Seems another photographer—a woman in the UK—laid claim to this name a while ago, although she still hasn't done THING ONE with it.
Doesn't seem to be a single phrase in the English language that hasn't already been grabbed for use on the web.
![William Porter Photography [2009-10]](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BdmG2FltN6U/VWc8FvPTYkI/AAAAAAAAAJ4/jMlVI5GGDYM/s1600/GOOGLE%2B320x132.png)
Squeaky-clean digital, no filmy residue
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Introducing an outstanding wedding photographer in Tampa Bay: Booray Perry!
I'm pretty active in several online communities of photographers, getting help from others from time to time, and offering help from my own experience whenever I am able. Sometimes I get to know other photographers pretty well from exchanges online and I do often look behind the "avatar" at people's work. There are more than a couple really good photographers out there.
Sometimes I even get a chance to talk personally with somebody whose work I like very much. That happened today with Tampa Bay wedding photographer Booray Perry. I won't say a thing about the wonderful name; you can find out for yourself on his website:
http://boorayperry.com/
Booray's a real live wire. He used to be a radio disk jockey here in the Dallas area and I can testify that his personality comes through loud and clear, not just over the phone but also in his photos and on his very entertaining blog. Today I found his post on the creative challenge of photographing the bride's shoes, which I both sympathized with and smiled at. Anyway, we had both been involved in a recent thread about wedding albums on photo.net, and we ended up chatting together about photography, business, and families. Like me, Booray thinks of himself as not just a wedding photographer but as a family photographer. I admire his work. If you are looking for a wedding photographer in Tampa Bay (or for that matter, someone to shoot your son's bar mitzvah, whatever), by all means browse the impressive online galleries over at his website.
Sometimes I even get a chance to talk personally with somebody whose work I like very much. That happened today with Tampa Bay wedding photographer Booray Perry. I won't say a thing about the wonderful name; you can find out for yourself on his website:
http://boorayperry.com/
Booray's a real live wire. He used to be a radio disk jockey here in the Dallas area and I can testify that his personality comes through loud and clear, not just over the phone but also in his photos and on his very entertaining blog. Today I found his post on the creative challenge of photographing the bride's shoes, which I both sympathized with and smiled at. Anyway, we had both been involved in a recent thread about wedding albums on photo.net, and we ended up chatting together about photography, business, and families. Like me, Booray thinks of himself as not just a wedding photographer but as a family photographer. I admire his work. If you are looking for a wedding photographer in Tampa Bay (or for that matter, someone to shoot your son's bar mitzvah, whatever), by all means browse the impressive online galleries over at his website.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Reading a photograph: Patricia Dalzell's "Benita at Home..."
Excellent post over at The Online Photographer. The subjects of the post are, first, a photo by Patricia Dalzell, and second, a reading of that photo by another photographer, Ken Tanaka. I disagree with Ken Tanaka's reading but am grateful to him for it; and I don't feel bound to accept or be too influenced by Patricia Dalzell's explanation of the photo's background, but I'm grateful for that, too. I won't reproduce the photo or the critique; you can and should bop over to TOP and see them both for yourself. It's worth the click.
What I want to do is say a few things about criticism and the meaning of art. This is a pool I used to wade in pretty frequently in my days as an academic.
A good critic in any art must be thoughtful but must first be observant, and to be truly observant, you must be disciplined, restrained, patient, humble. Or to put it differently, a good critic SHOULD be superficial, should be devoted to the surface, at least for a start. The problem with the way most folks look at photos (or poems, or movies, or whatever) is not that they are superficial, it's that they are dismissive, they're in a hurry. They FAIL to look even at the surface carefully. For most people, almost nothing is harder to see than what is right beneath their noses.
Thomas Aquinas, speaking in the Quodlibetales of the interpretation of scripture, said, Sensus spiritualis semper fundatur super litteralem, et procedit ex eo ("The spiritual meaning is always based on the literal meaning and proceeds from it"). In other words, look carefully at the literal level, the surface. Work hard to see the obvious and try to remain content with it as long as possible. Only then will you earn the right to step into the sanctum sanctorum of the deeper or less obvious meaning.
Ken Tanaka's reading, like a lot of readings done in the last, oh, half century or so, demonstrates a willingness to get to the sanctum sanctorum too quickly, too carelessly. It is, in short, an overreading. He says he's worried about the woman doing violence to him but in fact he does violence to her and to the photograph.
You can't ask too many questions about what's NOT in the photograph. Or rather, you can ask them, but it's not fair to expect those questions to be answered. You can't start trying to figure out where the woman's husband is, for example. I think it's silly to ask what the woman is holding in the hand that's in the pocket (a gun? a knife?). She has her hand in her pocket, that's all, and we have no reason nor any right to assume she's holding anything at all. Women get to put their hands in their pockets. Now, you are certainly allowed to notice the hand in the pocket. You can even sense that it's meaningful in some way—but you can't quite put your finger on what that way is. I would add, as a portrait photographer myself, that hands are a big problem in portrait sessions, especially in full-length shots like this one of Patricia Dalzell's. I've often heard it said that actors like to smoke when acting because it gives them something to do with their hands.
Sometimes the photo does reveal a lot about its context and then you may be obliged to take it into consideration. A photo of a political leader is almost inevitably political. Cartier-Bresson's famous photo of the woman who has been "outed" as a former concentration camp guard is also rich with meaningful context, which we know quite a bit about in part because Cartier-Bresson made a short documentary giving more of the incident for critics to chew on. My insistence on the importance of the surface is not meant to justify ignorance of WWII. We bring what we know to our experience of any work of art or craft. A photo of someone else's dead dog may be touching. A photo of our own dead dog may bring us to tears. Art doesn't exist in a vacuum, as much as the esthetes would like it to.
But an awful lot of art lives in a chamber which, if not a vacuum, at least has a pretty thin atmosphere. Patricia Dalzell says that she tries to make her photos "timeless", by which I take it she means first of all, "not easily dated." I strive for the same thing, so I can see a kindred spirit's work in this photograph. When was the photograph taken? Could have been almost any time in the twentieth century, I think. This is what I would call a private work. The subject is not a famous person and her story is not known. It's quite wrong to make up a story of our own and foist it on the photo, just because we feel the urge to do so.
If we can't ask what the woman ate for breakfast, where she's going after the photo session is finished, or whether her raised eyebrow is in fact a sign of latent anger or hostility, then what does the photo "mean"?
This is the central, perennial question of criticism in all the arts, and the best answer has never changed: the photo (or poem, or painting, or sonata) means what it says, just that and nothing else. It isn't a package that can be unwrapped to reveal the gift of meaning hidden inside. The package is the gift, the photo means what it is. No paraphrase or description can replace it.
