Where is the Art?

I was pleased this last weekend that I got out and took some pictures. That entailed going out with just my dog Elmer who has grown accustomed to me hopping out of the car at a moments notice and spending what must be for him an eternity taking pictures of the same thing over and over. Elmer is also used to having his leash attached to my belt while I carry camera gear down a trail, set it up, and again spend an eternity shooting pictures. He sometimes just sits near me, other times he's wandering around to the extent his leash allows. I think he enjoys being in the outdoors with me, except for when he gets thorns in his feet.

This last weekend's excursion was pleasant. I enjoy driving in the dark even though my eyes don't do as well at it now as they did years ago. I like getting hot coffee. I like the breakfast burritos, hash brown, and orange juice from McDonalds, and so does Elmer. I like Elmer sitting in the seat next to me.

I like setting the tripod and camera up in the dark. I like the solitude. I like the anticipation that persists from the moment I leave home until the first shutter release.

I did those things again this weekend and I liked all of it.

But I didn't like it when I get back home and pull the pictures off the camera. They were okay but they're still not capturing how I felt about the place. The pictures just fall flat for some reason. I think they were technically okay, sharp, exposure was as expected, etc. But especially now, after an extra day or two of living with them, there's no emotion captured in them. They could be postcard pictures, I guess, and they perhaps capture what the place looked like. But I want them to capture what the place FELT like to me.

That, in my opinion, would separate the pictures from a postcard contender to fine art.

 

Keep Trying

I have said before that I don't claim to be a guru with the equipment or post processing software, but I think I've become competent. I don't struggle with that end of things like I did a year ago.

Now I want to strive to capture images that have some uniqueness or impart some emotion.

A Navy shipmate of mine, Mike, recently moved to Arizona from back east. He shot some pictures of Jerome, Arizona that included a number that I find very artistic. Mike has been artistic since I was around him during the first Gulf War years or earlier. He is always finding unique or artistic shots that I wouldn't have thought of. That bothers me. I've read a number of other authors that have said you can learn to take pictures but you can't learn creativity. I hope that I actually have some amount of creativity but it's just not unleashed yet.

I've written and recorded rock and roll songs for many years (since the early 1970's in fact, using cassette recorders). I truly think I've had moments of creativity in some of my songs, and I've been told that by others at times. So I hope that I can carry whatever amount of creativity I have over to visual arts.

Mike recently posted a picture of an old fence post. But what he did was look straight down on the end of the post. The circular wood grain was in focus. The depth of field (DOF) got fuzzy by the time you got to the ground. The few barbed wire strands were in various stages of blur due to the DOF. He rendered it in black and white. It looks cool to me. It looks like art to me. It looks like nothing I'd have thought to shoot and I've been around similar, weathered fence posts. I'm jealous.

This last weekend I looked around at the locations I went to trying to find my own dilapidated fence post shot (okay, not literally a fence post, but something I could shoot in an unusual way). I didn't find it. I'll bet Mike would have found it. I'll keep trying though.

Trying out the Nikon 70-210mm f/4-5.6 AF lens

I got this used Nikon 70-210mm f/4-5.6 AF


My Nikon D610, 70-210mm Zoom Lens, and GPS

lens last Thursday and came up with a fairly close location to try it out.

I discussed it before, but I got it from B&H after some research. It was last produced by Nikon around 1999. It's pretty much all metal and weighs about 1.5 pounds. I couldn't find a "D" version; this is a non-D version. No VR, ED, etc.

Coupled with the D610 and my Manfrotto RC5 plate (also shown), it makes for a substantial mass! This pic also shows my after-market GPS unit on the hot shoe. I like this pic!

Off to a Shoot!

I've always thought the Salt River Canyon area where U.S. Highway 60 crosses it is pretty spectacular. It's located about 2-1/2 hours from my home in Phoenix, north of Globe, AZ about 40 miles or so (here's a link to Google Maps showing the location relative to Globe, AZ). I've taken pictures there before, including a few from a couple of weeks ago, but I wanted more.

I've been reading a book by David duChemin that I really like, called "Within the Frame". At one point he was discussing a picture with the sun coming up, partially hidden by a building. I got the idea to try to do the same thing with the sun coming up over a mountain top, taken from down by the river.

