Another thing I tried lately: capturing tricks to the eye. These things are hard to spot. It is all about perspective. A centimetre up or down will ruin the composition, but when you've got it right the results can be spectacular. This shot was taken with the 10-20 mm wide angle lens at 10 mm. The perspective distortion really works in this image. If you take a long look at the image, it will really mess with your brain.
Sometimes something catches your eye that makes you laugh, or is the work of a genius that makes you think. In this case, it is both.
There is possibly no simpler directive for the use of the on-board facilities!
I finally got it right! I bought a Sigma 10-20mm lens this summer to be used underwater. The Sigma fits the PPE-E05 port, normally suitable for the standard kit lens. This port is HUGE and after careful analysis I found out the Sigma would fit in the port, without any trouble. The port is big enough - no vignetting. The only problem that remained was that I couldn't zoom the lens. I took a few shots with it (see my photostream) but one thing was missing...Zoom.
Guess what - now I can. By using a caterpilar track normally found in LEGO Mindstorms I managed to create a zoomring that can be operated by the zoom knob on the outside of the camerahousing. The track is folded around the lens and fixed in place by using a rubber band. Eureka! It works...
Last weekend I took a picture of the intersection near my village "knooppunt Ridderkerk". Because I mixed up the controls of the camera, I came home with 1 heavily over-exposed and one heavily underexposed image of the intersection, instead of a nice exposure-bracketed series.
To salvage the shot, I mixed the two picture using PhotoMatix, and applied selective colouring to the image, and retouched the image to remove lanterns (some of them were right in front of the intersection), message signs and an ugly background.
This is the mixed original with insets (the 2 ill-exposed pics):
I technique I tried the other day is panning the camera, tracking a moving object. I stood just a meter away from the amusement ride for kids, and used a wide angle lens to take the shot. Needless to say that most images were blurry, but this one captures the action quite accurately.
The trick is to move (or better: swing) the camera so that the subject remains in exactly the same position in the frame during the exposure. The other difficult part is knowing when to release the shutter - in this case knowing was more akin to a gut feeling.
This image is straight from the camera - no photoshopping involved!
Oh well, you can't have it all. I did a night dive on probably the most boring dive site on the face of this world, swam for almost 2 km fully geared up, not able to go deeper than 1.5 metres, and the only interesting creature was this fish.
Just made this image this morning, and the longer I look at it, the more I like it.
Another example of the results you can get if your timing is right. If this image was taken during the day, it would have been a boring image. (Having said that, I might go back there and give it a try at noon. Just to see what the differences are...).
The technique is real easy:
Now I can see why the extreme wide angle lenses are so popular amongst underwater photographers. It allows you to get close (which is good to reduce the effects of absorption and diffraction of light, eliminates the snow effect (the flash bounces back on little particles floating in the water) and renders a good impression of the atmosphere in Dutch murky waters.
As you can see, Dutch water aren't that murky: because of the algae and other muck floating around it gets dark pretty fast: at 10 meters depth you need a pretty good torch.
I like this particular photo for the following reasons:
About an hour before and after sunset (and probably sunrise as well) it is said that the light is showing remarkable properties. Everything seems to light up in beautiful reddish colours. This is also known as the golden hour.
So I went with a friend of mine to the maasvlakte and tried it out. Before this shot, shooting pictures during the golden hour was coincidental - but now I was paying attention. And this is what happened:
First the colours seem to fade away as the light started to get weaker. Pictures I took then look dull, with almost no saturation. But there is a small period in time (about 10 minutes) where the sky and the artificial lights are producing the same amount of light. I waited for that moment and while there were still details in the sky, the artificial lights exploded into fantastic colours. This picture is not photoshopped: the sky is a gorgeous deep blue (there were no clouds), the shiny metal of the factory gets a reddish, almost copper or golden look and the lights are not overexposed - just.
If you want to read more about this, Ken Rockwell claims to shoot most - if not all- of his pictures during golden hour and gets really crazy results!
One of my photo friends suggested to go "Urban" the other week. This means you enter a deserted building or other terrain(mostly industrial), take some shots without being hurt or killed by collapsing structures and get out before you are arrested for trespassing.
Just kidding (although I was visited by the police)! Old buildings are a great way of expressing your creativity, but you need to be patient, absorb the environment and really look to find those captures. It took me over an hour before I 'saw' this composition.
The fallen down support beams showed great texture - when I looked at it in colour it was an 'ok' image, but when turned into a black&white picture the texture came out right. It really emphasizes the rotten wood.
I'm not quite satisfied with the results - The upper right corner isn't just right and there is a distracting line in the top of the image. I may repair that later, by either editing & cropping the image or by going back and redo the image (which is more fun, although it is raining cats & dogs in the Netherlands right now...).
TIP: If you live in the Netherlands, it is a good idea to visit http://www.snapspots.nl/ to find those inspirational photo sites. This site is listed as well!
Photography is a journey, not a goal. In search for even better captures, one has to practice, think about what has been shot, and try again. In the proces, art is created (or total crap). In this blog, I'm sharing my experiences.+00072.jpg)