Criticism isn't the record of art's meanings, not for a minute. Criticism is simply talk about art and it should always take us back to the work and help us see it (or hear it) more attentively. Moreover, all critics should realize that, while the work endures, all criticism is ephemeral. In the mid-twentieth century, we had a critical renaissance in which a lot of very smart people thought—and even dared to say aloud—that criticism had replaced art. Silly, silly, silly.
Anyway, a lot of criticism can be useful even when it's very wrong. Criticism that puts bad, inappropriate or distracting thoughts into your head that you have trouble removing, well, that's just bad. But some criticism is wrong but provocatively so. It provokes us to look harder at the work if only to see if the critic is right or wrong, or at some point perhaps in order to find evidence of the critic's wrongness. That's okay. Criticism is talk about art. And strong art can survive bad criticism. Shakespeare's plays have, and while of course it isn't a masterpiece in the league of King Lear, this portrait by Patricia Dalzell will survive a little misreading, too.
What I want to do is say a few things about criticism and the meaning of art. This is a pool I used to wade in pretty frequently in my days as an academic.
Superficiality is a virtue
A good critic in any art must be thoughtful but must first be observant, and to be truly observant, you must be disciplined, restrained, patient, humble. Or to put it differently, a good critic SHOULD be superficial, should be devoted to the surface, at least for a start. The problem with the way most folks look at photos (or poems, or movies, or whatever) is not that they are superficial, it's that they are dismissive, they're in a hurry. They FAIL to look even at the surface carefully. For most people, almost nothing is harder to see than what is right beneath their noses.
Thomas Aquinas, speaking in the Quodlibetales of the interpretation of scripture, said, Sensus spiritualis semper fundatur super litteralem, et procedit ex eo ("The spiritual meaning is always based on the literal meaning and proceeds from it"). In other words, look carefully at the literal level, the surface. Work hard to see the obvious and try to remain content with it as long as possible. Only then will you earn the right to step into the sanctum sanctorum of the deeper or less obvious meaning.
Ken Tanaka's reading, like a lot of readings done in the last, oh, half century or so, demonstrates a willingness to get to the sanctum sanctorum too quickly, too carelessly. It is, in short, an overreading. He says he's worried about the woman doing violence to him but in fact he does violence to her and to the photograph.
Don't expect too many answers
You can't ask too many questions about what's NOT in the photograph. Or rather, you can ask them, but it's not fair to expect those questions to be answered. You can't start trying to figure out where the woman's husband is, for example. I think it's silly to ask what the woman is holding in the hand that's in the pocket (a gun? a knife?). She has her hand in her pocket, that's all, and we have no reason nor any right to assume she's holding anything at all. Women get to put their hands in their pockets. Now, you are certainly allowed to notice the hand in the pocket. You can even sense that it's meaningful in some way—but you can't quite put your finger on what that way is. I would add, as a portrait photographer myself, that hands are a big problem in portrait sessions, especially in full-length shots like this one of Patricia Dalzell's. I've often heard it said that actors like to smoke when acting because it gives them something to do with their hands.
Sometimes the photo does reveal a lot about its context and then you may be obliged to take it into consideration. A photo of a political leader is almost inevitably political. Cartier-Bresson's famous photo of the woman who has been "outed" as a former concentration camp guard is also rich with meaningful context, which we know quite a bit about in part because Cartier-Bresson made a short documentary giving more of the incident for critics to chew on. My insistence on the importance of the surface is not meant to justify ignorance of WWII. We bring what we know to our experience of any work of art or craft. A photo of someone else's dead dog may be touching. A photo of our own dead dog may bring us to tears. Art doesn't exist in a vacuum, as much as the esthetes would like it to.
But an awful lot of art lives in a chamber which, if not a vacuum, at least has a pretty thin atmosphere. Patricia Dalzell says that she tries to make her photos "timeless", by which I take it she means first of all, "not easily dated." I strive for the same thing, so I can see a kindred spirit's work in this photograph. When was the photograph taken? Could have been almost any time in the twentieth century, I think. This is what I would call a private work. The subject is not a famous person and her story is not known. It's quite wrong to make up a story of our own and foist it on the photo, just because we feel the urge to do so.
What do photos mean?
If we can't ask what the woman ate for breakfast, where she's going after the photo session is finished, or whether her raised eyebrow is in fact a sign of latent anger or hostility, then what does the photo "mean"?
This is the central, perennial question of criticism in all the arts, and the best answer has never changed: the photo (or poem, or painting, or sonata) means what it says, just that and nothing else. It isn't a package that can be unwrapped to reveal the gift of meaning hidden inside. The package is the gift, the photo means what it is. No paraphrase or description can replace it.
Criticism isn't the record of art's meanings, not for a minute. Criticism is simply talk about art and it should always take us back to the work and help us see it (or hear it) more attentively. Moreover, all critics should realize that, while the work endures, all criticism is ephemeral. In the mid-twentieth century, we had a critical renaissance in which a lot of very smart people thought—and even dared to say aloud—that criticism had replaced art. Silly, silly, silly.
Anyway, a lot of criticism can be useful even when it's very wrong. Criticism that puts bad, inappropriate or distracting thoughts into your head that you have trouble removing, well, that's just bad. But some criticism is wrong but provocatively so. It provokes us to look harder at the work if only to see if the critic is right or wrong, or at some point perhaps in order to find evidence of the critic's wrongness. That's okay. Criticism is talk about art. And strong art can survive bad criticism. Shakespeare's plays have, and while of course it isn't a masterpiece in the league of King Lear, this portrait by Patricia Dalzell will survive a little misreading, too.
Traveling light: The post-mortem
Well, I'm back from my excellent vacation adventure, mostly but not exclusively in Yellowstone National Park. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post titled "Traveling Light," in which I revealed that I had—with some hesitancy—decided to leave my Pentax DSLR bodies and my excellent lenses at home, and instead to entrust my vacation photos completely to a couple of relatively inexpensive compact, fixed-lens cameras.
And that's what I did. My pro gear stayed home and the compact cameras traveled. Now that I've had a chance to review the photos, select my favorites and post them online, what do I think about this experiment? Was it a success or a failure?
I'm fairly satisfied with the pics I got with the FZ35, in most cases. This pic of a buffalo lying in the grass was taken in the middle of the FZ35's zoom range (around 200mm equivalent), which is usually a "sweet spot" for lenses:
There's a fair bit of detail here, acceptable noise (the shot was taken at ISO 80, the lowest setting), and good color. I'm confident it will print well.