A few weeks ago when I went through there I saw someone had driven down by the river. I wasn't previously aware of an access road so I zoomed in on Google maps and found it. I figured I could try it too.

I also used the Photographer's Ephemeris for the first time to see where the sun would be coming up, as well as the time. I've known about the site for some time but hadn't actually used it before. It said the sun would be up at about 6:00 AM. I decided I wanted to be there about 5:00 AM, which meant I needed to leave home about 2:30 AM. So, at about 2:00 AM I gathered my 3 camera bags (tripod bag, Amazon Basics camera backpack, and LowePro fanny pack bag), and my dog Elmer, asked my wife if she wanted to go (surprisingly she said no), and headed out.

We stopped and fueled, then headed out I-10 to catch the U.S. 60 and we were on our way. Unfortunately we came across an accident that had the highway shut down just west of the tunnel near Devil's Canyon. We waited maybe 20 minutes before we got to move. Then it was back to the Explorer eating some miles (I have to say, I really like my Explorer. I'm not much of a car guy any longer but my Explorer continues to be exactly what I need in a vehicle including dependable and comfortable).

Waning Crescent Moon north of Globe, AZ

Before we got to our destination, maybe 20 miles north of Globe, I noticed the sliver of a moon (waning crescent). I debated on whether to take the time to try to shoot it, and the shooting won out. I wish I had found a better location to pull off of the highway, but I still like this image.

The place I stopped was an entrance that had a chain link fence gate across it. It had about a 10 inch gap between the two halves of the gate and I easily had enough room to shoot through the gap.
Then, back on our way to the Salt River...

I have to say I enjoy driving in the early morning; I used to do it often when I was stationed in the Navy in San Diego and Long Beach, CA - driving straight through to the Portland, OR area to see my kids.

We got to the river about 5:30 AM as it was getting pretty light, found the access road, and headed down it. There are signs on the road that you're supposed to have a permit from the Native Americans - it's on a reservation. There wasn't anyone there to buy the permit from, though. (I planned to buy it on my way out but no one showed up at all).

The dirt road wasn't too bad but it is rocky in places. I decided to just stay by the bridge instead of going to where I'd seen the vehicle earlier. I don't know if it was a good decision or not.

I was surprised, pleasantly so, at how cool it was. My wife had left a sweatshirt in the Explorer and I was able to get in on. It was chilly (must have been down in the 70's!).

Due to the recent rainfall there was more water in the river than I'd seen before. But, it was dirty water. It just didn't seem very attractive to me. I did end up trying a polarizer but that does nothing with muddy water.

Salt River

While waiting for the sun to come up I tried a number of shots, none of which I really cared for. The opposite bank of the river has a visitor center (closed for construction at the time I was there), with a trail along the bank that has railings. Looking east up the river there's a big concrete structure on the bank, ruining that side of the picture for me (perhaps if I'd gone up river farther it wouldn't have been an issue).

In the picture at right, I composed it to keep the structure out of the shot but there's barely any of the right bank and it just looks kind of mistakey to me.

Looking down river there weren't a lot of good shots either, in my opinion. You had to be tight in order to keep the bridge structure out of the shot, and even then, once the sun came up the shadow of the bridge ruined the shots for me.



Sun rising on Salt River

As for the sunrise, I did get some but the problem with it was that the highway is carved into the mountain side that the sun is rising over, giving it a nice scar along the face. Another poor shot. Oh well, you don't know these things unless you're there trying to shoot them. I don't know if I'll try anything more there in the future (at least at the river itself) because I think I got what I could and it was pretty minimal.

But, as we headed back, I did get some shots from the view points along the highway. I wish I'd seen them with the actual sunrise to see if there was any better golden hour shots but I could only be in one place at a time, I discovered.

Elmer and I took some shots at a few of the view points / pull outs. I found one pull out that has a great shot of the river, maybe from 500 or 600 feet above it. But, just like at Horseshoe Bend, I couldn't make my feet go close enough to the edge to shoot it. In fact, I got heebie jeebied enough that shivers were going up my back and I had to grab on to the Explorer and drive away. Even driving I still had the creeps. Man I wish I could man up. I could probably have laid on my stomach for the shot - there wasn't anyone else around. But just looking over that edge, from probably 5 feet back, makes me wimp out.

