Know Someone Interested In Nature Photography?

Are you interested in nature photography?  Do you know someone who might be interested in taking photos like these?  Read on...

All photos from 2016 walk

Each year I do a one hour program on nature photography followed by a casual walk/stroll through the woods at Warriors Path photographing nature.  These free programs are part of the 38th Annual Spring Nature Festival at Warriors Path State Park in Kingsport April 21 - 23, 2017.  My talk is Saturday, April 22 from 9 - 10 AM in the Recreation Building on Duck Island.  The walk is 10 - 11:30 in the park.  

The program is suitable for beginner photographers with any kind of camera, including a cell phone. The walk is along a stream where we will find wildflowers and other things to photograph.

No need to register.  Just show up.

Be sure to check out the other programs Friday - Sunday.

Pass this along.  Spread the word.

When Nature Doesn't Provide, Get Creative

As an outdoor / landscape photographer, I'm at the mercy of nature.   The wind, light, clouds and other conditions, can make really nice photographs.   More often than not, the conditions are not all that conducive to making good photographs.  Such was the case this morning at Warriors Path State Park.

I had gone there to scope out photography opportunities for a photography class I'm teaching.   My students will meet me there Saturday morning and I want to have some idea if I should take them left or right in search of photographs.  I wandered around for a while not finding much to capture my attention.  At one point I found this branch sticking out of the surface of the lake.  I tried to create something in the minimalist style and came up with this.

Not much there to get excited about.   Then I recalled throwing pebbles into the water to create ripples, making a scene possibly a little more interesting.   Lucky for me the lake shore was littered with round rocks perfect for tossing in the lake.   The results weren't much better.  Then I tossed a bigger rock in the lake and the splash caught my eye.

What if I zoomed in and captured the water splashing up?  The sunlight was coming from the side, making the splash brighter than the reflections in the water and highlighting the texture of the water drops in mid-air without being too bright. It was only me doing the tossing and shooting, but I had plenty of time and rocks.   I would toss a rock, put my camera up to my eye, guess where the rock would hit the surface and try to time the shot just right.  Let's just say I played the law of averages - take enough photos that one or two may work out.   People out for their morning walk at the park probably shook their head and the crazy guy with the camera down on the lake shore.

Here are the results of my creative rock tossing.

Bass jumping with mouth open

Jumping Leaf

Water Fountain

Man Looking Over A Wall

See The Face?

All were taken at 200mm, f/4.5, ISO 400 - 800.   Shutter speeds varied between 1/250 and 1/800.

In the end, I had fun and created some fun scenes to photograph.   Don't let conditions keep you from shooting.   Go out and see what you can find and maybe even create some really cool conditions for photography.

Wait For It - Timing The Light

Here's a quick post to illustrate the power of timing in landscape photography.  

Normally timing a photo is not all that important for landscape photographers.  We can take our time to set up a shot and shoot when ready. Unless it's a wildlife shot the subject is not moving and timing is not the most important thing to be concerned with.

Sometimes timing a landscape shot can make the difference between a ho-hum photo and one that really grabs your attention.  This morning was just such a time.   June and I were walking at our local state park and I was lucky enough to have my camera with me.   It was a typical winter morning.  The wind was calm, the sky was overcast, and occasionally the sun would break through the clouds for a minute or two. The moving clouds and constantly changing light was what made the difference today.

Here are three shots taken in a span of  less than two minutes.

8:54:32

8:55:17

8:56:20

In the second photo, the sun was hitting the bank and bare maple trees but not the hillside behind.  At that brief moment, the bright trees were standing out against the darker background.  The high contrast causes your eyes to be drawn right to the trees.  These conditions lasted less than a minute.

I was able to get this shot because I was watching for interesting light and paying attention to the interplay between the cloud shadows and the trees.   When you're out looking for interesting subjects to photography be sure to pay attention to the light.  It can make all the difference in the world.

Patience

This has been a good weekend.   I got to spend most of it with June and taking pictures.

On Saturday June and I spent a few hours taking sunrise photos in downtown Kingsport, eating breakfast at The Bagel Exchange, and then making photos of the pianos that have been painted and placed around downtown.