This shot of the engineers building in Mammoth Hot Springs is slightly less satisfactory:
Fortunately I captured this as a raw file. The unprocessed original is somewhat "soft", but I think the final result turned out okay, after I boosted the blacks, the contrast and especially the "clarity" in Lightroom 3. Still, I can't shake the feeling that this shot would have been sharper if I'd taken it with my Pentax K20D and, oh, the Pentax 70mm prime.
The FZ35 shined when I was able to get fairly close to my subject, and when the light was good. We were not more than 25ft from these otters as they played near the banks of Trout Lake in Yellowstone:
I'm happy with that shot and don't think it would have been better if I'd had better equipment. There was a serious photographer there at the same time, shooting with a film SLR. Apparently he's quite devoted to the otters. I'd like to see some of his photos. But I'm happy enough with this.
The grizzly bears and wolves were far less cooperative than the otters. This shot of a mother grizzly with her three cubs was taken in the early morning, at Alum Creek in the Hayden Valley. I was using the FZ35 with the 1.7x teleconverter attached, and with the camera mounted on a tripod for additional stability. The FZ35's in-camera image stabilization is actually quite good, but when you are shooting at an effective focal length of over 800mm, well, image stabilization can only do so much.
This grizzly was probably a quarter mile away from us at the time. I tried to remember, when attaching the converter, to switch into the FZ35's shutter priority mode so I could keep the shutter speed over 1/500th sec. This wasn't quite as fast as the old rule of thumb requires (that would be 1/800th sec) but I let the camera's image stabilization do some work and I think the results were okay. At this distance, the limitations of the resolution of the lens become apparent. Teleconverters get you a longer reach but you pay for it in light lost (about a stop) and image clarity. But getting closer wasn't an option; we were restrained by the ranger, and if the ranger hadn't been there, I would have been restrained by my wife; and if my wife hadn't been there, I would have had to rely on my own disinclination to risk being mauled by a grizzly. So this is the shot I got.
Could I have gotten this shot with my DSLR gear? I doubt it but I'm not sure. If I shot with my K20D and the Tamron 70-300 ED Di Macro, and if I was using the Tamron 1.4x teleconverter as well, I'd have an effective focal length available of something over 600mm. Now the difference between 600mm and 800mm in this situation is less than you might think. It's possible that the DSLR's much better performance at higher ISOs would become a factor here. The shot above was taken at ISO 200, which on the FZ35 is a fairly noisy sensitivity level. If I had shot this at ISO 400 or even 800 on my K20D, I am pretty sure it would be less noisy and more fine detail would have been preserved. The field of view would have been narrower (that is, the bears would have seemed "smaller" in the frame) but the greater resolution of the DSLR might have permitted me to crop and get something close to what I got with the FZ35. I just don't know. What I am pretty sure of, however, is that what I could have gotten with my DSLR gear would not have been better.
(I hasten to emphasize that I'm comparing the FZ35's performance and capabilities with my personal DSLR lens options, not with what a pro photographer could do with a $6000 lens.)
The noisiness of the FZ35 at anything over ISO 100 became an even more serious problem when, on another day, we spent a long time one afternoon watching these bears chew on a bison carcass on the bank of Soda Butte Creek, in the Lamar Valley.
We were a fair bit closer to the bears this time—not more than a couple of hundred yards, I think, if that—but it was a drizzly overcast afternoon, in other words, the light sucked. In order to keep the shutter fast, I had no choice but to boost the ISO to 400, and that meant losing detail. The other problem here was that I wasn't using the tripod. Instead, for some reason, I grabbed the monopod instead.
But I think the images are quite satisfactory, as vacation photos. I got a gray wolf, too. She (the ranger told us it was a female) was hanging around in the neighborhood, probably hoping to get to the carcass if the bears abandoned it. Didn't happen.
I'm glad I had that reach.
The bottom line is that the FZ35 basically performed as well as I expected it to, which was pretty well. These photos aren't going to end up in National Geographic, but I'll be happy making prints of them for a vacation album.
I should add a note about the Panasonic 1.7x conversion lens. Dealing with it—putting it on and taking it off—involves a certain amount of hassle, akin to the hassle involved in changing lenses on a DSLR. Except that at no time do the camera's innards get exposed to the air and its hazards (dust, pollen, moisture, etc.).
I was a little vague even at the time about which of the falls this was. I think this is a shot of the Lower Falls, as seen from above.
I did the black and white conversion in Adobe Lightroom 3. But the raw file from the LX3 gave me everything I needed to work with to make a decent conversion. I used the LX3's 16:9 aspect ratio a lot, and usually cropped those photos to my personal favorite 2:1 aspect ratio for web display and printing.
I had a neutral density filter for the LX3 and tried it when shooting a couple of other falls. I didn't use it here because I did not want to blur the water. I really like the sharp definition in the water at the top of the falls.
This shot of my wife and daughter along the path down from Trout Lake is very different from the waterfall shot:
The LX3 gave me the wide-angle I needed here and the fast aperture; this shot was taken at f/2.4 and ISO 100. Color rendition is good and the shot is nicely detailed.
But my favorite use for the LX3 is landscapes. Here is one of my favorites:
These last two were taken not in Yellowstone but in Rocky Mountain National Park, where we camped for two nights on our way north from Dallas. This is the Moraine after a rain (and hail) storm.
The image's vibrance was goosed a little in Lightroom 3, but those colors are basically the colors that I saw.
The last picture is perhaps my favorite of the vacation and it illustrates the LX3's adaptability. I had to make a midnight run to the comfort station one night at Rocky. While I was out of the tent, I noticed that the Moraine—which our campground looked down upon from the north—was full of fog and the moon was shining above it. Everybody else in the campground was sound asleep, so as quietly as I could, I hauled the tripod out of the van, put the LX3 into manual mode, took a couple test exposures, and then captured this:
You can click that image for a larger version. Yes, it's a tad noisy, but hey, this is a six second exposure on a compact camera! I shot at ISO 400. In retrospect I wish I'd shot at ISO 200 and done a 12 second exposure. Nevertheless, I'm pretty happy with this shot. The Moraine at Rocky Mountain National Park, like the Eiffel Tower and Mount Rushmore, has been photographed millions of times and most of the photos look like all the others. It's nice to have a chance to take a shot that looks a bit different.
My conclusion is that the experiment was generally a success.
One of my main motives for leaving the DSLR gear at home was that I didn't want to have to lug a variety of lenses around. That worked out well. Even though I was carrying two cameras with me in the car most of the time, both were small. And although I did have to fiddle with the FZ35's teleconversion lens occasionally, in general, I was able to grab a camera and go to shoot.