A stop or two later I did force myself to get back out, plus the pull out had some dirt berms along the edge making me feel more secure somehow. We took some pics and then headed home.

What about the lens?

As for the lens, I used it for most of my shots. I am pretty pleased with it after looking at the results at home. I don't see any thing that makes me want to return it.

It is a push-pull zoom, the first one I've had. In fact, I didn't even know such a thing existed. It was actually one of the features that made me hesitate getting it. I'd read someone say that he had issues (it was actually a different lens) with trying to shoot up or down from horizontal - the lens would creep. He'd set the zoom / focal length, but before he took the picture the lens would have slid down hill changing the composition.

If the one I got ends up having that problem I'll have to deal with it or get a different lens. But for now I didn't detect any of that and I did try it.

The auto focus worked fine. The complaint with the non-D version is that the auto focus is slow. It may be, but that really only matters when you're shooting moving subjects. Fortunately for me the landscape stayed put while I photographed it.

Other complaints about the lens are lack of contrast and color saturation. I don't see any problem there and I tend to prefer more than actual or normal contrast and color saturation. CaptureNX 2 did just fine with the lens.

I can't really comment on any distortion because the scenery did't have a lot of straight or parallel lines.

I like the zoom range. Perhaps a 300mm would be nice, but when you look at the difference in the field of view it's only a few degrees and really not that much of a consideration (at least on the FX format). I did end up trying a wider lens for some shots, but that wasn't any fault of this lens and I don't mind swapping a little bit. Galen Rowell did it.

I actually like the heft of the camera with the lens. It just seems more professional, solid, heavy duty, etc. On the other hand, I didn't really carry it far. But when I do carry, I can and do leave it on the tripod at times, or in my LowePro fanny pack which I really like. Most of my shooting is on a tripod and not hand held which also factors into dealing with the weight, but without VR I think the lens will mainly see use from a tripod.

I didn't see a big issue with vignetting either, and I took a 3 image pano. Photoshop does have a vignette correction when stitching the images, but even without that I didn't really notice a problem on the individual pictures.

Overall, I'm very pleased with this very cheap full frame zoom. I like the range (I don't think the gap between my 50mm and the zoom's 70mm is significant - I'm sure I can make do with one or the other even though that is a 40% gap with respect to the 50mm). I only paid about $110 for the lens plus a 62mm Tiffen polarizer and I'm digging it!

Some comments

One comment I'll add is that I did try to take a 2-3 second exposure of the river to get the milky (chocolate milky in this case) look but didn't have enough filter to do it easily. Fortunately the polarizer helped a bit, maybe a stop, and then I used the extra stop of the D610's ISO which I hadn't done before. It all worked, but if I keep the lens I think I'll get a set of Tiffen ND's. And, the shot just wasn't very good or pleasing otherwise so I guess I didn't really care that much.

I also want to say that it was great getting out again, me and my dog. Every time I use the D610 I like it more and more. I used the interval timer to take pics as the sun was coming up over the mountain top. I have the grid turned on in the view finder and I find I don't do much, if any, levelling in post production (I don't use a bubble level or the build in camera level either).

Finally, even though the pics weren't that good, I enjoyed the drive and the experience including just seeing the sun come up on a location I hadn't seen that happen before. I'll always remember the small bats that were flying around under the bridges when we got there. The pics may not win awards but I had an award winning morning!

A Few Quick Notes (Steve Vai anyone?)

I haven't posted for a bit because I haven't done much photographically for the same period.

My wife and I did go camping with our 4 dogs (my wife recently added another one to the collection) and her horse last weekend, and I did take my camera gear, but I didn't even get a camera out of the bag. We were only gone one night and basically we got to the camp site, set up the tent, ate, slept, got up, tore down the tent, and came home. We had a good time, it just didn't involve taking pictures. It did involve getting out of Phoenix and sleeping in cooler night air near Prescott, AZ (Groom Creek Campground).

I did wake up around 2:30AM and took the dogs out to do whatever they needed to do. The moon was really bright and shining through the pine trees. I really wanted to take some pictures of it but I knew I couldn't leave the dogs in the tent without it causing a ruckus so the opportunity was wasted. Similarly with a rock formation right next to our camp site. Perhaps next time...

I haven't done anything during the weeks either. It's been rainy here off and on (our Monsoon season) and even though the D610 is weatherized, I'm not. I just stayed in doors.

