As the title of this post says, your panoramic shots don’t always have to be in the standard panoramic format you are used to seeing.  This past weekend a few other photographers and myself made a trip up to Rock Island State Park in Tennessee.  I had never been and had heard great things about it, so I was up for it.  It was a beautiful place and I plan to go back and get more shots in the spring or fall when there is more color.

While we were there the water in the river was very high.  Our area has had an incredible amount of rainfall this month and it is supposed to continue this week.  I’m sure you are thinking a lot of rain means better waterfall pictures, right?  Well, not always and this one of those cases in which it was not better.  The waterfall and river was full of run off and both had basically turned brown and muddy.  I am not a fan of muddy waterfall pictures, but I was there and I was going to be taking some photos.  Now the waterfall itself was roaring!

I decided to try something a bit different.  I took a set of shots to use as a square format panoramic shot.  When I say “a set of shots” it was way more than I had imagined.  I took 50 shots to make the panoramic shot below.  Putting it together almost killed my computer and my patience.

After I had the shot stitched together, I was able to combat the problem of the dirty colored water by converting the image to black and white.  I like the final image.  I’ll show you both images so you can see why I did not like the color one.

So, you’ve got two tips today…try shooting square format panoramics and if you encounter a dirty waterfall, convert to black and white

Here’s the color image.  The name of the falls is Twin Falls, but it may as well have been Diarrhea Falls on this day.

And here’s the final black and white image, which I much prefer.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, mostly because it’s been a while since I’ve shot anything.  On another note, I’ve almost accepted that I may never get outside with a camera again (at least that’s how it feels), so, I’ve been doing a lot of stuff inside.  Namely, macro.  In doing this macro work, I’ve been using a few things that I thought I’d share with you.  One of my favorite macro tools is a new light I picked up on a visit to the fine folks at Calagaz Photo.  It is one of those LED lights that’s made for video and designed to sit on your camera’s hot shoe.  I, however, use it for macro work and hold it in my hand.  This is the one I bought: Promaster LED120 Plus.  A few of the things I like about it are that it is rechargeable, which is handy.  I also really like that it has an adjustable light output setting.  That allows me to creatively control my lighting on various macro subjects.

Let me show you how this light can effect my images…

First, here’s a shot with the light held at one angle…

Here’s a shot at a different angle.  Nothing changed from this shot and the first other than where I was holding my light.

You can see how you could get pretty creative with your lighting with this little handheld thing.  I have really had a lot of fun using it myself!  I hope this little tip helps you in your macro photography adventures.

Here are a few more of the macro shots I’ve managed to make on my dining room table, all using the LED120 Plus:

As promised, I’m going to share with you how I made the lemon shot from yesterday’s post.  It really is quite simple, so let’s get started.

First, I used a square vase like the one here.  Then, to get all the micro bubbles and sizzle you see, I filled it about 3/4 the way up with Sprite.  I have also heard plain soda water works, but I couldn’t find it and, in this case, Sprite seemed to do the trick.  Next, I used a Canon 430EX speedlite to light the vase and lemon.  I placed the speedlite to the left of the vase, directly up against it so it would light the entire scene nicely.  I had the flash connected to the camera’s hot shoe via a flash extension cord, similar to this one.  I set the flash in manual mode at 1/2 power.  I had my camera set on a tripod.  To ensure correct focus, I stuck a toothpick in the lemon slice, dropped it down in the water at the depth I thought was correct and manually focused on the lemon.  Once focus was set, I was ready to try my hand at the shot.  I dropped the lemon in the water from a few inches above the surface.  It took a few tries to get my timing down on where I wanted the lemon to be, but after a few I got it dialed in pretty good.  Since I was using flash, I was shooting my camera in manual mode, too.  I set my camera between F/20 and F/22 depending on how bright the flash was on the subject.  Then I set my shutter speed at 1/160th and the ISO to 100.

This is really a fun shot to setup and try.  On a later blog post I’ll show you another good use for that vase, so don’t put it away soon

Here are a few more shots I made while I had the vase, lemons, limes and Sprite out.

Well, out with 2011 and in with 2012.  I hope you all spent the New Years Day doing something you enjoy.  I know I did.  I spent part of the day making macro photographs.  I bought a new little tool about a month ago for my macro shots, and I finally got a chance to try it out.

I’m going to share a few of the shots with you today, and a few more throughout the week.  I’ll also post later on about how I made each shot.

Here’s the first shot…it’s a yellow rose.  I’m real excited about how this one came out!  I used my new “tool” that I’ll tell you about in a later post.

Here’s another one that was kind of fun to make.It is a lemon slice in water.

Your first bit of information for all of these images is that I used my Tamron 90mm Macro Lens and my Vanguard Alta Pro 283CT Tripod to help make these.  I hope you enjoyed these shots as much as I did making them.  Stay tuned for info on how they were created.