The other main goal was to take photos that were not worse than those I'd have taken with my DSLR kit. That's not a high standard, of course, but it was a realistic one. And I'd say that standard was fairly well met.
Our next family vacation takes us to another national park, Big Bend, in southwest Texas. I could change my mind in the next few months but right now I expect I'll be carrying the same two cameras I took with me to Yellowstone.
And that's what I did. My pro gear stayed home and the compact cameras traveled. Now that I've had a chance to review the photos, select my favorites and post them online, what do I think about this experiment? Was it a success or a failure?
Wildlife: Panasonic FZ35
We saw lots of wildlife on this trip, mostly in Yellowstone, but also in Custer State Park in South Dakota and elsewhere. We saw grizzly bears (but no black bears, I think), gray wolves, lots of bison, coyotes, elk, white-tailed deer, pronghorns, marmots, otters, not to mention lots of birds, including an osprey, a couple of bald eagles, a couple of sandhill cranes, what was probably a downy woodpecker, and a very colorful bird that we think was a western tanager. I'm justing rattling off the species I can remember easily.I'm fairly satisfied with the pics I got with the FZ35, in most cases. This pic of a buffalo lying in the grass was taken in the middle of the FZ35's zoom range (around 200mm equivalent), which is usually a "sweet spot" for lenses:
There's a fair bit of detail here, acceptable noise (the shot was taken at ISO 80, the lowest setting), and good color. I'm confident it will print well.
This shot of the engineers building in Mammoth Hot Springs is slightly less satisfactory:
Fortunately I captured this as a raw file. The unprocessed original is somewhat "soft", but I think the final result turned out okay, after I boosted the blacks, the contrast and especially the "clarity" in Lightroom 3. Still, I can't shake the feeling that this shot would have been sharper if I'd taken it with my Pentax K20D and, oh, the Pentax 70mm prime.
The FZ35 shined when I was able to get fairly close to my subject, and when the light was good. We were not more than 25ft from these otters as they played near the banks of Trout Lake in Yellowstone:
I'm happy with that shot and don't think it would have been better if I'd had better equipment. There was a serious photographer there at the same time, shooting with a film SLR. Apparently he's quite devoted to the otters. I'd like to see some of his photos. But I'm happy enough with this.
The grizzly bears and wolves were far less cooperative than the otters. This shot of a mother grizzly with her three cubs was taken in the early morning, at Alum Creek in the Hayden Valley. I was using the FZ35 with the 1.7x teleconverter attached, and with the camera mounted on a tripod for additional stability. The FZ35's in-camera image stabilization is actually quite good, but when you are shooting at an effective focal length of over 800mm, well, image stabilization can only do so much.
This grizzly was probably a quarter mile away from us at the time. I tried to remember, when attaching the converter, to switch into the FZ35's shutter priority mode so I could keep the shutter speed over 1/500th sec. This wasn't quite as fast as the old rule of thumb requires (that would be 1/800th sec) but I let the camera's image stabilization do some work and I think the results were okay. At this distance, the limitations of the resolution of the lens become apparent. Teleconverters get you a longer reach but you pay for it in light lost (about a stop) and image clarity. But getting closer wasn't an option; we were restrained by the ranger, and if the ranger hadn't been there, I would have been restrained by my wife; and if my wife hadn't been there, I would have had to rely on my own disinclination to risk being mauled by a grizzly. So this is the shot I got.
Could I have gotten this shot with my DSLR gear? I doubt it but I'm not sure. If I shot with my K20D and the Tamron 70-300 ED Di Macro, and if I was using the Tamron 1.4x teleconverter as well, I'd have an effective focal length available of something over 600mm. Now the difference between 600mm and 800mm in this situation is less than you might think. It's possible that the DSLR's much better performance at higher ISOs would become a factor here. The shot above was taken at ISO 200, which on the FZ35 is a fairly noisy sensitivity level. If I had shot this at ISO 400 or even 800 on my K20D, I am pretty sure it would be less noisy and more fine detail would have been preserved. The field of view would have been narrower (that is, the bears would have seemed "smaller" in the frame) but the greater resolution of the DSLR might have permitted me to crop and get something close to what I got with the FZ35. I just don't know. What I am pretty sure of, however, is that what I could have gotten with my DSLR gear would not have been better.
(I hasten to emphasize that I'm comparing the FZ35's performance and capabilities with my personal DSLR lens options, not with what a pro photographer could do with a $6000 lens.)
The noisiness of the FZ35 at anything over ISO 100 became an even more serious problem when, on another day, we spent a long time one afternoon watching these bears chew on a bison carcass on the bank of Soda Butte Creek, in the Lamar Valley.
We were a fair bit closer to the bears this time—not more than a couple of hundred yards, I think, if that—but it was a drizzly overcast afternoon, in other words, the light sucked. In order to keep the shutter fast, I had no choice but to boost the ISO to 400, and that meant losing detail. The other problem here was that I wasn't using the tripod. Instead, for some reason, I grabbed the monopod instead.
But I think the images are quite satisfactory, as vacation photos. I got a gray wolf, too. She (the ranger told us it was a female) was hanging around in the neighborhood, probably hoping to get to the carcass if the bears abandoned it. Didn't happen.
I'm glad I had that reach.
The bottom line is that the FZ35 basically performed as well as I expected it to, which was pretty well. These photos aren't going to end up in National Geographic, but I'll be happy making prints of them for a vacation album.
I should add a note about the Panasonic 1.7x conversion lens. Dealing with it—putting it on and taking it off—involves a certain amount of hassle, akin to the hassle involved in changing lenses on a DSLR. Except that at no time do the camera's innards get exposed to the air and its hazards (dust, pollen, moisture, etc.).
Landscapes and people: Panasonic LX3
Going into the vacation, I knew that, within its limited zoom range, the LX3 was a superior camera, indeed, within its limited zoom range and its even more limited range of satisfactory sensitivity (ISO 80-100), the LX3 is a very good camera, compared to just about anything. That Leica f/2.0-2.8 24-60mm (effective) lens is a real winner. And I understand that the LX3 has a slightly larger sensor than the FZ35. Anyway, from a technical perspective, the best shots I took on this vacation were taken with the LX3.I was a little vague even at the time about which of the falls this was. I think this is a shot of the Lower Falls, as seen from above.
I did the black and white conversion in Adobe Lightroom 3. But the raw file from the LX3 gave me everything I needed to work with to make a decent conversion. I used the LX3's 16:9 aspect ratio a lot, and usually cropped those photos to my personal favorite 2:1 aspect ratio for web display and printing.
I had a neutral density filter for the LX3 and tried it when shooting a couple of other falls. I didn't use it here because I did not want to blur the water. I really like the sharp definition in the water at the top of the falls.
