Your Moment in the Sun — 100mm | f/4 | ISO 400 | EXP 1/2500
Most always when shooting macro I rely on the camera’s autofocus system to home in on a single point of focus of my choosing—within the camera’s autofocus grid selection, that is. But for this shot I switched over to full manual focus. The system was struggling to capture optimal sharpness of the fly—if anyone can identify said fly that would be great!—so I took matters into my own hands. Literally.
All factors were ideal for the making of this shot. Wind was no issue, keeping the Black-eyed Susan still; there was a happy little fly confident enough to sit motionless for well over a minute; and lastly, a lone sunbeam illuminating what otherwise was a bed of flowers slumbering in the shadows with a welcome dose of drama. Altogether creating one of those moments were all I had to do was steady the hands, take a deep breath, and depress the shutter before the exhale.
Daedalus Bid You Take Heed — 100mm | f/3.5 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/125
This is abstract. Is this abstract? I think this is abstract. A quick googling of abstract art returns the following—
art that does not attempt to represent external reality, but seeks to achieve its effect using shapes, forms, colors, and textures.
Once I decided to roll with low key black and white processing, all my mind could see is an unnamed papier-mâché sun, brooding near unseen amidst the vastness of space. The way the would-be corona is captured frozen in its solar flare tango as countless sun spots blot out the surface. This is no coneflower—this is a sun. Will our telescopes ever fix on such a sight? Of course not. But another photographer’s macro lens just might.
Those Summer Nights — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures
Not a bad way to wrap a weekend, eh? Summer’s in full swing here in southern Ocean County—revelers abound, commerce is pumping, and the traffic? Well it’s been something . . . Good for business and that’s what counts!
For those keeping score at home my sunset light chasing has been seriously lacking. Sure, Summer’s typically a down season for my wide angle work, giving way to more time spent with my macro lens and some good old fashion handheld shooting. But that doesn’t mean I’m still not keen on hunting one down when conditions are right. Last night offered the perfect combination of temperature, sea breeze, and cloud deck. All the ingredients for a good time on the salt marsh. With my mind in the tank for the better part of the week the fresh air was just what the doctor ordered, and fortunately my trusted camera was happy to oblige. Hands down my best sunset endeavor since I hunted down this all-timer back in late May. Keep the A+ clouds and color coming, please.
Just Missed The Round Up — 100mm | f/3.5 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/640
Here’s another shot from last Sunday’s macro session. And as the title would suggest I just missed my focal point. You can see the sharpest section of the photo happening over the silver-spotted skipper’s right wing instead of its eye and proboscis—thanks Google for letting me know what a butterfly tongue is called. This mess-up could have been mitigated with 1) steadier hands, 2) a tripod, and/or 3) stopping down to let’s say f/4–4/5.6. Shallow depth of field can be a beautiful thing, but it’ll kill ya when you miss. Such is the way of things.
Many far better photo making type peeps than I preach photographists should only show their best work, leaving the mishaps for the doldrums of our digital libraries. There’s certainly wisdom in these words, but I’ve carved my place in this hobby without paying much attention to the rules. This is not to say sound guidance is not important, I think it’s more to say that sometimes we need to make, or at least break, the rules—particularly if it’s an activity your doing for your own sanity and growth. After all how can we grow without exposing ourselves warts and all?
Slacker Greg is is running a bit of a backlog so I beggin’ your pardon if my words are short—though let’s face it you’re here for the photos and not these silly word things, right? Right!?
Bloggers . . .
Anyways, this photo dates back to 25th July, and you’ll see something of a theme in the next few posts—flower and insect macro hybrids. My run of buggy good luck began last Sunday, and over the course of the week netted me bumblebees, a skipper butterfly, and some kind of cool ass fly. In each instance our bug friends were using purple coneflowers or black-eyed susans as their stage. It’s a p kool feeling when your able look down the barrel of your macro lens to dial in an insect with tack sharp focus. It’s a whole new world down there. From there it really makes you wonder what things look life down in the world of the planck length.
As for the title? This comes from a song I’ve only recently been exposed to, though I’ve been told it represents an anthem of sorts from my friends’ hooligan heyday.
Litter Knows No Bounds — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/320
Travel anywhere in this world and you won’t have to look hard for the litter to find you. Not that I know this from experience, but so I’ve been told—I’m not really one for wanderlust. This is especially true for those of us living along the coast where our waterways turn into a de facto mass transit system for our discarded interests. Our refuse gets around easier than we do. I’m sure somewhere on the antarctic ice sheets emperor penguins are bee-bopping next to a transient piece of plastic. I just hope they’re not choking on it.
As I was traipsing about Dock Road this past Sunday, basking in some serious golden hour light pouring over the salt marsh, I began popping off some handheld shots that differ from my more typical tripod only wide angle compositions. The twisted guardrail you see barrel rolling across the frame has caught my eye for years, but I’ve never put it to any kind of compositional use. It wasn’t until I was kneeling to frame up this shot I noticed the trash. For a moment I thought about removing the water bottle from the frame in order to capture a more pristine “natural” shot, but then thought, nah, I’m gonna keep this piece of garbage in my shot. Maybe I had a temporary moment of journalistic integrity and wanted to capture the shot as it really was? Who knows?
