Sports shooter for a day

I’ve never been into sports. Probably because I can’t play any. But for some reason, I’ve really started to enjoy rugby. Today we attended our first local match and I decided to play sports photographer for a day — something else I have never done, but it seemed like a good opportunity to play with some of my Nikon’s focus-tracking features that I’ve seldom used but probably should more.

The Jayhawks were playing the KC Islanders. For the sake of the Jayhawks, I’ll just say that the score wasn’t important. It was a hard-fought game and I thoroughly enjoyed myself! The Nikon performed beautifully. I tend to not trust automation enough sometimes and I always think I can focus more accurately myself but, in a case such as this, the 3D auto-tracking, continuous servo focusing of my D7000 was a huge help. Every now and then it would pop to a player that I didn’t intend but that was rare and my keeper ration was much higher than it would have been if I had relied on my own focusing skills.

All-in-all, a great – if not brutally hot – day!

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Misc. Michigan

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I spent a few amazing days shooting in Michigan’s upper peninsula last week. The city of Marquette and the surrounding area offer all kinds of opportunities and I enjoyed shooting beautiful natural areas and architecture alike. Rather than try and categorize these images in some thematic or otherwise thoughtful way, I’ll just throw ’em out there and let you see a few of the places I saw.

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Flint Hills cattle drive

It was a near-perfect weekend for shooting a Kansas cattle drive and sampling the cooking of Josh Hoy. Josh and Gwen Hoy operate the Flying W Ranch near Clements in the Kansas Flint Hills and have opened some of the working cattle drives to guests. Josh’s cooking may be more of the draw than the cattle, in my opinion, but the whole package was amazing. For a real Kansas experience, this is tough to beat. I’ll just let the photos do the talking:

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More shallow depth of field

Here are a few more shots taken in Arkansas with my 85mm 1.4. Having a manual focus lens again has been interesting. I used to love manual focus and only grudgingly adopted autofocus when I upgraded film bodies years ago to get other features. I’m enjoying a return to that slower, more thoughtful way of shooting but I am finding that changes in my own eyesight and in camera viewfinders have added some additional challenge. Not to mention that at f/1.4 you get very little wiggle room. That plane of focus can be wafer thin.

The big viewfinder on my D700 is pretty manual-focus friendly but I do miss my old split-view finders. I’ve looked at options online for getting a replacement focusing screen, but I’ve seen enough comments from people who have experienced exposure issues that I’m not sure it’s worth it to me. Instead, I think I’ll just continue to practice, practice, practice. I also think I’ll try and rely more on my eye and less on the focus-confirmation dot in the viewfinder that tells you when you’re sharp. I’m not so sure that it isn’t “drifting” a bit depending on my subject distance. It must be the camera – it couldn’t be me, right?

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Above: I happened on this beautiful lakeside wedding location, just after the ceremony had finished. Below: a few shots of people hunting for diamonds at Crater of Diamonds State Park.

Simplifying the frame: Clinton birthplace home NHS

On a recent visit to the President William Jefferson Clinton Birthplace Home National Historic Site in Hope, Arkansas, I decided to take a different approach to my photography. It’s easy to develop habits and a common one is to see “interior” and immediately think “wide angle.” After all, I carry that wide angle for just that reason — if I’m in a tight space, I can still get it all in the frame — right?

Here’s a typical shot from starting with that mindset:

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But the more I thought about it in this case, the more I realized that the architecture isn’t the point. The real spirit of the place was in the details: the childhood photos, the everyday items, the memories. After I had all of the wide shots I needed, I popped on my new Rokinon 85mm 1.4 and took a fresh look at things. The image at the top of the post and the three that follow were all made with the 85mm.

That short telephoto view changed how I saw things. It forced me to simplify. What was a chaotic mixture of patterns through the 17mm was now reduced and dreamy — thanks to the shallow depth of field. The images felt more like I felt, when touring the house. I’ve toured a lot of presidential museums and boyhood homes but this one was more personal for me, probably due to the fact that it resembled my own boyhood home so much. It was very nostalgic for me and I think that came through in the images. I’ll definitely not disregard a short telephoto when shooting interiors from now on.