But, last night I got a new (used) full frame lens ("FX" in Nikon speak). I've been stalled trying to decide what lens to get, either a wide prime or a telephoto prime. I still don't know. But to help with my decision I decided to get a used telephoto zoom.

I read a lot about a lot of different old lenses, and the Nikon 70-210mm f/4-5.6 lens kept popping up as a good, cheap, old lens compatible with the D610. So I ordered it from B&H. I'm planning to do some shooting with it this weekend to see how it works. I've been trying to decide on an 85mm or 105mm prime and since this zoom covers both of those lengths plus more, I should be able to see where I end up shooting more often and that should help me decide on a prime length.

While looking at lenses, I actually started by seeing what was available in the used departments and B&H and Adorama. I saw a few different lenses but B&H seemed to have more in their used department. I looked up the various lenses on the interweb and came down to the 70-210mm or the 75-300mm used lenses for around $100 each. I deliberated and read more, and it seemed to me that the 70-210mm just kept getting the better comments so that's the one I chose. I got the best one they had at B&H and figured for about $100 how could I go wrong? (After I ordered mine another one popped up on B&H that was new, in the box).

I got the non-D version. I couldn't find a D version like Ken Rockwell raved about. The non-D is slower to auto focus but I think I can live with that since I'm mainly using it for landscape and not sports or wildlife. But the D version also apparently has a coated element to cut down glare / flare / ghosts which I would like to have had. 

I'm planning to take the new lens (and the rest of the gear) to the Salt River Canyon where Highway 60 crosses the Salt River this weekend, and hopefully I'll get myself out of bed in time to make it there by sunrise. There are supposed to be some clouds over near there, east of the bridge. I want to try to get some shots as the sun is breaching the horizon there. 

I've finally started using the Photographer's Ephemeris, to note where the sun will be rising from and at what time. I have also been able to determine that a shot I've been wanting to do with a sunrise on Washington Street in Phoenix should present itself around September 22 this year. Cool!

My First Anniversary Is Near

It will soon be a year since I started on my photography adventure, and with that on my mind I've been reflecting upon my time so far. Here are some of my thoughts as to what photography has come to mean to me.

After some amount of deliberation and research I got my first DSLR on 8/12/2013. As I've explained previously, I had some cursory knowledge of cameras, although it was primarily video. I knew something about focus, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and white balance. Compared to now, however, it was not as ingrained into my "psychy".

Over the last year I've had to learn a lot and buy a lot. (Edit - note that the picture at the top of the page is one I took of a lot of my gear)

Buy a Lot

I don't think that you can buy your way to taking good pictures. I have a Les Paul guitar but that doesn't mean I can play as well as Joe Bonamassa (even though I've been playing longer than he's been alive). At the same time, I developed a philosophy in my wood working hobby that I wanted to have the best equipment I could afford not to try to look like I knew what I was doing, but because that way I'd know that any mistakes were mine and not due to the equipment.

That took me some time to figure out, but I had a cheap table saw with a cheap blade that just didn't do a good job of cutting. I couldn't cut straight with a rip fence and it was because the fence wasn't accurate, the table wasn't aligned anyway (and didn't offer alignments in it's cheap motor mount), etc. When I got a good table saw and a good blade and aligned them, I was able to get good cuts using the same techniques as before - the only difference was in the equipment. That started me buying Starrett squares (I have 3), Freud blades, etc.

I am trying to do that with the photography equipment as well. I can't afford or justify multi-thousand dollar lenses so I'm relying on reviews to find lenses that I can afford that give me what I want, which is a sharp image. I also want good light transmission so that the colors are saturated. One place I've come to rely on is the DxO Mark labs website. I also like a lot of the info that Ken Rockwell has posted. Some have criticized Ken's site for keeping old info posted but I like it. I want some of the old lenses he talks about that DxO Mark rate highly and they're available used at Adorama or B and H Photo.

With that in mind, I also started with no camera gear at all a year ago. That means I had to get a lot of stuff that will (hopefully) be a one time purchase. I'm talking about things like the tripod (I may want another quick release plate though), tripod bag, camera bags (I've bought 4 different bags but use only 2 of them), SD cards, camera sling, filters (all of my lenses are the same size except one), software, etc. I did buy a second camera body recently but I didn't have to buy seconds of all of the other things.

