Cranes and Geese, Sunset, Reflecting Pond

Cranes and Geese, Sunset, Reflecting Pond
Cranes and Geese, Sunset, Reflecting Pond

Cranes and Geese, Sunset, Reflecting Pond. San Joaquin Valley, California. January 1, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Cranes fly through evening sky above geese in a San Joaquin Valley pond.

I made this photograph on New Year’s Day 2014. Two years ago it seemed like a good idea to begin the new year by greeting its first dawn in the San Joaquin Valley, and sharing the experience with thousands of migratory birds and a few like-minded friends. Getting there was a stretch this year – late the previous night I had arrived home from a week in New York City, and getting up four hours later to drive two hours in the dark was going to be a challenge. But I made it and after photographing through the morning I thought that I might just head home. In the early afternoon we broke off from the photography and went to nearby town to grab something to eat, and by the time we were done it was only an hour or less until the evening “show” would begin back in the wetlands, so I shelved by early departure plans and headed back into the field.

I’m glad I did. It turned out to be a very beautiful evening, with many thousands of birds and with an unexpectedly beautiful sky. Often when it seems a bit gray and “blah” in the late afternoon, the evening light can end up illuminating this thick atmosphere, turning it both colorful and near-transparent. That is what happened here as I was photographing a large group of Ross’s geese that had settled in on the wetlands near this small tree. As the light diminished, I hoped for a fly-in of the sandhill cranes, which can be one of the most magical moments of any day in this area. Unlike the geese, which tend toward raucous and unpredictable behavior, the sandhill cranes seem to show up in large groups right at dusk, mostly gliding smoothly above the ponds as they head for their landing spots.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographic Myths and Platitudes: No Post-Processing!

(The following is another (more or less stream of consciousness) post that I wrote in reply to a comment I read somewhere else, in this case suggesting that photographic history implies that post-processing or manipulating photographs after the shutter has been clicked is ethically questionable and should be avoided. I’ll start with a modified version of the message I saw.)

…it is invalid to claim that Adams was a modern photoshoppe[r]… 

I… recommend to every beginner to do film… to develop a better feeling for composition… The most difficult in digital is to restrict yourself to [taking] a limited number of photos… in the beginning…

…I want to leave my photos as natural looking as possible…

This is an important conversation, for the beginner and for people who have been making photographs for a long time.

When people make pronouncements about how photography is supposed to be done or has been done based on notions about what great photographers do or have done, it is important to check those notions against reality. In photography there is a frequent mantra about “no post processing” and “get it right in camera” that has been, in my view, perverted to suggest that photographs are created in certain ways that do not correspond to reality – and worse, that other photographers should adhere to these false “rules.” It obviously is important to develop an eye for composition and an ability to operate a camera, but that is most certainly not the end of it, nor is there much of any evidence to indicate that great photographers have felt that photography is limited to what happens in the camera.

Did Adams ever make a “bad” negative look good in post? That depends on what you think of as bad. I’m can’t think of photographs that were poorly composed and where post-processing compensated for this. (However, there are some negatives that were damaged in the fire at the Yosemite studio very early on, and in which the composition is affected by this. I’m pretty certain that “Monolith” was burned along its top edge, which is partly responsible for the crop with which we are familiar today.)

Adams did, by the reports that I have heard first hand from people who knew him, make a good number of banal and boring exposures. In fact, like photographers today, he made far, far more uninteresting and forgettable photographs than great ones. His famous statement about a dozen successful photographs in a year being a good crop is a partial acknowledgment of this truth about photography.

