Official Photography Thread

[Scott R Nelson]

I took this photo on January 11, 2008 at the Maverick's big wave competition in Half Moon Bay. They only hold it once a year, except that in 2009 there weren't any days with big enough waves, so they missed that year. This year (2010) the waves were coming up the beach and sweeping away the crowd on occasion. Several people watching got broken bones from that one.

I went with my son-in-law, the surfer, and hiked over to a place we could climb up the hillside for a better view. We had to wade back out in water up to our knees. This was the day that my Canon S1-IS camera died, right before I could get any good surfing shots. I used my daughter's Canon digital SLR (I don't know the model) with my 300 mm zoom lens that has been on loan forever and that I'll probably never get back.

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Scott R. Nelson, Pleasanton, CA

[Katy Lied]

A quick and dirty way to spruce up your photos of flowers is to spritz them with water. Voila. Below, my mister was too fine. I think I prefer bigger drops and less of them.

Without mist


With misting. A little more interesting.

[Surfah]

Nice. But you need to burn that reflected sunlight out of the wave (or get a polarizer). I'd try and saturate the water color a bit more too and, well, the lack of sharpness is a problem. Also, a tighter crop (without the wave runner) would be better... but you already mentioned you are shooting at a fairly long 300mm. One of my favorite surfing photographers, David Orias, seems to shoot at 600mm (or 840mm!). But the Canon 600mm telephoto sells for $7500 and the 840mm telephoto sells for north of $10k, so there's that. But, wow!, Orias' photo sets on Flickr (like these taken of California surfers) are quite lovely.

Thanks for sharing... looking forward to seeing more.

cheers.

Yeah those long lens' are a must at Mavericks. That wave breaks a half mile from shore.

Edit: I just checked out those links of Orias' photos. Nice. That's where I learned to surf. Those Ventura/Santa Barbara breaks, C-Street, Rincon, Oil Piers, etc.

[Scott R Nelson]

Also, a tighter crop (without the wave runner) would be better... but you already mentioned you are shooting at a fairly long 300mm.

The original photo had a much wider view. I cropped it down to less than half the original width. Since we didn't have a tripod or anything, I was probably lucky that the photo came out as sharp as it did.

Little by little I hope to learn how to take better photos.
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Scott R. Nelson, Pleasanton, CA

[Babs]

The original photo had a much wider view. I cropped it down to less than half the original width. Since we didn't have a tripod or anything, I was probably lucky that the photo came out as sharp as it did.

Besides, you couldn't crop it any tighter without losing some of the power and detail of the wave. Only thing you could do would be to photoshop the waverunners out, and that'd be really tough. I think it's a great picture.

[Katy Lied]

I'd try and saturate the water color a bit more too

You know, that thought occurred to me as well. But then I thought, if Half Moon Bay has waves that big, they probably arrived on some storm, so the water should be very dirty from the churning. So its not going to be a typical deep ocean blue. So I'd keep it that color.

[Katy Lied]

Did you try this with your black background? I think your single rose illuminated out of the darkness - perhaps in a square crop - would be really nice.

cheers.

I tried that, and was unimpressed with the results. Bleh. I should have used around an f/11 or f/13. I think this one is pretty wide open. The short focal plane just irritates me and makes the photo look blurry.


What was more interesting were the black photos of violets. More unexpected than roses.

[Katy Lied]

My (7 y.o) daughter took this one with her Nikon Coolpix S220 (I don't recommend it at all!). She says she took the tree in focus on purpose. If true, I think it shows that she might have a knack for something interesting behind the lens.

This is the second or third picture you've shown us with incredible flowers in the background. Do you live near an arboreatum or is your yard beautifully and lushly landscaped?

[falafel]

Yeah those long lens' are a must at Mavericks. That wave breaks a half mile from shore.

Edit: I just checked out those links of Orias' photos. Nice. That's where I learned to surf. Those Ventura/Santa Barbara breaks, C-Street, Rincon, Oil Piers, etc.

A grocer's apostrophe on top of an improper plural! Awesome.

[wuapinmon]

This is the second or third picture you've shown us with incredible flowers in the background. Do you live near an arboreatum or is your yard beautifully and lushly landscaped?

