Sphericality.org

I read somewhere once that the more stuff you bring, the less pictures you take.

This is very true.

Think about it – if you are going to be inside, there is no need for a 100-300mm lens.  You won’t use it, but if you carry it around all day, you’ll want to find a reason to use it, and you will take up space in your bag that should otherwise be used for things you will use – possibly something for your flash which you will make good use of.

Likewise, if you are going to be outside at an airshow all day, the likelihood of you needing a flash, or a macro lens, or an f/1.8 35mm lens is unlikely.  Ok, so the 35mm might be useful, but outside, with bright sunlight, you’ll gain next to nothing by using the fixed 35 over an 18-200mm lens.

You might be thinking to yourself, self, I just bought this $300 flash, I want to carry it around everywhere and I’ll use it.

After going to your first airshow, I guarantee you will leave the flash behind next time.  Or after taking the big lens to the indoor event, you’ll leave it home next time.

Think about this for a minute: when you take underwater images, you plan your first dive for the day to get a feeling for what is down there.  Then, you surface and set up your camera.  You have two choices (as, for the most part, nothing else is worth while for taking images underwater), close up, or large and sweeping scenes.

You cannot change lenses underwater.  Well, some can, but most cannot.  Experience here will tell you how to judge what you can and cannot get.  The same is true for above water.  Once you learn how the various lenses take pictures, it becomes very clear which is the right one for the situation.

For me, I usually carry no more than 2 lenses with me when I go anywhere.  On some level, it is an intentional way to ensure I use what I have correctly.  On another level, it is for simplicity.  My 400mm lens is heavy, and often not very practical.

I have 2 lenses that cover the short range – one is an 18-70mm, the other is 18-200mm.  On some levels, the 18-200 is better in every way, but on others it isn’t.  The main way it isn’t better is in how it is different.  The 18-70 focuses to infinity at a shorter distance than the 18-200 does, which also means it has a very different depth of field, which means it is not the same.

-sdo

Due to lightning in the area, I was browsing some Flickr Tags.

One of my images

(click for my Flickr page for this image)

One of the tags here is “Antietam”.  I thought it might be interesting to browse the public tags, see what others have taken.

I ran across this flickr page.  (I’ve linked it out of respect for the photographer).

Some of his images from the Union graveyard at Antietam were taken around the same time as some of my images from the graveyard.

When I was there taking my pictures, I saw someone else with a fairly large Nikon dSLR.  I find this both really cool and somewhat freaky that I was able to discover who the other person there was by browsing Flickr tags.

I also found out that ‘sdo’ is a Japanese Anime, and a lot of people are looking for pictures of it for some reason, which leads to most of my traffic.  Bleh.

About the photo I’ve posted here:

This isn’t anything special.  There is actually a stone monument right in the middle, which is what caught my eye and the reason I stopped.  Beyond that, I just stopped and took 4 images as I tried to frame up the scene the way I wanted it.  This is the last of the 4 and the one I liked best.  The sky, while fake looking, is an excellent reproduction of the day.  It looks like a painting, and I love it.  I love it to the point where I may end up getting it framed and put on one of my walls.

-sdo

One thing I like to try to use is existing surroundings to make a frame to my image.  This can be a really nice way to make an image turn out well.

(click for larger version)

This is the cloister from (I think) Magdalen College at Oxford University in Oxford England.  If I were doing something with the image, I would probably darken the top to complete the frame of the cloister.  It is a stone archway, and works fairly well as a border to the rest of the image.

However, look at what happens when I change the angle slightly.

(click for larger version)

It doesn’t work nearly as well.  It isn’t a terrible shot, but it isn’t quite up to the level of the first.  With this second one, I think I would have been better off not having the stone frame in the image.  Of course, one man’s trash is another’s treasure.  I’m sure the bottom image, to someone, is the greatest image ever made.

My personal opinion is that I like the first better, but it reflects my personality.  The top is a very still image, nice to look at, but somewhat cold overall.  Everything feels like it is frozen in place.  It may as well be a bunch of fruit.  While it is a good photo, it has no personality and very little character.  It would look nice on a wall, but there is no emotion.

