And now for something completely different. I made my way to Batsto Village on Sunday. Autumn peak is still a ways out, but the short jaunt made for a solid photowalk regardless. Temperatures were warm with mostly masked park goers aplenty. It was one of those dress for all seasons kind of days. Toasty in the sun, cool in the shade. As my friends played about with their tiny humans, I meandered listlessly about the old iron works village. Some noticeable changes since my photowalk in 2014, including the loss of some large maple trees. Such is the passage of time.
I spent ten minutes with my camera making photos of a building I once described as a weird barn-esque pseudo covered bridge type building sided in evenly spaced, repetitive wood slats. The leading lines speak to me. There is an old, weathered door with a rusted iron loop which once made part of a locking mechanism. Above is the photograph, treated in sepia to lend visual to the structure’s age. I’m not certain what to call this kind of photography? Street? Architectural? Nonsense? I suspect this is one of those photos I enjoy but doesn’t land well with the masses. But that’s OK!
Music and the world lost an icon and virtuoso today. Rest easy, Edward Lodewijk Van Halen. The stardust of the riff master has returned to the universe.
Hit the Pavement — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures
Get low. You will come across this command often in your development as a shooter. It is especially common for us plying our trade in the landscape photography niche. Get low. Get the shot. Get the viewer in. Throwing a quick and dirty best guess out into the universe, I would ballpark I make some 75% of my landscape photos at a camera height around two feet. So yeah, I follow conventional wisdom to get low.
Shooting on Dock Road a little over a week ago, about a minute or so after I made this shot, I decided to get low, all right. Hella low. The sunset was in max fire mode at a northwest exposure, which is in perfect perpendicular alignment with the west bound direction of the road itself. And so I used what my environment gave me—the asphalt. With careful placement of my camera on the road surface, spaced even between the yellow lines and using the road as a de facto tripod, I made seven brackets facing right into sunset supreme.
The low as you can go orientation brings us to the literal ground floor. Terrapin turtle crossing level. This shrinks the viewer down, in turn amplifying the magnitude and prominence of the road surface. We are so close to the action in this shot, we encounter farsighted focus leaving our immediate contact with the road blurred. This allows the viewer to climb into the frame and scan down the road, ultimately finding sharp focus on what was a potent sunset burn.
Leading lines help to further guide our vision. First and most obvious we have the center weighted double yellow lines. This sends us right down the frame. Added to that we have the converging lines of the two sides of the roads. Flanked by guardrails and power lines on the right side. This line work coupled with the smattering of houses along the horizon pulls everything to the vanishing point of the photograph. Here it all meets in the middle. Underneath the high drama of a sparkling sunset.
Remember to get low to get down with great photography.
To the Point — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures
I’m brining it back to last Friday evening on Great Bay Boulevard. To my final set of seven brackets on what was an excellent first fall night. It was only moments earlier I scored this sunset before turning my camera vertical for blue hour. It was in this moment I thought about the past.
Vanishing points fascinate me. First introduced to the concept back in grade school art class I’ve been keen ever since. It unlocked the secrets of depth, proportion, scale and scope. Suddenly I could make my drawings fall back into the page, perspective now conquered. To an eager grade schooler it was akin to sorcery. The shroud pulled and in a single lesson my mind expanded.
The precepts from all those years ago are on display in this photograph. Here to the right Great Bay Boulevard itself retreats back to a single point at the center of the scene. It’s met with the parallel power lines and telephone poles falling back to said point. Everything here drives back to the same point on a line, shrinking as it goes. The marsh and puddles serve as more lines—albeit natural. Even the clouds are working it. All over lines leading the eye to the one vanishing point, the singularity of this world. And yet it’s a farce. Pursue as you may, you will never make it to the singular spot. It will keep its distance with cunning allure. It will remain as unconquerable as the rainbow and as elusive as its pot of gold. Still it is a wonder to see the world collapse down to a spot so small.
Leading Lines and Lazy Misfires — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/6 sec
GRUMBLE, GRUMBLE . . .