I have a mature Southern yard (.52 acres). We have over 500 azaleas, 4 camellias, a red-tip hedge, a sego palm, a Japanese magnolia, a gigantic tea olive, a rose bush, 6 hydrangeas, 2 dogwoods, about 1,000 stalks of bamboo, oaks, ferns, blueberries, pines, sweet gums, 8 magnolias (including an 80+-year-old one), 10 mature holly bushes, and a 15 foot holly tree. The photo was taken in our backyard and shows only the smallest section of our awesome azaleas (all-told we have fuschias, reds, whites, pinks, and a couple of pink-to-reds). The horrific winter we had killed my satsuma tree .

[Tim]

A "pro" (part-time) photographer in my ward told me that the very minimum shutter value that you can take without a tripod is the reciprocal of the effective focal length. So if you have a full frame camera body, shooting hand held with your 300mm lens would require an exposure time no slower than 1/300. If you have a "cropped" sensor, like a Canon for example, then multiply by the crop factor (1.6) before taking the reciprocal. So a 300mm x 1.6 == 480mm ... or nothing slower than 1/480. If you have IS or VR on your lens, then divide focal length by 4 before taking the reciprocal.

HTH.

cheers.

Do you every stop and wonder if maybe you're missing the whole thing, all the experience, the actual beauty of whatever it is, because you're too focused on the technical side of getting the picture to be "perfect"? The more technology you layer over the scenario, the faker it becomes.

This may sound bitchy, but I really don't mean it to -- I'm a minimalist and find that a photo is only as good as the experience attached to it. Oh gosh, why am I using white text? What's wrong with me?

[creekster]

I totally agree... more formal family portraits should be taken with camera phones and more blockbuster films should be made using Flip camcorders. Technical expertise and quality equipment have always been over-rated. That's why I only buy audio CDs from musicians that record their music on mini hand-held analog tape recorders. It's all about the experience man... quality be damned!

cheers.

Now don't be touchy. To each his or her own.

[Mrs. Funk]

I totally agree... more formal family portraits should be taken with camera phones and more blockbuster films should be made using Flip camcorders. Technical expertise and quality equipment have always been over-rated. That's why I only buy audio CDs from musicians that record their music on mini hand-held analog tape recorders. It's all about the experience man... quality be damned!

cheers.

Ouch. Be nice.

I think Tim makes the fair point that at some point, elaborate equipment can get in the way of enjoying the experience in the moment. A girl in my law school class is now marketing herself as a professional photographer. She showed up in her cap and gown with three or four bags of camera equipment. I was a bit sad for her that she wasn't going to get a chance to just experience the moment and would be behind her camera the whole time.

Just a thought.

[Tim]

I totally agree... more formal family portraits should be taken with camera phones and more blockbuster films should be made using Flip camcorders. Technical expertise and quality equipment have always been over-rated. That's why I only buy audio CDs from musicians that record their music on mini hand-held analog tape recorders. It's all about the experience man... quality be damned!

cheers.

Hey, don't get me wrong... I own a DSLR, too, and I've owned a prosumer-level HD video camera at one point in my adult life, but I find that it's important to me to remember that there's not a single camera setting or configuration that can replace the feeling I have of sitting on the beach, watching the surfers, etc. I find that when I become too focused on quality, I forget that there's more to an experience than the quality of the image. I'm all about quality, I really am... but the settings used to capture a photo only represent a small portion of the quality truly associated with that moment -- like how we felt being there, what it smelled like sitting on the beach, the sound of the waves crashing, etc.

I own Photoshop and use it when necessary, but my general challenge to photographers and filmmakers is to try and edit less, because every edit and every touch-up takes the creator and the viewer one further step away from the reality of the moment captured.

[Babs]

Hey, don't get me wrong... I own a DSLR, too, and I've owned a prosumer-level HD video camera at one point in my adult life, but I find that it's important to me to remember that there's not a single camera setting or configuration that can replace the feeling I have of sitting on the beach, watching the surfers, etc. I find that when I become too focused on quality, I forget that there's more to an experience than the quality of the image. I'm all about quality, I really am... but the settings used to capture a photo only represent a small portion of the quality truly associated with that moment -- like how we felt being there, what it smelled like sitting on the beach, the sound of the waves crashing, etc.

I own Photoshop and use it when necessary, but my general challenge to photographers and filmmakers is to try and edit less, because every edit and every touch-up takes the creator and the viewer one further step away from the reality of the moment captured.

This exchange reminds me of the photo you got of the soldier and how all MikeWaters could see was that it was out of focus.