The second one is very different.  By adjusting the framing, and blurring the stone a little, it almost makes you uncomfortable to look at.  The age of the buildings helps to make it feel old, and almost a memory.

This is part of the difference between being just a good photo and breaking into art.  Although the line is very blurry sometimes.  Some would call both of these images art, some would say only one is.  While I do not consider myself an artist, I have made some images that could be considered art.

Moving on.

You can do the same as this with natural objects, like trees and rocks.

(click for larger version)

While not a great photo, this does work.  I was sitting under a tree and I found the framing of the Washington Monument to be quite nice.

However, it can also produce some, odd images.

(click for larger image)

The branch, in my opinion, actually ruins this image.  It just sort of hangs there and looks awkward.

(click for larger image)

This is kind of the reverse.  The branch is the subject, and everything else frames it.  It doesn’t work, just looks odd, and is not very good.

-sdo

A while ago I posted a picture on a forum that I took on one of my day trips.

(click for larger version)

I mentioned that it was about a 3 hour drive from where I live that I took this image.  This was taken with my Canon SD800.  I have some images from the Nikon D70, but they were not really as good as I was hoping.  The comments I got on the picture were interesting.  Some were saying things along the lines of “I wonder what is 3-4 hours drive from where I live”, to “There are no good pics to be taken where I live unless ya like places where nothing can live lol”.

For that, I had two replies, one was an old lesson I had to learn the hard way.  I was discussing ideas with my photography professor in college saying how I felt like I needed to travel far to get the images I wanted.  He told me that you don’t need to venture far away to be able to tell a story or get a good photo. I replied that the town was too small and without a car I couldn’t get the pics I wanted. He told me to look harder and I would get them.

The second reply was a few images from my trip to Vegas (my friend who doubted that there were any good pics to take lives near Vegas).

Current Album: Vegas
Images:

Not being one to not take my own advice, I decided to try something new with photography.

I’ve been spending some time reading up on how to get a sunrise image to turn out.  Since I’ve never gone somewhere for the purposes of taking a sunrise or a sunset, I decided to try one.

Ok, I couldn’t sleep, and when I woke up I realized it was 5:10 am, and sunrise is around 5:15 am.

I took a bunch of images as I stood there for about 2 hours.  I discovered that my balcony is a horrible place to try to take sunrise pictures due to the trees and hills.  The sun gets into a good position about 90-120 minutes after first light, but which time it is too bright and washes out everything else.

But I did get these two images.

(click for larger version)

I used a tripod so it made it a lot easier to get the same general area in two different pictures.

It may not be very noticeable, but the top image exposes the ground better, but at the cost of over exposing the sky.  The bottom image exposes the sky well, but underexposes the ground.

What to do…

I cheated.  Hurray for PhotoShop.

(click for larger version)

This is a mix of the two versions.  It was done fairly quickly, but I kind of like how it came out.  Even if it does look like something it isn’t.

I took the bottom image and set that as the background, then dropped the top image on top as a different layer.  I then set it to about 75% opacity, then went about erasing the sky from the top image.  The end result is something a bit better than the two source images, but still not quite as good as I was hoping for.

But I feel like I learn more from failure than success.  I learned a bit about how to make a decent sunrise image (location!) and quite a bit about how to not make one.

-sdo

I love to play with Depth of Field.  If done right, it can turn a good image into a great one, and a great image into a fantastic one.

Most of the time though I don’t realize how the image will come out until I get it back or transfer it to a computer.

First of all, what is depth of field?  Simply put, when you take a picture, part of the image is in focus, and part is not.  The distance from the camera that is in focus is usually referred to as the depth of field.

This is my favorite photo to use as an example:

(click for larger version, I’ve resized this to 600 pixels wide instead of my normal 500 to show extra detail)

This is an excellent image to describe depth of field.  It is very easy to see the out of focus foreground, and also see where it goes back into focus around the diver (who is the center of focus for this image).  Then the background becomes a little fuzzy.  As an aside (and reference to a previous post), this was not taken with an amazing top of the line camera.  It was taken with a 3 MPix Canon S30, which was introduced in 2001.  Canon usually makes a water proof case for their point and shoot cameras, and I was using this case (hence the reason I had the camera out in the rain and near the surface of the water).  I was also about to go diving and I had my camera with me.  The camera was about 6in above the surface of the water.  Everything else was set to ‘auto’.