I haven’t had much of a chance to get out with a camera lately.  Sometimes when I don’t get out for a while, I take a look back at what I photographed this time last year.  So, I looked through the archives and the closet thing to today’s date I could find was December 26th of last year.  Last year we had a small amount of snow for Christmas, which lingered for a day or two afterwards.  I took that rare opportunity to go photograph a barn I had been eying for some time.  So, that’s what I did last year…

Well, like I mentioned earlier, I haven’t been out with a camera in some time.  However, I have been in with a camera.  Since I have these kids running around the house, I have an anytime portrait subject.  I have discovered that photographing your own kids in your own home is pretty dang difficult!  They tend to want to go do what they normally do and not sit still for pictures.  I really don;t know, but I would imagine this would be a little easier to control at a strange place, since they don’t know where the toy room is at said strange place

Anyhow, yesterday I tried my hand at setting up a mini portrait session with the two babies…here are the results.

Alex went first.  Alex will be 10 months old on January 1.  He can crawl and climb like lightning, but is not walking yet.  It’s hard enough to get him to sit still now, I imagine as the days go on that will even be a harder task.  He smiles and laughs a lot, the only problem is getting him to sit still.

Next up was Blake.  Blake will be 17 months old in January.  If you’re swift at math, you’ll determine that those two kids are only 7 months apart.  We cannot defy science…he is a foster child.  Blake also smiles and laughs a lot, but has an even bigger problem sitting still.  He no longer walks.  He runs.  Everywhere.

I guess most families take their Christmas photos before Christmas, but we had several small catastrophes leading up to Christmas that didn’t lend well to photographs.  Mostly black eyes, rashes, etc.  So, we had to wait until after Christmas.  Ah, heck the Christmas spirit will be alive and well here until decorations come down at the end of the year anyhow

Here’s wishing you all a very Merry Christmas!!

The above image is our living room Christmas Eve night, a la HDR lit only by Christmas Lights and a cozy fire.

Often while out photographing, I like to try different things.  This mixture of things can sometimes be planned and sometime “happy accidents” that turn out to be artistic.  Today, I’d like to discuss a few things…shutter speeds and the use of ND filters.

When most people think of ND filters, they think of using them on waterfalls, which is a great place to use them.  I like to use them in places that you wouldn’t conventionally think of using them.  The examples below are case in point.

These two images were taken standing in the exact same spot on St.George Island at sunrise.  The first was taken with available light with no filters at all.

Technical info: ISO 100, F/22 @ 1/15th

While this is a nice image, I wanted to smooth the water, for a more artistic feel.  The way to do that is lower the shutter speed.  As you can see in this composition the sun is directly out of the frame to the right.  You can see it’s reflection in the foreground.  Slowing the shutter speed shooing into the sun will surely blow my image out…unless I use a ND filter.  That’s what you see in the next image.

Technical Info: ISO 100, F/16 @ 30 seconds

I was able to achieve this shutter speed with a 10 stop ND Filter.  You can see the water has smoothed out greatly, which also gives us a much longer reflection of the sun.  That’s artsy, huh?

Here’s another example of using shutter speeds to create feel, without the use of filters.

These two images were shot just minutes apart, the first using a fast shutter speed to freeze the action…

Technical Info: ISO 800, F/6.3 @ 1/400th

You can see the effects of the fast shutter above.  Most noticeable is the mud flying up from the horse in front.  It had just rained and the mud was flying off those horses hooves like crazy.  I wanted to capture this, so I used a fast shutter.  As fast as I could given the available light  and the effect I wanted to achieve.

This next picture, taken from a different perspective, offers a much different feel than the first.  I “dragged” the shutter and panned, or moved my camera along with the horses, as they ran past me to achieve the “motion” look and “movement” feel.

Technical Info: ISO 200, F/16 @ 1/15th

Both very different images that show movement, only in a different way by simply using shutter speed.

Here’s an image I made while out in the Tetons this past fall that I don;t think I’ve shared yet.  It is an image of the Milky Way.  I had never attempted to shoot the Milky Way before, but I had done my research and also shot star trails a few times, which applies a lot of the same principles.

This image was taken with my 15mm fisheye lens

Here’s how I did it…

I shot in manual mode and tried to let as much light in as I could, without getting too much movement in the stars.  I shot this wide open at F/2.8 manually focused at infinity.  I jacked my ISO up to 3200, something I never do on a regular basis.  Then I set my shutter speed for 30 seconds.  This allowed the Milky Way to show up clearly without getting a ton of movement in the stars.  I chose the fisheye lens for this to capture as much of the scene as possible.  I also like the effect it gives.

Just a quick tip tonight to remind you to not overlook the vertical, or portrait, orientation when out shooting.  A lot of times I shoot a horizontal, or landscape, composition then go ahead and shoot the same scene with a vertical composition.  Sometimes I like the horizontal better, sometimes the vertical and sometimes both.

Here are a few examples.

It even works for HDR

In this case, I like both shots.  This is a simple tip that is often overlooked!  Just trying to remind you not to do that