Some of Adams’ most famous, most successful, and most universally admired photographs would have been forgettable without extensive work in post. It still surprises me how many photographers don’t know this and, in fact, believe that the opposite is the case. A number of other photographers who knew and worked with him regularly point this out in their presentation on Adams. One of their favorite and most compelling examples is the iconic “Clearing Winter Storm” photograph of Yosemite Valley. There are three powerful pieces of evidence in this case: the straight prints of the negative (which has been printed by others), Adams’ own shorthand instructions for his extensive dodging and burning of the image when producing prints, and the profoundly different appearance of the print we all know, in which clouds that were almost uniformly near white become a dramatic mixture of very contrasting tones. Further, Adams made a number of exposures of this exact composition – most of which are not as spectacular – but he selected one from which to create the brilliant print in post that became so famous. Continue reading Photographic Myths and Platitudes: No Post-Processing!

Beyond the Golden Gate

Beyond the Golden Gate
Beyond the Golden Gate

Beyond the Golden Gate. Marin Headlands, California. January 17, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The Pacific Ocean and western horizon outside the Golden Gate

A day trip to San Francisco began with a plan to see the David Hockney exhibition at the De Young Museum – important since the show was in its last few days. After spending several hours at this wonderful show, we came up with a vague plan to go somewhere and perhaps photograph something before dark. With a bit less than two hours to go and no more plan than that to go on, we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge to the north and were distracted by the idea of an espresso stop. By now there wasn’t a lot of time left before sunset, so we simply reversed course and headed back toward the bridge, where we did the “usual thing” and headed up into the Marin Headlands.

This is probably one of the very most popular area tourist destinations in the evening, since these hills north of the Golden Gate provide a classic and romantic view through the Golden Gate Bridge and back toward San Francisco – at least when it isn’t foggy. Since I know this area well, and in all kinds of conditions, at this point I was thinking more about simply enjoying the evening than about making photographs, and when we found a place to stop and park I left my camera equipment in the car. I looked toward The City and decided that I wasn’t going to photograph it… but as I looked to the west I saw some things that did seem a bit more interesting. At first I focused on the silhouette of more westerly cliffs as they dropped down to meet the Pacific. Then, after the sun had set, I decide to go ahead and just photograph the immense surface of the Pacific Ocean, reflecting sky colors and fading into the haze at the horizon.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | FacebookGoogle+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Camera Stability and Long Lenses

I responded to a question somewhere else and thought that it might be useful to share the response here, too. A photographer asked some questions about using long focal length telephoto lenses for landscape photography and how to deal with the issue of camera/lens stability, bringing up related questions about things like live view modes, mirror lockup, image-stabilization, and so forth. Here is what I wrote in response…

Rocky Creek Bridge, Surf and Fog
Black and white photograph of Rocky Creek Bridge with winter storm surf and fog. Big Sur coastline, California.

If you are shooting landscapes from the tripod…

  • Do use live view – it is the mode that introduces the least amount of shutter vibration.
  • Either mode 1 or 2 will perform essentially equally well when it comes to shutter vibration. (In both cases, there really isn’t any shutter motion vibration before the exposure since it is initiated electronically.
  • If you use a remote release (and you do, right?!) then there is no reason to use any delay setting on the camera to avoid vibration. (Many cameras have settings for 2 second or 10 second delays – mostly there so you can run and get in the photo, too!)
  • Mirror lockup is irrelevant in live view. The mirror is up by default in live view.  To be even more explicit, live view and MLU are mutually exclusive modes – they cannot be used at the same time.
  • After touching the camera, moving the tripod, etc., wait a few seconds for vibrations to dissipate before making your exposure. I  think that 2-3 seconds is sufficient, though some folks will claim that even longer might help.
  • Speaking of this, I would tend to avoid using either auto-focus (AF) mode when making landscape photographs with such a long lens. Either can introduce some amount of vibration to the system, but especially the mode that momentarily flips the mirror down, auto-focuses in the usual manner, then flips the mirror up to make the shot in live view. I prefer to manually focus at 10x magnification. If you must autofocus, do so before switching to live view mode, and then turn AF off before making the exposure.
  • Realize that the large area of these big lenses, combined with their very long focal lengths and great magnification, make the system far more susceptible to vibration from air movement. Even relatively weak breezes can create enough vibration to create a bit of blur and soften the image. Continue reading Camera Stability and Long Lenses

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