This shot of my wife and daughter along the path down from Trout Lake is very different from the waterfall shot:
The LX3 gave me the wide-angle I needed here and the fast aperture; this shot was taken at f/2.4 and ISO 100. Color rendition is good and the shot is nicely detailed.
But my favorite use for the LX3 is landscapes. Here is one of my favorites:
These last two were taken not in Yellowstone but in Rocky Mountain National Park, where we camped for two nights on our way north from Dallas. This is the Moraine after a rain (and hail) storm.
The image's vibrance was goosed a little in Lightroom 3, but those colors are basically the colors that I saw.
The last picture is perhaps my favorite of the vacation and it illustrates the LX3's adaptability. I had to make a midnight run to the comfort station one night at Rocky. While I was out of the tent, I noticed that the Moraine—which our campground looked down upon from the north—was full of fog and the moon was shining above it. Everybody else in the campground was sound asleep, so as quietly as I could, I hauled the tripod out of the van, put the LX3 into manual mode, took a couple test exposures, and then captured this:
You can click that image for a larger version. Yes, it's a tad noisy, but hey, this is a six second exposure on a compact camera! I shot at ISO 400. In retrospect I wish I'd shot at ISO 200 and done a 12 second exposure. Nevertheless, I'm pretty happy with this shot. The Moraine at Rocky Mountain National Park, like the Eiffel Tower and Mount Rushmore, has been photographed millions of times and most of the photos look like all the others. It's nice to have a chance to take a shot that looks a bit different.
Conclusion
My conclusion is that the experiment was generally a success.
One of my main motives for leaving the DSLR gear at home was that I didn't want to have to lug a variety of lenses around. That worked out well. Even though I was carrying two cameras with me in the car most of the time, both were small. And although I did have to fiddle with the FZ35's teleconversion lens occasionally, in general, I was able to grab a camera and go to shoot.
The other main goal was to take photos that were not worse than those I'd have taken with my DSLR kit. That's not a high standard, of course, but it was a realistic one. And I'd say that standard was fairly well met.
Our next family vacation takes us to another national park, Big Bend, in southwest Texas. I could change my mind in the next few months but right now I expect I'll be carrying the same two cameras I took with me to Yellowstone.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Don't Say Cheese
I'm experimenting with a number of changes here. I've fiddled with the look over the last couple of months. Blogger gives me more control than I'm taking advantage of, but I like to keep things clean, and I also want to keep things simple for myself.
And now I'm playing with a new name: "Don't say cheese." I don't tell my subjects to say cheese. I don't even ask them to smile. Instead, I try to get them to smile without being asked. It gives better results.
And I try not to take cheesy photos, which in itself makes me something of a stand-out in the wedding photography biz.
On the downside: If you didn't know that it was the title of a photography blog, would "Don't say cheese" make you think of photography? Maybe, but I doubt it. Without a context, it sounds more like advice you would give to someone who was taking a quiz about French food.
So enjoy the new name while it lasts. Maybe it will stick. Maybe it won't.
And now I'm playing with a new name: "Don't say cheese." I don't tell my subjects to say cheese. I don't even ask them to smile. Instead, I try to get them to smile without being asked. It gives better results.
And I try not to take cheesy photos, which in itself makes me something of a stand-out in the wedding photography biz.
On the downside: If you didn't know that it was the title of a photography blog, would "Don't say cheese" make you think of photography? Maybe, but I doubt it. Without a context, it sounds more like advice you would give to someone who was taking a quiz about French food.
So enjoy the new name while it lasts. Maybe it will stick. Maybe it won't.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
If you have the FZ35, do you really need a 1.7x teleconverter, too?
As I mentioned in yesterday's post, the Panasonic FZ35 has a 18x zoom range that extends from 27mm to 486mm in conventional 35mm film or 36x24 digital ("full frame") terms. That's some serious zoom action.
So, if you can reach 486mm (effective) with the FZ35 on its own, do you really need the 1.7x teleconverter? After all, you can always just shoot at full zoom and crop, to make the subject appear bigger in the frame.
Well, the short answer is that the teleconverter is indeed useful.
Here is a photo of a car across the street. This was taken at full zoom extension (486mm equivalent) and cropped. What you are seeing here is actually a screen shot from Adobe Lightroom 3.
Now here is essentially the same shot, taken with the Panasonic DMW-LT55 1.7x teleconverter attached.
As you can see, the field of view is about the same in the two photos, that is, the car is about the same size in each photo. And the two images look just about identical in other ways, at least at this size. So are they in fact identical? Is the one taken without the teleconverter as good as the one take with the teleconverter?
No, it's not.
The one taken with the teleconverter actually has more pixels, more data. This means several good things. It will be possible to print the second shot somewhat larger than the first. The second shot will be more amenable to certain post-processing maneuvers, such as noise reduction and sharpening, because there is more data to work with.
Here's an enlargement of the license plate from the first shot (the one taken without the teleconverter). The enlargement ratio here is 3:1.
And here is an enlargement from the second photo (the one taken with the help of the teleconverter). The enlargement ratio here is only 2:1. In other words, I didn't have to work the pixels as hard this time to get the same size on screen.
The difference doesn't seem dramatic at first glance, but look again. Look at the Nissan badge above the plate, or the State of Texas symbol in the middle of the plate, or the word "MAXIMA" at the bottom. In the second image, everything is a little sharper, a little smoother and less pixelated.
*
Here they are again, a little smaller. I'm simulating the effect of printing here. You should be able to see that the second image is sharper and simply "better" than the first one. If you can't see the difference, well, you might be running into the limitations imposed by your computer's display.
*
The bottom line here is, the 1.7x teleconverter is actually useful. Say I have the good fortune not only to see a wolf in Yellowstone but actually to be able to set up my tripod and take a photo of one. From what I've read, it's almost certain that the wolf is going to be a long way in the distance. I can take the shot with or without the teleconverter. But if I use the teleconverter, I'll collect more data. The image of the wolf will be comprised of more pixels, which means the wolf will be higher resolution. And that's good.
A final point. There's a practical limit to the advantage of the teleconverter, and I'm working very close to that limit. The limit is set by two things: the quality (acuity or sharpness) of the lens; and the effective focal length at which you are working when the teleconverter is attached.
The quality of the lens that channels light to the camera's sensor determines how efficiently and effectively the available pixels are used. The number of pixels captured isn't the only thing that matters, in fact, it's not even the most important thing. A really good lens on a 10 megapixel camera will produce better photos than a mediocre lens on a 14 megapixel camera. Returning to the FZ35 and the teleconverter, the FZ35's built-in Leica lens is rather good, and the Panasonic teleconverter is not bad. But at full zoom extension, the FZ35 plus teleconverter seems to have reached its maximum resolving power, that is, more pixels in the sensor wouldn't matter because the lens is already starting to lose detail. A lens is an analog device, of course, it doesn't have pixels. But you can't just keep giving the lens more and more pixels and expect the lens to record finer and finer detail.
