Another shot from our Puget Sound air-/road-trip. This one’s looking back toward Victoria, BC from the ferry headed south to Port Angeles, Washington.
This shot would have looked about as nice if the sky had been clear and blue. Still, I like the smooth background light that the light overcast gave the scene. For those of you taking notes, I made this image with an Olympus E-M5 camera with the 12-50mm “kit” lens.
We recently returned from a multi-week vacation to the Puget Sound area. This trip followed our now-standard approach — fly to some interesting locale, rent a car, drive a thousand miles or so over a few weeks while taking in the sights and sounds. This is the first picture I’m posting from the 2,000+ photographs I collected in the process:
It’s a view out the front windows of the ferry between Vancouver (the city) and Nanaimo (on Vancouver Island), both in beautiful British Columbia, Canada. I was originally hoping that I could capture some nice scenic views on this leg of the trip, but it proved… wetter… than the weather forecast had predicted.
So when life gives you rain, you take rain pictures.
At this point, the ferry was just leaving the Vancouver docks; that white-outlined dark spot is a small fishing boat heading out ahead of us. In retrospect, I like the sense of mystery that focusing on the water gave this shot. I took another version of this shot, but focused on the small boat — doesn’t look nearly as interesting.
I spotted this on a photowalk through New Orleans’ French Quarter:
Some pretty interesting lights — particularly given that they’re in the entryway of a hotel. Good geometry and textures, though, for sure.
Nothing terribly profound — just a sunset I had to grab a camera to save…
Over the years, I’ve settled into having two semi-related sets of photography gear — a “large set,” and a “small set.” My small set of gear is all micro-4/3 stuff, and I recently upgraded that body to an Olympus OM-D E-M5 (yes, bit of a mouthful there). Or to be more accurate, I should say that I ordered an E-M5
back in March and it finally arrived a few weeks back.
So buoyed by reports of good performance in low-light situations, I took my shiny new (surprisingly small) little camera with tripod and cable release to a fireworks display that our town put on recently.
Craft and Vision has just released a new eBook — as usual it costs $5, and as usual it’s a good one. The latest title is Up Close by Andrew S. Gibson, and is all about Macro and Close-up Photography — so not a lot of philosophizing in this title, but plenty of practical information for those who shoot things up close (or who are interested in giving it a try).
So what, you may ask, will your $5 get you? Up Close is 90 pages long, and is divided in four parts. Part one (the largest of them) is all about equipment — dedicated macro lenses, close-up lenses (a.k.a. close-up adapters or diopters), reversing rings, extension tubes, and the like. Each gets an exhaustive discussion of its uses, benefits, limitations, and things to consider before you buy. This section of Up Close also includes a nice set of example images made with each of the equipment types, so you can see for yourself what each is capable of producing.
The second part of Up Close is about macro and close-up photographic technique. Focusing, use of depth of field, dealing with camera shake — all get their due in this comparatively slim part of the eBook.
Part three is about lighting for macro and close-up photography. Gibson definitely prefers natural light, but still gives a fairly complete (and commendably brand-agnostic) treatment of lighting options for your work with your camera.
The final section of the book contains case studies of work done by Mandy Disher (macro) and Celine Steen (food close-ups), along with photography tips from both of them.
All in all, Up Close is a very solid work if you’re even just toying with the idea of getting into macro or close-up photography. Gibson includes (really, emphasizes) approaches that don’t involve buying super-expensive macro-specific gear. And for $5, you don’t have much to lose.
Just as an FYI, come on back on Tuesday morning for a review (with money-saving promo codes!) of a new Craft and Vision eBook!
I spotted this scene late at night in New Orleans:
I’ve taken to paying attention to what ceiling light fixtures look like from below — it’s not how they’re intended to be viewed, and you’ll often see an interesting geometry as a result. This one just made me laugh — it started as a nice symmetric six-sided thing, but has lost any pretense of regularity (as seems to be typical of New Orleans). Meanwhile, over on the left, where two bulb holders are a bit spread apart from where they originally were, an alarm bell sits between them and balances the composition.
So, crooked but still balanced. The sepia tone, by the way, was naturally there — about all I did to this shot was correct a little pincushion from the close perspective.
Likely the best surviving example of Puuc-style architecture, at the ancient Maya ruins of Uxmal, Mexico:
Many Maya structures still bear the nicknames given whimsically to them by their re-discoverers in the 19th and 20th centuries. Whether by luck or prescience, the name of this structure fits it surprisingly well — archaeological work here indicates that it was once used by the rulers of Uxmal in its heyday.