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Catching up, gearing up

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Well, the month of July seems to have slipped past me without my having ever made a single post on this blog. So sorry. Bad blogger! I’ll try now to summarize what has been a busy month, even if it involved very little travel. And interspersed are a few images from June’s trip to Hot Springs, Arkansas. I have a couple of other posts from Arkansas in the works, so stay tuned.

So what happened to July?

Good question. It was there and then gone. For me it’s been a month of getting caught up in the office — prepping files and sending them off to stock agencies, doing a few design projects, prepping a couple more books in my “Journals of a Travel Photographer” series — and, perhaps most importantly, getting prepared for what appears to be one of my busiest Autumns ever. I’ll post more about that as things become more finalized but, suffice it to say, I’ve been buying travel guides for multiple countries. I’m super excited about the months ahead.

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But I also didn’t want to push forward with future work at the expense of past work. I’d been getting behind in stock submissions and images don’t sell themselves when they’re just sitting on a hard drive on your desk. And, if I needed more encouragement, my stock sales are actually up this year. Alamy is the agency that I can most easily track because I can log on for immediate reports and they have been doing very well for me this year. At the midpoint of 2013, I’m about where I was for all of 2012 and my average price per sale has increased for the first time since 2009. I’m not back up to those 2009 prices, but it’s comforting and hopeful to not see image prices continuing to drop. We’ll see if the trend continues and if it’s reflected at my other agencies but, in the meantime, it felt like time to “feed the beast” and get more images out there. My backlog isn’t entirely caught up, but I’ve made progress.

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August looks to be the turning point for me and my assignment and travel schedule is quickly heating back up. I’ll try and get my blog posts caught up before I get too swamped. I have a couple of things from Arkansas in particular that I want to share before new destinations distract me. And I hope to be announcing more books in the very near future. Two are in proofreading and two more are nearly to that stage.

Then, come September, things will get really exciting around here.

SATW CS Awards

I recently returned from the Central States Chapter meeting of the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW), where I’m proud to say that I was awarded the 2013 Photographer of the Year Award. The photo above of a group of Swedish festival dancers in Lindsborg, Kansas, sealed the deal. It won first place in the “Action or Motion” category and was then judged best of all of the first place category winners. I don’t enter a lot of competitions but the SATW ones mean a lot to me because of all the great shooters that belong to that organization. The fact that a Kansas shot won over images made all around the world also made me very happy. For those interested in getting into travel photography, it’s a lesson that you don’t have to go to distant, exotic destinations to make interesting photographs. There is often plenty of material right in your own backyard.

Here are a few other images of mine that placed in the SATW CS competition:

This shot from Quebec City took second place in the “Places/Scenery Featuring U.S./Canada” category.

Another Kansas shot from a rodeo in Phillipsburg took third place in the “Action or Motion” category.

And yet another Kansas shot of a steak dinner at the Grand Hotel restaurant in Cottonwood Falls took third place in “Food Reflecting Local Cultures.”

I also tried my hand at my first ever Photo Shootout at the Central States meeting, held in Little Rock, Arkansas. Basically, participating photographers have 24 hours to shoot images in five categories and then a few more hours to assemble a 10-image portfolio for submission. The following are a couple of my images that placed in that competition:

This shot of the interior of the Arkansas State Capitol took first place in “Architecture.”

This shot of the Clinton Library and the adjacent pedestrian bridge took first place in “Bridges” category.

My congratulations to everyone else who won awards at our Central States meeting. It was great seeing and traveling with you all and I look forward to doing so again soon.

Testing a new lens

Gear is a funny thing. You can become obsessed with it — always wanting the newest, the fastest, the most megapixels — but it’s a trap. At least I feel that it can be a distraction from paying attention to the things that really matter: composition, mood, light, message.

I don’t buy new gear all that often and I try and really think through and make purchases that will last. I’ve had a solid stable of bodies and lenses for a while now and have the whole range of focal lengths covered from 17mm to over 400mm (if you consider the 1.5x of my crop-sensor D7000).

So what more could I want or need?

I’ve thought about this a lot lately and have decided that what I’m looking for now are not necessarily the tools that test out as having the “best quality,” but rather tools that have a “unique quality.” It’s a fine distinction, but what I’m looking for are a few lenses, in particular, that have a uniqueness about them. They deliver something special. They may not be the most expensive, rugged or sharpest, but they will bring a capability to my kit that I didn’t have before.

