Photography
So I just got back from eight days in Costa Rica. It had been a couple of years since I’d been out of the country, and I was getting a bit of wanderlust. Unlike my last trip (to Peru) I knew Michelle was coming with me. She’d never been out of the country (Ontario doesn’t really count), so we picked a place that was exotic, but convenient. Flights are cheap, dollars are readily accepted, and they even share American plugs and voltages. In short, it was a perfect introduction to international travel.Read More →
This was supposed to be part 1 of 2, but I never posted part 2.
Since the year’s coming to an end, I thought I’d reflect again on what I’ve learned about photography in the year 2009, and share a few of my favorite shots with the stories behind them. This first set is photos I took from January to June.
In January, my Fuji point and shoot finally died, so I took a break and started saving my pennies for a DSLR. I wanted an Olympus E-520, because of the in-camera image stabilization. My biggest complain with the Fuji was that I had no control over shutter speed, which ruined a lot of photos over the years. Built-in IS would go one step further towards eliminating blurry photos without buying expensive IS lenses.
I ended up buying a Canon Rebel XSi. I have friends who already shoot Canon, so I figured the ability to borrow equipment would make up for the slightly higher cost. I think it was a good decision. The XSi is a solid camera except for the mode dial, which is way too easy to bump. Several times this year I lost a shot because I had somehow nudged the camera from Aperture Priority mode into Manual or the strange and useless A-DEP mode.
I got to travel quite a bit in early 2009. I went to Minneapolis and New York for work, saw my parents in Florida, and took a road trip to Toronto. Back at home, the town where I live flooded and my photos got hundreds of hits in 24 hours. I also became a Toledo Zoo member this year, so I took the chance to visit many other zoos on the cheap and practice with my telephoto.
Back in March I got a Tamron 70-300 lens to take pictures of zoo animals. I paid about $200 for it at my local Castle Photo (now sadly closed), which is still pretty cheap for such a long telephoto. The tradeoff, of course, is in optical quality. The lens is mushy at the extreme long end, giving it an effective range of about 70-270mm. Still, I’m pretty happy with the Tamron, and after learning its limitations I’ve been able to take some pretty good pictures.
The other neat feature about this lens is a 1:2 macro capability at the long end of the range (180-300mm). I hadn’t really played around with this much, but the weather has been absolute crap so yesterday I set up various small objects on the bathroom counter and got out the tripod to see what I could do. I still have a lot to learn about controlling depth-of-field in extreme closeups, but I got lucky a few times, as in the shot above.
I was also playing around with some rudimentary lighting, using a cheap LED headlamp to shine white and red lights on the dragon and other objects. I posted an example of that here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/daverodriguez/3516629677/.
All in all, a pretty successful day in, and hopefully the first of many macro shoots to come. Now all I need is a better tripod…
On Saturday, John and I went to shoot pictures for a freelance job and then went up to North Toledo to walk around and take some pictures.
Approximately 15 seconds into the walk, my camera died, so I borrowed John’s Canon 30D. I’ve used this camera before, but this was the first time I had taken it for an entire outing.
The lens John had on the 30D was a 16-35mm wide angle job. I think he may have had other lenses in his bag, but it was extremely cold and I didn’t want to stop and change them out, especially not knowing what the hell I was doing.In hindsight, this particular lens probably wasn’t the best suited to landscape photography. We shot a lot of buildings, and while I was able to get them entirely in frame from only a few feet away, I was surprised by how much barrel distortion I got.
We walked up and down Sylvania Avenue, checked out a couple of thrift stores and antique shops, and then headed to the north end of downtown to photograph squalor.
All in all it was a pretty successful afternoon. I got some more practice with the DSLR, got a little exercise, and capped it off with a trip to White Castle.
Full set is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/daverodriguez/sets/72157613102131846/