So now that we all are on the same page on Depth of Field, here is how I personally use Depth of Field.

I like to de-emphasize that which the viewer would normally consider important in favor of that which would normally be un-important.

(click for larger version)

This is a picture I took in 2003 at the Al Hambra in southern Spain.  The background is the Al Hambra, one of the most important sites in all of Spain.

By focusing on the flower, I de-emphasize the castle.  Your eye goes right to the flower and the great historical and cultural landmark becomes nothing more than the background for a relatively unimportant flower.  It also makes for a much more interesting photo if it is not all crisp and in focus.  If you want to make it all in focus, take a few steps back and use more zoom.  To get everything in focus, you need your main object to be at or past where the lens will focus to infinity (my older lens is at about 11 ft, my current is around 20 ft, my 300mm lens is at around 55 ft, most point and shoot cameras will be around 5-6 ft).  But if everything is in focus, the image will be much, much more boring.

So that is how I like to use it.  But the question is – how do you get this effect?  By knowing and abusing depth of field.

The question I have is this – are two photos, one taken from 10 ft at 50mm and one taken from 20 ft at 100mm the same?  Once you understand Depth of Field, you will begin to know that while mathematically the two images are the same, they are only the same for the main point of focus.  If you are taking a picture of a wall, then, yes, these two are the same.  But if you have objects behind or in front of your focus target, they are not the same.

And so, the next time you are going to take a picture, try to make things out of focus.  Once you get some practice, I think you will like the results.

-sdo

PS: I’ve started a Flickr account.  http://www.flickr.com/photos/38699373@N08/, although its nothing special yet.

A friend of mine told me something once about why he loves golf.

What he said was something along the lines of “every so often you hit the ball, and just know that you’ve hit it as well as a professional would.  That is a good feeling”.

Ok, that version isn’t even close, but it captures the spirit of the quote.

In that light, I would like to describe photography as the “Golf of the Art World”.  Even a total beginner can pick up a camera, get a lucky shot, and have it be one of the best images you have ever seen.  This is an exciting thought.  At any time, there is a chance that anyone might make a photograph that will just take your breath away.

My photography professor would have a slightly different take.  He described photography as a democratic art form.  It really is open to everyone to enjoy as they wish.  Taking a good photograph is not hard, but painting and drawing can be somewhat difficult and require skill and talent that not everyone will have.

Case in point:

(click on image for full size)

While looking through my very old photos, I came across this one.  Yes, that is me, but this is from my 1997 trip to France.  I hardly even look like that guy anymore.

I remember setting up the framing on this image, but at the same time, I obviously did not take it.  And it came out fantastic, even if it was a disposable Kodak panoramic camera (I long ago lost the original image and the negative is who knows where, but this old scan was sitting on the hard drive of my college laptop).  Even still, it is one of my favorite pictures I have of myself.  As you can probably assume, I an more often the one behind the camera than in front of it.  It means I end up as the group archivist, and the one who rarely appears in the images.  A role I personally prefer, but I digress.

Anyone has the chance, at any point, to take an image that is as good or better than a pro would take.  But a pro will be more consistent.

-sdo

I have some expensive camera toys.  There is no reason to deny this.  But some of my favorite images have come from my cheapest equipment.  Today, we will look at one of those images (and discuss a habit of most people I find disgusting).

A long, long time ago in April 2008, I went to the National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, DC.  While I was there, I took this photo.

(click for larger version)

This was not taken with my dSLR.  It was actually taken with a digital Point and Shoot camera – a Canon SD800.  When I purchased the camera the previous summer, it was around $250.  Far from the price of a starter dSLR.

