Vacation Photo Observations - Day 1

[MarkBarbieri]

I'm going to post pictures from most of the days of my recent vacation along with comments on how I took and processed each shot. It'll be fun for me and hopefully educational for some of you.

The first day our vacation really started for me was when we arrived in the Grand Tetons. We spent the first night in a lodge at Signal Mountain. After throwing our gear into the lodge, we walked down to the shore of Lake Jackson. The weather was pretty cloudy, so it wasn't a great time for landscape shots. Instead, I shot the kids playing along the rocky coast.

I took this shot using a 7-200mm lens at 100mm, f/4, 1/200, and ISO 400. I picked that ISO because the cloudiness meant I didn't have enough light to comfortably shoot at a lower ISO. I used f/4 because it helps isolate the subject (my kids) but is much more forgiving than f/2.8. Also, I find that f/4 is as wide as I can get when shooting more than one person using a long lens. Even with that, it is easy to get one of them out of focus.

We hadn't been shooting long when someone swam out of the lake (presumably from one of the boats) and informed us that a serious storm was about to blow in. We just got back to the cabins when the storm broke. It was 15 minutes of hard rain and serious wind.

After things settled down, we went for a walk. Kathy and the boys went to the main lodge house to play games while I took a stroll along the edge of the lake.

Grand Tetons is really more of a sunrise park. The problem with sunsets is that the main views are looking west. That has the sun setting behind the mountains in the picture. I decided to try a few shots anyway. The clouds had mostly cleared, so the view was looking nice.

Both of these are HDR shots. There was just too much dynamic range to get everything I wanted in a single shot. I could have gone for more of a silhouette of the mountains in a single exposure, but I thought it would look better to see a little detail on the mountains.

I used ISO 100 because I was on a tripod and didn't have any shutter speed concerns. I used f/22 because I wanted a starbust effect from the sun. I shot at a focal length of 21mm for the first shot and 17mm for the second shot on my 17-40mm lens. I didn't use a polarizer because I was shooting directly into the sun. My shutter speeds ranges from
1/60 for the low exposure shots to 1" for the high exposure shots. I used 5 shots in my spread.

I cropped both shots to panoramas because they were much more interesting that way. Without cropping, I would either have a lot boring sky or a lot of boring lake. I liked the second shot better because the trees add a little visual interest. The shot works OK at computer resolutions, but I couldn't print it large. The trees moved too much during and between the exposures and aren't very sharp.

You can also see that I had some flare problems in the first shot. That's really hard to avoid when shooting a really bright object like the sun. The best you can do is remove all filters (including a UV filter if you are using one), which are possible flare causing surfaces. Even with that, sometimes it happens. If you can't avoid it, tell people you did it for artistic effect.

 

[wenrob]

Beautiful Mark! Love the HDR's, very tastefully done, they're subtle not in your face.

 

[jann1033]

I'm going to post pictures from most of the days of my recent vacation along with comments on how I took and processed each shot. It'll be fun for me and hopefully educational for some of you.

The first day our vacation really started for me was when we arrived in the Grand Tetons. We spent the first night in a lodge at Signal Mountain. After throwing our gear into the lodge, we walked down to the shore of Lake Jackson. The weather was pretty cloudy, so it wasn't a great time for landscape shots. Instead, I shot the kids playing along the rocky coast.

I took this shot using a 7-200mm lens at 100mm, f/4, 1/200, and ISO 400. I picked that ISO because the cloudiness meant I didn't have enough light to comfortably shoot at a lower ISO. I used f/4 because it helps isolate the subject (my kids) but is much more forgiving than f/2.8. Also, I find that f/4 is as wide as I can get when shooting more than one person using a long lens. Even with that, it is easy to get one of them out of focus.

We hadn't been shooting long when someone swam out of the lake (presumably from one of the boats) and informed us that a serious storm was about to blow in. We just got back to the cabins when the storm broke. It was 15 minutes of hard rain and serious wind.

After things settled down, we went for a walk. Kathy and the boys went to the main lodge house to play games while I took a stroll along the edge of the lake.

Grand Tetons is really more of a sunrise park. The problem with sunsets is that the main views are looking west. That has the sun setting behind the mountains in the picture. I decided to try a few shots anyway. The clouds had mostly cleared, so the view was looking nice.

Both of these are HDR shots. There was just too much dynamic range to get everything I wanted in a single shot. I could have gone for more of a silhouette of the mountains in a single exposure, but I thought it would look better to see a little detail on the mountains.

I used ISO 100 because I was on a tripod and didn't have any shutter speed concerns. I used f/22 because I wanted a starbust effect from the sun. I shot at a focal length of 21mm for the first shot and 17mm for the second shot on my 17-40mm lens. I didn't use a polarizer because I was shooting directly into the sun. My shutter speeds ranges from
1/60 for the low exposure shots to 1" for the high exposure shots. I used 5 shots in my spread.

I cropped both shots to panoramas because they were much more interesting that way. Without cropping, I would either have a lot boring sky or a lot of boring lake. I liked the second shot better because the trees add a little visual interest. The shot works OK at computer resolutions, but I couldn't print it large. The trees moved too much during and between the exposures and aren't very sharp.

You can also see that I had some flare problems in the first shot. That's really hard to avoid when shooting a really bright object like the sun. The best you can do is remove all filters (including a UV filter if you are using one), which are possible flare causing surfaces. Even with that, sometimes it happens. If you can't avoid it, tell people you did it for artistic effect.

actually i really like the flare in this case, adds to the effect imo. i like the tree one a little better as well, due to the lighter sky, nicer clouds and the tree adds some interest.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

I tried capturing an interesting sky shot just after the sun set, but it just didn't have enough going on to work well.

It was 1/80s, at f/8, 17mm, ISO 100, 1/3 stop underexposed.

Here is a shot I got less than 2 minutes later. It shows just how quickly the light changes. I used a f/22 and ISO 50 to get a very long shutter speed (20 seconds). I also underexposed by 1/3 stop. I wanted to completely calm the water with motion blur to give a more peaceful look to the scene. The effect didn't work as well as I'd hoped, so I dropped the picture from the show.

On my way back after the sunset, the sky briefly turned golden and that was reflected on the lake. The view back to the mountains wasn't very good, but it was nice along my shore. I didn't include the picture in my slideshow because I have no idea who the kids are and thought it would be confusing to include them.

The shot was handheld and taken at 1/25s, f/9, ISO 800, 17mm, and 1/3 stop underexposure. I wanted the shutter speed to be low enough to capture just a bit of the boys movement. I wanted an aperture narrow enough to give a lot of depth-of-field.

It would have been a great opportunity if I had my kids with me or a better foreground subject. The other problem was that the light came on and left in just a few minutes, so I didn't have much time to think about what I wanted to do. A better photographer would anticipate this situation better and have a better plan. It's the sort of light that can make for dazzling photos if pick your subject well.