Speaking of the second camera body, that is my single largest purchase to date (and likely will be for some time). Since it is a full frame camera, and the first body was a crop format, I will need to buy some number of lenses for the new body. I think I've blogged before that I am leaning towards primes. Even so, I think I only need one wide angle and one telephoto to go with my 50mm. Maybe someday I'll want a long lens like the Tamron 150-600mm, but for now I'm concentrating on landscape photography and a 24mm and something like a 135mm would probably do it.

For my last year, to summarize, I've got an entry level DSLR and an entry level full frame DSLR along with a number of accessories. I've got some good deals along the way that saved a few hundred dollars here and there, but it's still cost over $5,500 to get to where I am today. That's the easy and easily quantifiable part...

Learn a Lot

I knew some fundamentals about photography, but I had to get them to become second nature. I'm still working on that - I read a lot and I read other professional photographers who do photography full time and have for many years state that they are still learning. I think it may be like any artistic pursuit; you never know everything.

I've had to learn about which camera and lens will do what that will allow me to take the kind of picture I want to take. I've had to learn how to use the camera and lenses that I've got to actually do what I want them to do. I've had to learn about other tangential items that I wasn't expecting, and a lot of them I haven't nearly mastered - like my speed light for example.

I haven't done anything with my YongNuo YN-565EX ETTL (wow, the price has dropped since I got mine) speed light that wasn't done in the "auto" mode. I know it will do a lot of cool things, like work as a strobe light, but I haven't used it for anything like that. The most I've done that is kind of "out of the box" is used it on an extended exposure of some palm trees at night to light them up.

I had to research tripods and ball heads. When you end up with a $500 or so tripod (and that's not terribly expensive) you want to be sure that it does what you want and will last. I still wonder if I shouldn't have got the fiberglass version of the Manfrotto 055X legs (wow, the price has gone up since I got mine). And even though I like my Manfrotto 468MG ball head (I really like the way this works but good luck finding one), I smell the hydraulic fluid so I wonder how long it'll last before the fluid has leaked out.

I've learned a bit about filters, although the only filters I really use are a polarizer and neutral density filters, including the Cokin system with a Singh-Ray graduated ND filter. I've read arguments for both leaving a UV filter on the lens for protection, as well as going without any protection, and I choose the latter. Maybe if/when I get $1,000 lenses I'll feel differently.

I've learned some aount about a number of software packages, specifically Nikon View NX, Nikon Transfer, Nikon Capture NX 2, Adobe Photoshop Elements 12, Adobe Photoshop CC, Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Bridge, Photomatix Essentials, Photomatix Pro, Flickr, jAlbum.

I think of all of those educational requirements as just learning the basics. It's like learning how to read music. You're still not a musician just because you can read music. There's more to it.

And that's the learning path I'm on now. Not that I've mastered all of the tools, but I know what they are and I believe I'll get better with them in time. Now I want to work on the subject of my photographs. I've started accumulating and studying material regarding how to capture my feelings in photographs, not just the visual images. I want to make the photographs say more. I want to jump from being a beginning trumpeter to being Wynton Marsalis. I think this will be the harder jump!

Finding the Art, Capture the Emotion

I am still trying to develop the artistic side of photography. I may be premature according to the Robert Rodriguez video I'm linking to below; I should be learning my gear inside and out. But I don't want to wait until then to start on the process of trying to get more in touch with the artistic side of photography.

I just finished watching this video by Robert Rodriguez I think it's worthwhile. In fact, I will watch it again and take some notes about what he said. I've also read the first book of his that he mentions in the video. I like his ideas and thoughts about landscape photography. His emphasis is NOT on the gear as much as the shot. You have to have and know the gear, but that's easy compared to being able to find and capture an emotion in a photograph.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATFShS-LTsM 

I have also started reading a couple of books that I like regarding this same subject, by David duChemin.

I want to be able to evoke a feeling out of the pictures I take. So far I feel like a lot of the pics I've taken are snapshots. Some may be different that what an iPhone could capture due to having control over depth of field or other exposure aspects, but I am searching for how to capture the other senses besides sight in a picture (something Mr. Rodriguez covers and which struck a chord with me).