When I buy a camera, I look at the feature list and find what I really want.  With this particular camera, I bought it before my trip to Europe in which I knew I would be in small areas (as many of the older areas of Europe can be).  So, I picked this camera because it has a wider angle lens (and thus has less zoom, making it less ideal for other uses) and because it had macro.  This image was taken using the macro mode, which is why it turned out as it did.

Knowing your camera is key to having an image turn out.  Knowing how it works, what is available, and just as important, how it takes a picture in the various modes.

Which leads me into a horrible practice I see people doing all the time – stealing a shot.  Because I like taking pictures, I start to see things and how to frame them when I walk by.  This is referred to as your ‘eye’.  It is an acquired skill, and the only way to really acquire it is to take a lot of pictures and see what turns out and what does not (I have more bad images than I care to think about, but I learn a little with each one).  With the advent of digital photography, everyone suddenly thinks they are an amazing photographer because they dropped $2000-$3000 on a camera.

Nobody was stopping at this particular cherry blossom, but when I walked past, I saw the shot and told my group to stop.  I lined up and took this shot in about 10 seconds, then showed it to my friends, who all said ‘wow’.  Others nearby saw the resulting image on my camera’s LCD screen and a line soon formed to get the same image.  This drives me nuts, although in large crowd situations, I just accept it.  Personally, if I see someone take a shot I didn’t see, I ask them if they mind if I try for the same shot.  If any of them had asked me, I would have told them ‘go for it’ and helped them line the shot up.  None of them said anything.

None of them were able to get what I got.  They all looked at their screens, shook their heads, and walked away (some using what was at the time a very nice Nikon or Canon dSLR).  The line went away fairly quickly.

A friend of mine said that her camera could never get the same picture.  She was using a Canon SD700 or 750.  I took her camera, and got an image that was about as good (I vaguely recall liking the one on her camera a little better than the one on my own).

But that brings me to my point.  I can get a better image on what would be a ‘lesser’ quality camera.  Anyone can.  95-99% of getting a shot is framing the image.  The last 1-5% is the camera, and for the shot I posted above, almost any camera should be able to get something equally as good.  This is a fairly simple shot.  For more complex shots, a better camera will probably help get a better image – but only if you know how to use it.

As to why I was using my Canon Point and Shoot on the day in question, that’s a simple one.  I had a Nikon D70 as my dSLR.  But the weight of the D70 can hurt my back, and my back was already hurting on this particular day.  The Canon SD800, even with a spare memory card and battery, weights very little.  Had I not brought the SD800, I would have nothing.  The image you don’t take is worthless.  The macro lens I have for the D70 costs more than double the price of the SD800.  And it would probably take an image about this good.

In the right hands, a disposable camera will take a great shot.  In the wrong hands, the very expensive dSLR will not magically make a great photograph.

-sdo

Woops, I sort of got distracted for a while.  But since I don’t have any traffic, it is all good.

The purpose of this site is to display my photographs.  Yes, it really is that self centered.

But I also will talk about how I made the photo, what I was thinking, where I was, etc.  I won’t discuss much technique beyond the how I took the shot (most of this information can be gathered from the EXIF anyway).  I also won’t talk about equipment or brands other than what I personally use and why I like it.  Most of the shots I will show can be taken on any similarly capable camera, and probably lots on much less capable (and expensive) cameras.

I’ll also discuss things people don’t normally think about.  And I’ll try to use plain English.  I don’t even remember the names of specific things half the time.  Lets call this “Photography in Plain English”.

You can see my older pictures below, and there is a link to a gallery I set up a while ago at the top.  This will get updated over the next few weeks and months.

Lets begin.

Much of what makes a photo good is that which is not obvious.

(click for larger version)

What makes this a good photo (or at the very least, why do I like it enough to make it my first example)?

The reason I like it so much is that it was unexpected.  The person shown here was not often caught just sitting and smiling for a picture.  He would normally make a face.  That I was able to get an image of him making a normal face was just shy of a miracle, and more impressive than just about anything I could otherwise take.

None of this would be known to anyone reading this, aside from those who know us both.

Beyond that, the image has the full range from white to black and all various shades of grey which produces what most would consider pleasing.  If the image were all grey, or had too much black or too much white, it would be ugly.

-sdo