The other practical limit here is imposed by the focal length. With the 1.7x teleconverter attached, the FZ35, at full zoom extension, is shooting at a focal length equivalent to 826mm. Most serious photographers never own a lens with an effective focal length greater than 500mm, and many never even reach that. Now, when you are shooting at 500mm, 600mm, 800mm, even the tiniest vibration or instability in the camera can affect the sharpness of the image that is captured. The photos above were not taken with the camera on a tripod; I simply used a monopod. If I do use the teleconverter in Yellowstone, I will have the camera on a tripod, and I will use a 2 second shutter delay so I can get my hands off the camera before the picture is actually taken. At this extreme focal length, the merest touch can wreck a photo.
Nevertheless, while the teleconverter is pushing the FZ35 to its extreme limits, it's not exceeding those limits and if you really need extra telephoto reach, it's better to have the 1.7x lens than to do without and simply crop. Q.E.D.
So, if you can reach 486mm (effective) with the FZ35 on its own, do you really need the 1.7x teleconverter? After all, you can always just shoot at full zoom and crop, to make the subject appear bigger in the frame.
Well, the short answer is that the teleconverter is indeed useful.
Here is a photo of a car across the street. This was taken at full zoom extension (486mm equivalent) and cropped. What you are seeing here is actually a screen shot from Adobe Lightroom 3.
Now here is essentially the same shot, taken with the Panasonic DMW-LT55 1.7x teleconverter attached.
As you can see, the field of view is about the same in the two photos, that is, the car is about the same size in each photo. And the two images look just about identical in other ways, at least at this size. So are they in fact identical? Is the one taken without the teleconverter as good as the one take with the teleconverter?
No, it's not.
The one taken with the teleconverter actually has more pixels, more data. This means several good things. It will be possible to print the second shot somewhat larger than the first. The second shot will be more amenable to certain post-processing maneuvers, such as noise reduction and sharpening, because there is more data to work with.
Here's an enlargement of the license plate from the first shot (the one taken without the teleconverter). The enlargement ratio here is 3:1.
And here is an enlargement from the second photo (the one taken with the help of the teleconverter). The enlargement ratio here is only 2:1. In other words, I didn't have to work the pixels as hard this time to get the same size on screen.
The difference doesn't seem dramatic at first glance, but look again. Look at the Nissan badge above the plate, or the State of Texas symbol in the middle of the plate, or the word "MAXIMA" at the bottom. In the second image, everything is a little sharper, a little smoother and less pixelated.
*
Here they are again, a little smaller. I'm simulating the effect of printing here. You should be able to see that the second image is sharper and simply "better" than the first one. If you can't see the difference, well, you might be running into the limitations imposed by your computer's display.
The bottom line here is, the 1.7x teleconverter is actually useful. Say I have the good fortune not only to see a wolf in Yellowstone but actually to be able to set up my tripod and take a photo of one. From what I've read, it's almost certain that the wolf is going to be a long way in the distance. I can take the shot with or without the teleconverter. But if I use the teleconverter, I'll collect more data. The image of the wolf will be comprised of more pixels, which means the wolf will be higher resolution. And that's good.
A final point. There's a practical limit to the advantage of the teleconverter, and I'm working very close to that limit. The limit is set by two things: the quality (acuity or sharpness) of the lens; and the effective focal length at which you are working when the teleconverter is attached.
The quality of the lens that channels light to the camera's sensor determines how efficiently and effectively the available pixels are used. The number of pixels captured isn't the only thing that matters, in fact, it's not even the most important thing. A really good lens on a 10 megapixel camera will produce better photos than a mediocre lens on a 14 megapixel camera. Returning to the FZ35 and the teleconverter, the FZ35's built-in Leica lens is rather good, and the Panasonic teleconverter is not bad. But at full zoom extension, the FZ35 plus teleconverter seems to have reached its maximum resolving power, that is, more pixels in the sensor wouldn't matter because the lens is already starting to lose detail. A lens is an analog device, of course, it doesn't have pixels. But you can't just keep giving the lens more and more pixels and expect the lens to record finer and finer detail.
The other practical limit here is imposed by the focal length. With the 1.7x teleconverter attached, the FZ35, at full zoom extension, is shooting at a focal length equivalent to 826mm. Most serious photographers never own a lens with an effective focal length greater than 500mm, and many never even reach that. Now, when you are shooting at 500mm, 600mm, 800mm, even the tiniest vibration or instability in the camera can affect the sharpness of the image that is captured. The photos above were not taken with the camera on a tripod; I simply used a monopod. If I do use the teleconverter in Yellowstone, I will have the camera on a tripod, and I will use a 2 second shutter delay so I can get my hands off the camera before the picture is actually taken. At this extreme focal length, the merest touch can wreck a photo.
Nevertheless, while the teleconverter is pushing the FZ35 to its extreme limits, it's not exceeding those limits and if you really need extra telephoto reach, it's better to have the 1.7x lens than to do without and simply crop. Q.E.D.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Traveling light
Well, we're off on vacation pretty soon. Most of our time will be spent at Yellowstone National Park. I've never been. Everybody says it's a photographer's paradise, because it's beautiful everywhere you look, and because it has just about everything you could ask for in the way of natural beauty: mountains, prairies, geysers, waterfalls, rivers, lakes, ponds, forests, not to mention wildlife in the form of bears (two kinds), wolves, wolverines, badgers, beavers, bison, coyotes, eagles, osprey, hawks, falcons, ravens, bluebirds, and on and on. I've been doing my homework, reading both of the excellent books about photography at Yellowstone that I could find at Amazon (Lange's, and Verderber's), and getting advice from other photographers, mostly online, about where to go and what to look for. You gotta do your homework!
Well, with all this great stuff waiting for me to point a camera at it, you might think that I'd be bringing my best camera and best lenses. But you'd be wrong.
I've taken my Pentax gear with me to Rocky Mountain National Park, to the Grand Canyon, to Big Bend, to Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, and elsewhere. And yes, it does a terrific job. If somebody were paying me to go to Yellowstone and take photos, I guess I'd take my Pentax gear.
But I've decided this time to go light. I'm leaving the DSLRs and all the lenses at home, and I'm taking just a couple of Panasonic fixed-lens cameras. I hasten to add, a couple of very good fixed-lens cameras.