I was really confronted with this with my pics from the cliffs at the Woods Canyon Lake viewpoint. I find that place amazing, standing on the edge of a large drop off (I was able to get closer to the edge there than at Horseshoe Bend). My heart was beating hard, my adrenalin rushing, holding back my vertigo and fear of heights, breathing in the clean, cool, pine tree tinted air. Hearing, or not, the quiet of the scene. I snapped some pictures.

When I look at the pictures none of them do much for me. I don't get a sense of danger regarding the cliff. I don't get a sense of pure nature (I really don't from the pics with the highway in them). I don't really get much out of them other than "here's a picture of where I went and that anyone else could have taken".

I don't have a solution to remedy this problem yet, but I'm working on it. I know that I DO like my sunrise/sunset pictures and other low-light pictures. They do seem a bit more unique mainly because not everyone will be out of bed at that time of day. But, that's just a start. I want to get pics of scenes that represent how I FEEL about a place, and to hopefully make someone else feel something too!

Blue Skies

I can't profess to be much of an analytic pixel peeper, but I do know that it is a real pleasure, perhaps a geeky pleasure, to look at the raw pictures from the D610 compared to the D3200. After doing post processing on the D3200 for the last 11 months or so, with either Nikon CaptureNX 2 or Adobe Photoshop / Elements, every time I open one of the D610 pictures up I expect to see the grain or noise I've become accustomed to with the D3200. But it's not there! (That's a GOOD thing!)

That was one of my complaints about the pics I was getting - just ask my friend Kim (okay, you probably can't really ask her, but you can play along). She'd tell you that I complain a lot about the noise in my pics. She may even tell you I just complain a lot period, but that's another story.

I really wanted a better camera that would get rid of the noise I was seeing. I was really liking some of the compositions I was getting, but not the finished result. They often had too much noise or grain. The D610, with its full frame sensor, promised better image quality (IQ) in principal. It only cost about $2,000 to verify.

I don't know how well the artifacts will show up in these images, but these are 100% crops of screen captures from Nikon ViewNX 2 of some basic sky out of a couple of pictures. They're not from the same sky, or taken on the same day or even at the same time, hence the lack of pure scientific comparison. But, they are representative of what I'm talking about.

This first pic is from the D3200, as you can see, at ISO 100, 55mm focal length, shot at about 4:00 PM. You can see the splotchy quality of this untouched RAW screen capture. When you apply sharpening to this it gets worse, depending on the settings you use. The CaptureNX 2 noise reduction can help but usually at the expense of the rest of the picture. The sky can be blurred, which I've done sometimes, but that's a real pain. Not so much just blurring the sky but creating the mask at the boundary between the sky and whatever else is in the picture. If it's pine trees it really sucks because the jagged nature of the pine trees makes creating a hard to detect mask difficult. At least for me - and I'm really not into the photography for the purpose of playing with software post processing. I'd rather have a better image out of the camera.

Enter the D610. I know this isn't a direct comparison, but it is a 50mm focal length shot of some sky. The time of day is different, location is different, etc., but the white balance is the same, no exposure compensation, 1 stop difference in the exposure time. You'll just have to take my word that this is representative of what I see when I open a D610 RAW image - very little to no noise. It is such a pleasure to open these files and see a well saturated sky without the blotchy artifacts of the D3200. The rest of the picture is similar; the D3200 often has similar noise in any large area of a single color, especially darker colors, and the D610 has only exhibited that rarely. Now, I've only got maybe 600-700 shots with the D610 so far, but I am very pleased with the improvement in IQ.

I have heard the maxim that only a poor craftsman blames the tools, but I can clearly see that in this case the tool makes a significant difference. I've read somewhere else, Ken Rockwell I believe, that good photographers can eek more out of lesser equipment and that amateurs with top of the line equipment often can't replicate the good photographers results. 

While I agree with that to a large extent (Eric Clapton would sound better on my $200 made in Mexico Fender Stratocaster that I would sound on any Stratocaster that Eric Clapton owns), I also like knowing that the equipment isn't hindering me. If I'm using a good camera but getting poor results I know exactly where the blame lies. If I have poor equipment and get poor results it COULD be because of me but it might be the equipment's fault. I like removing that variable so that I know what to blame for poor pictures like the blue sky in the top picture. It wasn't me!