In the interest of full disclosure I have never set the world on fire as some kind of environmentalist/conservationist, though my desire to protect our Spaceship Earth has grown stronger with age. I have to give credit to my good buddy Ben Wurst for setting a fine example for myself and the rest of our cohort to follow. He has certainly opened my eyes and caused me to think differently. Though I get a big fat ‘F’ for not picking up this here water bottle to bring it to its rightful place in the bottom of my recycle bin. I am ashamed.
Live alone in a paradise — 100mm | f/3.5 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/1600
. . . that makes me think of two.
Here’s a flower for your Friday. I hope you enjoy it.
This is one of my purple coneflowers that I have potted (sloppily) in my backyard. With strong light overhead, a little to my back, I fixed bayonets macro lens and popped off a few shutters. It was five minutes of awesomesauce. You should have been there. OK. Maybe not.
Regardless, and I’ve said it before, purple coneflower are some of the best floral muses out there. A real go-to for this guy.
It was just this past Sunday I dropped such deep knowledge on the Twitters. Insert very strong sarcasm. Flippancy aside I really do like the shallow depth of field. Recognizing its existence was for me revelatory. As someone who spent the better part of 30 years willfully ignorant toward anything photographic, seeing exposures for the first time elevated composition to a new plane of understanding in my sometime left dominant brain. More so, it shed light into why, despite being rather skilled with any kind of fine art pencil work, I could never grasp the nuance and subtleties of painting—I’m especially looking at you, oils. I never understood depth of field. I never saw it. It’s as simple as that. I never understood you could just blur out elements, whether in the fore, mid or back grounds, with purpose to better move the eye across your subject and through its story.
Art, man. It sounds so simple in retrospect. But I really do like the shallow depth of field.
A Sign of the Times — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | EXP 0.8 sec
I’ve been sitting on these two photos for days; sulking in my own prison, shackled by the nonsense sentencing of my own perfectionist imposition. In some kind of martyred protest for the way events unfolded this past Tuesday, June 23rd. In other words acting like a petulant child.
I’ll spare the minutia but Tuesday started off all sorts of wrong thanks to an internet connectivity outage that interrupted much of coastal New Jersey for the better part of a day. A nightmare for Facebookers everywhere. This laid waste to my plans and sent me into the office on a day I was prepared to work from home. Just as importantly on a day I was prepared to shoot. Was prepared being the operative words here. You see, the best thunderstorm threat of 2015 thus far was becoming quite likely 24 hours out, and that the weather event would coincide with the golden and twilight hours. All the ingredients, man.
Connectivity issues be damned I put on my big boy pants, packed my things, and went to work. Accepting fate through self-deprecating laughter it was at this time I struck storm chasing from the day’s to-do’s and instead shifted focus to my deliverables. Yadda, yadda, yadda a day’s work and hit fast forward to leaving the office: the line of storms was about 30 miles to my south and west, moving due east at roughly 45 MPH. Could it be true? A chance for a well-timed rendezvous? Based on RadarScope positioning, I estimated the clock would afford enough time to get to my house to grab my gear. Everything looked great until I hit the light at County Road 539 and NJ-70 (~23minutes from my house); the already impressive line was expanding from the middle out into a bonafide bow segment driving across Salem, Gloucester, Burlington, and into Ocean and Atlantic Counties at an accelerated rate. By the time I made it to NJ-72 and turned eastward, the veil of black dominating my rearview said it all: getting to Dock Road for photos in time for the storm was simply out of the question. At this point it was simply get home, Greg.
Insert a rain, wind, and light show and you have what was a 15 minute raucous ride out at my house. Immediately afterwards text from friends and look to the west let me in on a little secret: the sun was going to get under these impressive cloud formations and roving lightning strikes just in time for sunset. Everything was in play—lightning, rainbows, a palette of intense color, dogs and cats living together? Without a second thought I loaded the car and made for Dock Road.
Posted up at my usual spot the scene was something. Storm clouds rolling, strong wind shipping, thunder clapping mere seconds after spokes of lightning splayed across the sky, pouring rain, and one rapidly developing sunset. Car bound thanks to rain and lightning I was missing out. If I could have kept my lenses dry I would have said to hell with the lightning and risked it, but the rain was too strong to get more than one clear shot off at any one time. At this point I was lamenting (re: complaining) to Twitter that I was 5 miles too far to the south. A few minutes into my pity party the rapidly intensifying light at my back (to the west) mixed with falling rain put me on instant rainbow alert. Seconds later there it was: bold and beautiful straddling Dock Road in full double rainbow regalia. Thunder was booming, lightning was cracking, the sun was shining, and this rainbow was saying hey, what’s up armchair photographer man? It was glorious.
It was then my mind downshifted into the hell with everything mode. I grabbed my tripod and set it up in the middle of a kaleidoscopic Dock Road. I fixed my camera, pressed the shutter, and proceeded to make a huge mistake. After the first shutter press I realized I didn’t have my two second timer enabled—I always use this to prevent any camera shake as the shutter is depressed and the mirror flips. Except this time it screwed me. Royally. I quickly enabled the timer, pressed said shutter, and immediately witnessed one very bad ass lightning strike sprawl throughout the sky, originating from dead smack in the middle of the rainbow. As the two second wait for eternity was up, the lightning was gone and the picture was taken. With nothing but the rainbow you see above. I blew my chance. I made a mistake and it was all www.nooooooooooooooo.com from there. Three and a half years into photography and I fold like a tent in the midst the best lighting/environment/sky conditions I’ve yet to encounter. Maybe next time I won’t choke so hard. Whenever that is.