For landscapes, I'll rely on the old Panasonic LX3, which still seems to me the very best digital compact camera ever. With its outstanding ultra-wide (24mm equivalent) Leica lens, it's a perfect camera for landscapes, like this shot of the spillway at White Rock Lake in Dallas:
The LX3 is terrific for macro (close-up) photography, as well.
I have a circular polarizing filter (for shooting the geysers) and a neutral density filter (possibly for shooting waterfalls) for use with the LX3, so I think I'm in good shape.
In the past, if I was shooting a landscape with a Pentax DSLR, I have relied mainly on the Sigma 10-20 ultrawide zoom, an outstanding lens. It's the only lens I took with me to the bottom of the Grand Canyon last Christmas. In 35mm equivalence, its range is 15mm to 30mm, so it gives me a considerably wider angle of view than the LX3's 24mm. But the LX3 has twice the reach at the other end (it goes to 60mm). In short, the LX3 is right in the range where I take most of my photographs. If it were a bit better in low light, I could shoot a wedding with the LX3, something I would never try with the Sigma 10-20! If I weren't going to use the LX3 at Yellowstone, I'd have to take the Sigma 10-20 AND at least one, probably two of my prime lenses, perhaps the Sigma 28 and the Sigma 40. More likely, for Yellowstone (since it's not the Grand Canyon), I'd leave the 10-20 at home and take the Pentax 21 and the Pentax 40. Those are both small lenses. Still, that would be three to four times heavier than the LX3 and bulkier by about the same factor.
But if I had a Pentax DSLR body and the 21 and 40mm primes, I would still lack a couple of things the LX3 offers: outstanding macro capability, and the ability to shoot high-def video!
The harder, much harder, part of the problem is what to take to shoot wildlife. I'm a portrait photographer, a wedding photographer, and the fine lenses that I have are all in the wide to normal to weak telephoto range. My only long lens is a Tamron 70-300, which is a decent consumer lens, but, well, not in the league of the stuff I take to a wedding.
The reason I have the Tamron 70-300 is that it's very affordable. Really high-quality telephoto lenses like the Pentax DA* 300 or the Sigma 150-500 ("Bigma") are not.
At first, I thought I'd just stick with what I had already, the LX3, and, well, just look at the wildlife through binoculars. But I decided that was crazy. But I didn't want to bring a DSLR and the 70-300, either. If I am going to go light, I'm going to go light.
So I decided to get a second compact camera with a good telephoto zoom.
I first tried the Pentax X90. I don't really want to talk about it. Pentax's DSLRs are terrific, really top notch. Its compact cameras, alas, not so much.
After a little more research, it became clear that Panasonic has ruled the compact camera category, or at least been a major competitor and innovator in that field, for years. So I tried the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7. The image quality was pretty good, and the zoom had a pretty good reach, too (300mm equivalent). Here's a pic of a coot:
The detail in the coot's feathers is actually better than it looks in this web-ready image. The ZS7 is compact and has GPS built-in, although I probably would not use the GPS feature in Yellowstone because we'll be camping and I'm going to be worried about battery use. The ZS7 seems like a really nice camera for a lot of photographers, and I've seen some wonderful photos taken with it. But for me, it had a couple serious weaknesses. First, it doesn't support raw capture. (The LX3 does, by the way.) I am not yet sure whether I'll shoot raw in Yellowstone or not but I want to have the option. Second, the ZS7's 300mm (equivalent) reach is just not going to be long enough to photograph a wolf or a baby bison. A final problem with the ZS7, for me personally anyway, is that, as far as I can tell, it doesn't support add-ons in any way. Mainly that means that I can't use it with filters.
So the ZS7 went back, too. And now I have a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ35, which is what I'll be taking with me to Yellowstone. Its zoom range is from 27mm to an awesome 486mm (equivalent). With the Panasonic LT55 telephoto conversion lens attached, the FZ35 can actually reach over 800mm (equivalent)! And did I mention that it cost $300—a small fraction of what I'd have to spend to get a better, longer lens for my Pentax DSLR body.
Unlike the Pentax X90, the Panasonic FZ35 produces photos that I think are really pretty good. And unlike the Panasonic ZS7, the FZ35 also supports raw capture, and it accepts filters. Folks, we have a winner. Well, it's not as compact as the ZS7. But it is very light.
How good is the FZ35's zoom? Well, consider this. Here's a shot I took from the east side of White Rock Lake (near my house in Dallas). I'm looking west across the lake toward the old pump house.
Interesting side note: The blur on the left side of the photo was caused by an insect on the lens. You have to keep your lenses clean, even if you have a compact camera!
Now the previous photo is a bit deceptive. The wide-angle view makes even the biker seem farther away than he is. He's probably about 35-40 ft away. But as you can see, the pump house is a long way away. I just tried to calculate the distance using Google Maps, and it's about half a mile across the lake at this point. Imagine that there was a wolf or a baby bison standing on the porch of the pump house. I'd be out of luck, right?
Maybe not. Here's a photo of the pump house taken with the FZ35's zoom extended all the way (486mm equivalent).
And here's a shot with the 1.7x teleconverter attached.
OK, if there were a wolf, say, lying on its side on the porch of the pump house, I'm not saying I'd be able to tell if it was a boy or a girl. But I'm pretty sure I could tell it was a wolf and not a coyote, which is a good start.
Of course, test shots of far-away buildings aren't really very indicative of how the lens will perform if I'm shooting wildlife. Perhaps this is a better example of the FZ35's zoom range. This was taken from the same spot as the previous pic, and the rowers were in the middle of the lake.
And here's an uncropped shot of a scissor-tailed flycatcher that was zipping around where I was taking these other photos.
Compare that to this cropped photo of a scissor-tail that I took down in the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge a few years ago:
That was taken with the Tamron 70-300.
So is this a good idea—leaving the really good cameras and lenses at home, and taking a couple of inexpensive "point and shoot" cameras? I think so, but to be honest, I won't really know until I get back and get some images printed. A big weakness of image comparisons on the Internet is that they're limited by the display medium, your monitor. Sometimes you can't really tell how much better one image is than another until you send both to a high-quality printer. I'll back to you at the end of the summer when we're back and I've had a chance to print and review my photos.
And if it does turn out to be a bad idea, I'll just have to go back to Yellowstone and try again.
Well, with all this great stuff waiting for me to point a camera at it, you might think that I'd be bringing my best camera and best lenses. But you'd be wrong.
I've taken my Pentax gear with me to Rocky Mountain National Park, to the Grand Canyon, to Big Bend, to Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, and elsewhere. And yes, it does a terrific job. If somebody were paying me to go to Yellowstone and take photos, I guess I'd take my Pentax gear.
