out and grab you!) They have a kind of fascination for me.
Anyway, this particular image was taken in late September, 2020. I used the Leica SL2 and a Sigma 85mm f1.4 DG DN, a standard portrait setup. That combination allowed for some nice background blurring and gave the wildflowers and tree in the foreground a 3-D effect. So yes, this, basically is a portrait of a tree.
Click on the image for a closer look.
Gear doesn’t matter/Gear matters
Do you need a fancy camera to take high quality images? There are a lot of strongly held opinions out there. I’ll tell you what I think.
To cut to the chase, the answer is no. The quality of today’s smartphone and low-end mirrorless cameras rivals the quality of high-end cameras from 20 years ago. And those old cameras were pretty darn good.
Also, the software available today allows lower resolution images to be enhanced and upscaled if needed. It’s remarkable how great a photo you can get from the small sensor on a smartphone. There are plenty of amazing images that were produced on phones hanging in galleries these days.
For years, my favorite camera was the Leica M9, which had a measly 18 megapixels. That’s small potatoes by today’s standards. But it strikes me that when reviewing images I often can’t tell whether I used the M9 or the more current 60-megapixel M11. Not to mention that some of my favorite images were taken with the puny 6-megapixel Nikon D100.
One area where there are significant benefits to using the latest and greatest (and most expensive) gear is sensor efficiency. Current cameras do have greatly improved noise and dynamic range performance. But software can help to mitigate some of those noise issues, too.
That said, I still prefer high-end gear. I’ll go for the biggest sensor and the best glass that I can afford. I also like simplicity and focus, which is why I gravitate towards Leica.
I’m one of those photographers who originally got into it because I became fascinated with the camera itself. I still love the look and feel of a well made and well designed camera or lens. I was surprised in talking to other photographers that not everyone feels this way. For many it’s just a tool. But for me the camera is an intrinsic part of the creative process.
I don’t intend to do formal gear reviews here, but I will probably post on specific cameras and lenses in the future to give my impressions.
2024 Eclipse
Taking photos of an eclipse can be pretty cool, but only if you’re in the path of full totality. Here in southeastern Massachusetts we were not.
For those in the path who had clear skies, it was nice to see all of the images posted on social media. This one is my favorite.
A local photographer, Bob Wydro, travelled some distance north to photograph the full eclipse only to find a sky full of clouds. Fortunately he was able to make the best of it.
Here, there were only a few clouds but the situation was still challenging. The partially obscured sun was high in the sky and, even with a 10 stop ND filter, it was still very bright, washing everything out. The only hope of having a visible foreground element was as a silhouette. And the only thing nearby to use for that were the trees in the backyard.
So that’s what I did. And the photo to the left is the result. Not a great shot but it’s something to mark the occasion. I should have used a longer lens but of course I was too lazy to set up a tripod, etc.
But now that I know how all this works and what to do and not to do, I guess I’ll be ready for the next eclipse — when it happens in 40 years of so.