Category Archives: Technique

Technique

A New Subject: Windsurfers

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I was at the coast yesterday for a few hours, and I ended up photographing windsurfers. I found a (very windy!) spot just above the surf a a beach a bit north of Davenport and set up with the long lens and a tripod… and proceeded to make a few hundred exposures. Some of the better images are now in the queue to appear here a few weeks from now – some of them are already posted in my Flickr Gallery. (There is a link in the sidebar.)

For someone who shoots more landscape images than anything else, photographing sports (and other active subjects like birds in flight) is actually a good exercise on several counts. While I’ve pointed out before that landscape photography isn’t always as sedate as some might imagine (lighting, clouds, etc. can change very fast), in general there is a lot more time to carefully consider things, and you do frequently get second chances. Not so with these subjects. You have to think fast – the subject is moving, the camera must track the subject (and lock AF), momentary juxtapositions appear and are gone, lighting can be tricky, and you somehow have to think about composition in a very dynamic way. All good practice, I think.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.

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Equipment, Technique

Using the Wrong Tool for the Job: Which Lens is ‘Best’?

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These are things that everyone knows about picking the right equipment for the subject, right?

Use wide angle lenses to shoot landscapes. When people ask what lens to get, I always ask them what they’ll be shooting. If they say landscape I generally recommend something wide rather than something long. Here’s an example of use of a very wide angle lens on a landscape shot:

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First Light, Banner Peak and Thousand Island Lake

Use long lenses to shoot sports. Everyone notices all of the Really Big Lenses at sporting events. I sure saw plenty of them at this week’s Amgen Tour of California bike race. Heck, I even used one myself to get shots like this one:

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Riding to the Starting Line, Prolog Time Trial, 2008 Tour of California

But wait a minute…

Sometimes the “common wisdom” can be exactly wrong, or at least it is possible to get interesting results by doing the opposite of the obvious thing. How about a landscape shot with a very long lens:

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Big Sur Fisherman, Winter Surf

And here is another bicycle racing shot, done with an ultra wide lens. (That’s Mario Cipollini banking into this turn, for the cycling fans out there.)

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The Peloton Enters San Jose – 2008 Amgen Tour of California

I’ll share one bit of technical information here. All four shots were made with two lenses. Both of the wide angle shots – landscape and cycling – were done with a 17-40mm zoom at the wide angle end. Both of the telephoto shots were done with a 100-400mm telephoto at the long end.

Just to tweak another assumption about “the right equipment,” both bicycle racing shots were done with a Canon 5D – and everyone knows that the 5D is only useful for landscapes and that you can’t shoot action subjects with it. ;-)