No, original NES Link, I’m not a hungry Goriya looking for a free lunch. Instead I’m just a dude (probably hungry) who’s going to spend a few hundred words whining a bit about what might have been. I like this photograph. I like it more than the one I posted last night—and here comes the but—but man did I turn this into a rush job. A rush job thereby leaving me without the stillness and subsequent sharpness I come to expect of myself and my photographs. Sure there’s a time and a place for soft edges and blurred lines, this was not one of those times.
It’s not uncommon for me to remove my camera body from its tripod head once I’ve settled on my shot of the night. Last night was no different. With a few minutes of time to kill, and a stunning pastel light show happening opposite of sunset over the ocean toward the northeast, I popped off a few handheld shots. Here’s where the lazy misfire comes into play. In my haste to make a shot I should have noticed that my shutter speed was down to 1/6 of one second. At a 14mm focal length this pushes sharpness to its limits. As a general rule when I am photographing handheld I try to never shoot at a shutter speed less than the focal length of my lens. So if I’ve got my 100mm on I tend to stay north of 1/100 of a second; rocking my nifty fifty I stay above 1/50, and so it goes. Of course there are exceptions, and if I take the time to still my legs, slow my inhale and depress the shutter in between breaths, I am able to push this further but I digress.
I took neither the time nor the care to make sure I was appropriately still yesterday, and have been kicking myself for it ever since seeing this shot in Lightroom. In hindsight I should have done one of two things: 1) move my tripod to reposition for this shot, rendering the sharpest and cleanest possible outcome, or 2) I at least should have dialed up my ISO to 400 to give me a quicker shutter speed for a sharper image. (At 400 ISO the shutter would be 4 times faster than at 100 while at the same aperture).
Now if you’re sitting back looking at this photo thinking Greg, you’re crazy! well you wouldn’t be wrong, but you also wouldn’t be entirely right. Viewed small enough this photograph appears quite sharp, quite clean. But if you blow it up and look close enough, particularly at the shells in the sand, you will clearly see the absence of sharpness. The ghosting around the shells gives my misfire away. It shows just enough camera shake during the 1/6 exposure. Enough shake to keep this from being a candidate for any kind of medium to large print. Le sigh. As to whether this is a lesson learned the hard way, we shall see. If you made it this far thanks for listening to me vent, I think it’s important to openly share our mistakes.
Lines in the Pine — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 250 | EXP 1/30
Before settling in to make yesterday’s sunset photo I took a few minutes in admiration of the Pinelands of Stafford Forge set aglow by some pretty serious golden hour light. It’s an open secret that I want more forest shots in my photo stockpile, and considering I live on the southeastern border of the great, albeit unheralded Pinelands National Reserve I have little excuse. Coincidentally the bulk of woods shots I’ve managed to produce have come from right here at the Forge, where I’ve already professed my childhood love of the trees.
Keeping it casual—which is to say making single exposure handheld shots—I’m able to get my eye in tight to the viewfinder focusing my wandering brain right on the action. Creatively intent on accentuating the vivid golden glow infusing life, warmth, and energy into the millions of felled pine needles; compositionally intent to play off the strong leading lines cast by the scrubby pine tree shadows—the angled left to right action lending a nice touch of directional movement drawing the eye toward the ridgeline up on the right, away from the left side path. Much of photography is about balance, distributing the weight of your subjects until you find equilibrium. Of course like all the rules this too can be broken.
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.
Crossing the line — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/30
When shooting wide angle have some fun working angles in tight spaces. It’s here where these rectilinear lenses really shine. Photowalking Batsto Village yesterday, I poked my nose inside this weird barn-esque pseudo covered bridge type building sided in evenly spaced, repetitive wood slats. I only call it weird because I’ve never seen anything like it and surely have no idea what it’s called. Anyway, leaning inside there was about two feet of space at the base, gradually widening as it moved upward. Here’s the shot I quickly framed up with the afternoon sun pouring in and shadows filing in perfect order.
