Tag Archives: short

Photographs: Scotland, Photographs: Travel

Oban Waterfront, Dusk

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Oban Waterfront, Dusk
“Oban Waterfront, Dusk” — Waterfront buildings reflected in smooth water at dusk, Oban, Scotland.

Our recent visit to Scotland included jet lag adjustment time before our Great Glen Way walk. It did not seem wise to get off our 11-hour flight, eight time zones away from home and immediately start walking! We spent our first night near the airport in Glasgow, then took a train to Oban for a couple of nights before heading to our trailhead in Fort William. Oban was a wonderful surprise — a lovely, walkable town on the waterfront. And, of course, the Oban Whisky distillery is in town. And, yes, we visited!

We stayed at a B&B about ten minutes from the center of town. As we walked back from dinner we came upon this lovely dusk light over the waterfront. I had not thought much about it before the trip, but Scotland is so far north (the northern tip is about as far north as Juneau, Alaska) that the daylight lasted until nearly 10:00pm.

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” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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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. ;-)