Category Archives: Commentary

Commentary

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. Mosquitos, Too.

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Just back from a few days in the slightly smoky (nothing compared to the rest of California) Yosemite high country in the Young Lakes area. At the moment I’m wading through hundreds of emails that came in while I was gone – so if you emailed me you can expect a reply before too long.

The three Young Lakes are at about 10,000′ and a one day hike in from Tuolumne Meadows in the Yosemite NP. I’ve the area quite a few times in the past, usually in late-August though about mid-October but this is the first time I’ve gotten out there in early July. I was looking forward to photographing a particular panorama of the Cathedral range from a beautiful lupine-filled high meadow where the trail crosses Dingley Creek. It was beautiful, but about a week shy of being “lupine-filled” and the brownish haze floating up from the Central Valley was not quite what I had in mind. Maybe next time!

About those mosquitos… Has anyone else noticed that the intensity of the Sierra wildflower displays is almost perfectly proportional to the density of the mosquitos? Until this trip I had three Really Awful Mosquito stories I used to tell – two from the Sierra and one from The Yukon.

Now I have four. They were awful at the lower Young Lake, which isn’t surprising considering the much of the shoreline is essentially a bog. I spent about 13 hours in my bivy sack the first evening/night to escape them, and the next morning thought I’d see if the middle and upper lakes were better. They weren’t. I finally got a bit of relief by climbing a good distance above the upper lake, but then it was time to descend.

Although photo opportunities were somewhat limited by the smoke, I’m hopeful that I’ll have a few to post from this trip before long.

Commentary, Equipment

I shoot Canon. Nikon is on a roll. I’m glad.

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The big news in the photo equipment world this week is the announcement of the new Nikon D700 camera. This is a 12 MP full frame body that in many ways approaches the performance of Nikon’s more expensive full frame D3 – and in a few ways may even surpass it. And this at a list price of $2900. This really sounds like a very fine camera in every possible way, and Nikon shooters should be very happy to see “their brand” introducing such fine stuff.

I’m a Canon shooter who uses the 12 MP 5D, a camera that the designers of the Nikon D700 must have had in their sights. On a purely feature for feature basis, the Nikon surpasses the excellent but older 5D. It isn’t that the 5D is a poor camera by any means, and I’m not going to sell my 5D to get a D700. However, the Nikon clearly takes advantages of improvements in DSLR technology that have occurred in the three years since the 5D was introduced and Nikon seems to have done less to cripple their $3000 FF 12 MP body relative to their more expensive bodies in comparison to Canon.

So, why am I glad?

Canon now appears to have (or will soon have) very serious competition in the full frame DSLR market at essentially every model level. The Nikon D3 competes strongly against the (1.3x cropped sensor) Canon 1DMKIII; the Nikon D700 competes very strongly against the Canon 5D and its probable successor; and the word on the street is that Nikon will soon introduce a direct competitor to Canon’s flagship 1DsMKIII.

For many years, Canon was essentially the only game in town when it came to full frame DSLR bodies. While the Canon bodies are great tools that can produce excellent photographs, competition is likely to spur all manufacturers (likely including Sony and perhaps others before long) to renew their focus on optimizing camera design and functionality and will likely even create some pricing competition.

To put it simply, the introduction of excellent Nikon full frame cameras will likely lead to even better Canon full frame offerings – and I’m all for that.

Commentary

Not Your Usual Wedding Photo

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Kelsey, Brandon, and Jameson

Kelsey, Brandon, and Jameson. Temecula, California. June 22, 2008. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

OK, not your usual wedding photography – fortunately someone else was handling that! My “kids” at my daughter’s wedding a week ago today.

(So, what do you think? Is it more Weegee or Friedlander? ;-)

Commentary, Photographs: Nature

About NOT Being the Wedding Photographer

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Last weekend was very special for us as our daughter Kelsey was married to our new son-in-law Mel. My role was to be the “Father of the Bride” – not the “Photographer of the Bride” – so while I took a minimal camera kit along I left it in the car for the main event. I left the photography to professionals and to the many guests who recorded the event – including my brother and his video crew of various talented nieces and nephews, and my sister whose point and shoot camera recorded several of the most wonderful shots I’ve seen so far from the event.

It was interesting to watch some of the methods employed by our photographer Katy Regnier and her “assistant” (otherwise known as her husband Ben) at the wedding. At times the two of them split up to cover different aspects of the event – Katy photographed Kelsey and “the girls” getting hair done and so forth while Ben photographed the guys getting ready (or, more accurately, “hanging around” ;-) at their hotel. But even when they shot together they worked in ways that complemented one another. For example, it often seemed that Katy would work close in with primes while Ben stood back and worked the same subjects with a longer telephoto zoom.

If you follow this blog, you know that while I do some photography of people I’m certainly no wedding photographer, nor do I aspire to be. However, I have a renewed respect for those like Katy and Ben who do this type of photography well. Good wedding photography requires photographic skills, but it is also requires social skills, timing, attentiveness, knowledge of wedding rituals and traditions, and a good sense of when to step in and direct and when to work invisibly in the background.

I will post a few photographs from the wedding here eventually, though because this event was a personal and family event rather than a photo shoot many of the photos will remain personal and private among my newly expanded family. But here is one of Katy and Ben photographing Kelsey and Mel after the ceremony as the sun set over the vineyards below the hilltop winery where they were married. (Can you say “awwwwww…” ;-)


Kelsey and Mel. Falkner Winery, Temecula, California. June 22, 2008. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.