A reader noticed that my recent Death Valley photographs were made with two different systems — a Canon full frame system and a Fujifilm APS-C system. Apparently some people DO look at the EXIF data! ;-)
He wrote:
“Hi Dan, I’ve been enjoying your recent posts and comps from your Jan visit to DV. After visiting your flickr site, I noticed that you use a Canon 5DSR with 100-400 telephoto lens for its reach across the terrain, and a Fuji XT-5 with a medium telephoto for the more intimate canyon shots. Is that your set up for convenience depending on the scene? I’m guessing the 5DSR is tripod mounted for shots, and the Fuji is handheld when hiking. I’m curious why you don’t pair the Canon with the same focal lens that you use on the Fuji. Thanks for your insights.“
For example, this photograph was made with the little Fujifilm XT5 rather than with my much larger Canon system. If you are interested in my answer, read on!
“Light in the Canyon” — Afternoon light strikes a hill in the lower reaches of a Death Valley canyon.
With his permission, I’m going to write a bit about why I use two systems, and how and when I use both of them together.
A person sits at a bus stop in downtown San Francisco, California.
I made this photograph a year ago during one of my summer walks through downtown San Francisco. These walks have become a sort of tradition for me during this time of the year – I take the train into The City, arriving very early, and then head out on foot to photograph various areas, most of which I’ve visited a number of times. I prowl for several different sorts of subjects – the early morning light above the waterfront, people, bits of color and shape, and “architectural landscapes.”
Things can evolve very quickly in this urban environment. As I recall, the first thing that caught my attention here was the solitary figure on the bench, obscured by the semi-transparent material around the bus stop shelter, followed by the juxtapositions of yellow colors on its room and the sign across the street. The scene was incredibly busy, with people walking between me that the shelter, cars and buses passing by on the street, and people moving in and out of the frame on the other side of the street. So here, as I often do in such situations, I used what I might call the “compose and wait” approach – I found a composition around the shelter that centered the far widow and red sign in the opening… and then I waited for something interesting to appear in the right parts of the frame and for the distracting elements to disappear. I made perhaps a half-dozen or more exposures. In one, a bus passes through the frame. In another, blurred people appear in the foreground. But in this one, the person in dark clothes walked right in front of the red sign as another person emerged across the street to the left of the shelter, and no other people or vehicles interfered.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer 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 | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