My most recent addition arrived on Saturday: a Rokinon 85mm f/1.4. I took it out for a quick walk around the KU campus yesterday to see what it could do. I was drawn to this lens for the shallow depth of field and creamy bokeh (out of focus areas). It’s manual focus as well, which slows me down and makes me more thoughtful. So far, I’m not disappointed. See what you think of these initial test shots:

The Jayhawk shot above is actually stitched from 18 images in a pano-grid method I’ve written about before. It lends the shallow depth of field to a wider angle of view.

These last two shots are of mounts on display in the Natural History Museum — they’re not wildlife shots. I was just looking for some tighter settings to try the close focus and shallow depth of field:

So far, I’m impressed and happy with my purchase — and anxious to get this lens out in the field for some real travel work.

Fort Larned National Historic Site

I almost didn’t go. Memorial Day and Labor Day are the two times a year where Fort Larned National Historic Site formally features groups of re-enactors. I’ve shot the 1860s-70s era fort many times but not when it was populated by soldiers, wives and craftsmen in period dress. It’s been on my list for years, but it has just never come together. This year looked good, but weather became a worry as the weekend approached.

It’s a four hour drive for me, so I got up early (about 3:30) Sunday morning to check the weather radar. It didn’t look good. There was a large storm cell just west of the fort, moving east. A second line appeared to be forming behind it. The predicted 30 mile an hour winds didn’t look good either. I pretty much decided to skip the trip and try again on Labor Day but, while watching the weather breaks during the morning news, I saw the thunderstorm break up and dissolve. At 5:00, I made the decision to go after all. In the end, I was glad I did. Here’s a brief photo essay of my visit:

The doctor is in. A re-enactor portrays a post surgeon at Fort Larned National Historic Site near Larned, Kansas.

Barracks inspection at 10:00.

Spa shoot in HDR

I’m not usually a big HDR guy. The first few of those over-the-top shots I saw with hyper-dramatic clouds and impossible shadow detail were interesting, but I quickly tired of the look. But that’s not to say that all HDR is inappropriate. There are times that I find it incredibly useful, as in this shot of the Alvadora Spa at the Royal Palms in Phoenix, AZ.

The room was soothingly dim but it was quite bright outside. The client wanted to show both the interior and exterior spaces in the same shot — something that might have been a challenge back in the days of shooting transparency. Then, I probably would have waited for dusk, when it would get darker outside and I could achieve a better balance between the brightness of the interior and exterior spaces. Another alternative might have been to light the interior space to bring it closer to the exterior, but I was also interested in keeping a slow shutter speed so that the water falling on the table would be nice and silky looking.

With digital and HDR capabilities now, it really wasn’t difficult to achieve this shot, even given the massive contrast in the scene. I mounted my D700 with a 17-35mm f/2.8 zoom on a tripod and added a neutral density filter to cut even more light and get a longer exposure for the water. I then shot 5 bracketed shots, each 1 stop apart so that I had images exposed at -2, -1, 0, +1, and +2 stops with the middle shot being correctly exposed. The most underexposed image held detail in the bright sky and distant mountain, but the interior was extremely dark. The most overexposed shot held detail in every corner of the dark interior but had blown out portions of the exterior. Not to worry, though. This is where the HDR comes in.

With the images imported into Lightroom, I selected all 5 and opened them using the “merge to HDR Pro in Photoshop” option under the “Photo>Edit In” menu. Photoshop now did all the heavy lifting, opening all 5 images and combining them into one high-dynamic-range image that I was able to save back out as a 32bit tiff. It doesn’t look that great in Photoshop at this point, but not to worry. When that tiff was opened in Lightroom it looked and acted like any other RAW file, except that the shadow and highlight recovery sliders had much, much more information to work with and, with a few quick adjustments, I had the image you see above. Detail in the darkest shadow as well as information in the bright sky above that far mountain. By being careful not to push the contrast and clarity too far, I think I was able to avoid that unnatural look that so many think is the only purpose of HDR.

And, to rebel against the cold rainy supposedly Spring day outside my window today, I’ll leave you with a few more shots of what was a much warmer day spent at the Royal Palms in Phoenix, just a couple of weeks ago…

Michael C. Snell photography blog

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