Downtown is not a place I would have thought to go for sunrise.  We were there to drop my car off for service while we photographed the pianos.  Wanting to get close to the front of the line we dropped the car off before sunrise.  It was too early to eat so we wandered around trying to find a good vantage spot to see the sunrise.

The sunrise colors were spectacular and we did find some nice shots before breakfast.

The pianos turned out to be more fun that I ever imagined.  I made a lot of shots and spent most of Saturday editing.

I'm planning to take my favorite piano photos and make a slide show.  For now, here's a couple for you to preview.

I almost missed the photo below.  We had seen this piano earlier and passed it up because we were on our way to breakfast.  It was much later when June reminded me we hadn't gone back to this one.   I wasn't real excited because I hadn't seen any compelling compositions the first time around.  It was still a beautiful morning and we were enjoying our time too much to cut it short so why not walk back and see if there were any shots hiding there.

What a shot we found!   The glass panels reflected the brightly painted piano, creating what I call a Pianorama.   This was a fun photo to make.  The hardest thing was finding a composition where I wasn't also reflected in the glass.

Day two of our weekend.   Again we got up before sunrise and this time we headed down the road to Warrior's Path State Park to see if we could catch another sunrise and fall colors.   No sunrise today, but the overcast skies made the fall colors pop right out of the photo.

There were many photo opportunities, such as the Blue Heron across the lake posing among the fall colors.

Near the end of our morning in the park the smooth reflections in the lake were disturbed by a couple fishermen in a big hurry to get to their favorite spot in the lake.   Because I was set up to take long exposure landscape shots from a tripod I wasn't set up to photograph a fast moving boat.  I did the best I could in a couple seconds and got an OK shot.  

I little later another boater arrived and unloaded his boat into the lake about 50 years away.   I was hoping he would come across in front of me like the last guy so I set up my camera for an action shot and waited.   He took his time and I about gave up when he started his motor and took off in the opposite direction!  This time I wanted a boat to come by and disturb the smooth surface and he goes the other way.

In the end my patience paid off and I got a different shot that also tells a story.

No matter how much we plan, there are things out of our control and we end up in situations where we didn't expect to be.   Be patient, make the best of it, know that someone else greater than us is in control, and His plans are even better!

Evolution of a Composition

I haven't been out shooting much lately.  Winter in East Tennessee does not provide many opportunities for beautiful landscapes.  The colors are grey or muted brown.   It does not snow often and when it does I'm usually at work. 

Today was different.  I checked the weather forecast last night and saw that they were calling for 30% cloud cover at dawn.   You have to have some clouds to get a good colorful sunrise, but not so much that the sky becomes overcast.  Thirty percent sounded pretty good to me so I set the alarm. 

It was worth it!  Here's what June and I witnessed this morning.

Pretty special, huh?  

Afterwards we drove around a bit looking for other opportunities and found ourselves at the shore of Patrick Henry Lake.  I was hoping the sunrise would light up the fog on the lake but it didn't happen.  At June's suggestion I shot this.

 

 

I always listen to June's suggestions.   My photography is better when she is with me. 

The photo above is cropped and a little tone adjustments were added.    The colors are too blah but the contrast between the bare trees on the left and the fog is interesting.   When there is little color but interesting contrasts it's a good idea to convert to black and white and see how it comes out.

I think this is more interesting than the color version, but the real interesting part of this shot is the branch sticking out of the fog on the left side.   This was shot at 200mm.  I really needed to zoom in closer to isolate that section.  I could have gotten my 300 and 1.4 teleconverter to more than double to focal length but I was too lazy to walk back to the car. 

I decided to crop the photo to isolate what I thought was the interesting part.  The problem is this reduced my 21 megapixel original down to a 1.9 megapixel photo.  OK for a small version on facebook, but too small for anything else. 

I got a copy of Perfect Resize for Christmas.  Using that software I was able to enlarge it back to 16 megapixels, more than big enough for most anything I want to do with it.

This composition evolved from the original as shot, to a wide crop, to a black and white, to an extreme crop black and white.   I like the last one, but each one is different and conveys a different mood.

This has been a pretty good day for shooting.