But I've decided this time to go light. I'm leaving the DSLRs and all the lenses at home, and I'm taking just a couple of Panasonic fixed-lens cameras. I hasten to add, a couple of very good fixed-lens cameras.
For landscapes
For landscapes, I'll rely on the old Panasonic LX3, which still seems to me the very best digital compact camera ever. With its outstanding ultra-wide (24mm equivalent) Leica lens, it's a perfect camera for landscapes, like this shot of the spillway at White Rock Lake in Dallas:
The LX3 is terrific for macro (close-up) photography, as well.
I have a circular polarizing filter (for shooting the geysers) and a neutral density filter (possibly for shooting waterfalls) for use with the LX3, so I think I'm in good shape.
In the past, if I was shooting a landscape with a Pentax DSLR, I have relied mainly on the Sigma 10-20 ultrawide zoom, an outstanding lens. It's the only lens I took with me to the bottom of the Grand Canyon last Christmas. In 35mm equivalence, its range is 15mm to 30mm, so it gives me a considerably wider angle of view than the LX3's 24mm. But the LX3 has twice the reach at the other end (it goes to 60mm). In short, the LX3 is right in the range where I take most of my photographs. If it were a bit better in low light, I could shoot a wedding with the LX3, something I would never try with the Sigma 10-20! If I weren't going to use the LX3 at Yellowstone, I'd have to take the Sigma 10-20 AND at least one, probably two of my prime lenses, perhaps the Sigma 28 and the Sigma 40. More likely, for Yellowstone (since it's not the Grand Canyon), I'd leave the 10-20 at home and take the Pentax 21 and the Pentax 40. Those are both small lenses. Still, that would be three to four times heavier than the LX3 and bulkier by about the same factor.
But if I had a Pentax DSLR body and the 21 and 40mm primes, I would still lack a couple of things the LX3 offers: outstanding macro capability, and the ability to shoot high-def video!
For wildlife
The harder, much harder, part of the problem is what to take to shoot wildlife. I'm a portrait photographer, a wedding photographer, and the fine lenses that I have are all in the wide to normal to weak telephoto range. My only long lens is a Tamron 70-300, which is a decent consumer lens, but, well, not in the league of the stuff I take to a wedding.
The reason I have the Tamron 70-300 is that it's very affordable. Really high-quality telephoto lenses like the Pentax DA* 300 or the Sigma 150-500 ("Bigma") are not.
At first, I thought I'd just stick with what I had already, the LX3, and, well, just look at the wildlife through binoculars. But I decided that was crazy. But I didn't want to bring a DSLR and the 70-300, either. If I am going to go light, I'm going to go light.
So I decided to get a second compact camera with a good telephoto zoom.
I first tried the Pentax X90. I don't really want to talk about it. Pentax's DSLRs are terrific, really top notch. Its compact cameras, alas, not so much.
After a little more research, it became clear that Panasonic has ruled the compact camera category, or at least been a major competitor and innovator in that field, for years. So I tried the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7. The image quality was pretty good, and the zoom had a pretty good reach, too (300mm equivalent). Here's a pic of a coot:
The detail in the coot's feathers is actually better than it looks in this web-ready image. The ZS7 is compact and has GPS built-in, although I probably would not use the GPS feature in Yellowstone because we'll be camping and I'm going to be worried about battery use. The ZS7 seems like a really nice camera for a lot of photographers, and I've seen some wonderful photos taken with it. But for me, it had a couple serious weaknesses. First, it doesn't support raw capture. (The LX3 does, by the way.) I am not yet sure whether I'll shoot raw in Yellowstone or not but I want to have the option. Second, the ZS7's 300mm (equivalent) reach is just not going to be long enough to photograph a wolf or a baby bison. A final problem with the ZS7, for me personally anyway, is that, as far as I can tell, it doesn't support add-ons in any way. Mainly that means that I can't use it with filters.
So the ZS7 went back, too. And now I have a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ35, which is what I'll be taking with me to Yellowstone. Its zoom range is from 27mm to an awesome 486mm (equivalent). With the Panasonic LT55 telephoto conversion lens attached, the FZ35 can actually reach over 800mm (equivalent)! And did I mention that it cost $300—a small fraction of what I'd have to spend to get a better, longer lens for my Pentax DSLR body.
Unlike the Pentax X90, the Panasonic FZ35 produces photos that I think are really pretty good. And unlike the Panasonic ZS7, the FZ35 also supports raw capture, and it accepts filters. Folks, we have a winner. Well, it's not as compact as the ZS7. But it is very light.
Zoom zoom
How good is the FZ35's zoom? Well, consider this. Here's a shot I took from the east side of White Rock Lake (near my house in Dallas). I'm looking west across the lake toward the old pump house.
Interesting side note: The blur on the left side of the photo was caused by an insect on the lens. You have to keep your lenses clean, even if you have a compact camera!
Now the previous photo is a bit deceptive. The wide-angle view makes even the biker seem farther away than he is. He's probably about 35-40 ft away. But as you can see, the pump house is a long way away. I just tried to calculate the distance using Google Maps, and it's about half a mile across the lake at this point. Imagine that there was a wolf or a baby bison standing on the porch of the pump house. I'd be out of luck, right?
Maybe not. Here's a photo of the pump house taken with the FZ35's zoom extended all the way (486mm equivalent).
And here's a shot with the 1.7x teleconverter attached.
OK, if there were a wolf, say, lying on its side on the porch of the pump house, I'm not saying I'd be able to tell if it was a boy or a girl. But I'm pretty sure I could tell it was a wolf and not a coyote, which is a good start.
Of course, test shots of far-away buildings aren't really very indicative of how the lens will perform if I'm shooting wildlife. Perhaps this is a better example of the FZ35's zoom range. This was taken from the same spot as the previous pic, and the rowers were in the middle of the lake.
And here's an uncropped shot of a scissor-tailed flycatcher that was zipping around where I was taking these other photos.
Compare that to this cropped photo of a scissor-tail that I took down in the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge a few years ago:
That was taken with the Tamron 70-300.
Proof is in the prints
So is this a good idea—leaving the really good cameras and lenses at home, and taking a couple of inexpensive "point and shoot" cameras? I think so, but to be honest, I won't really know until I get back and get some images printed. A big weakness of image comparisons on the Internet is that they're limited by the display medium, your monitor. Sometimes you can't really tell how much better one image is than another until you send both to a high-quality printer. I'll back to you at the end of the summer when we're back and I've had a chance to print and review my photos.
And if it does turn out to be a bad idea, I'll just have to go back to Yellowstone and try again.
Redesign underway
I'm in the process of redesigning everything—my web site, my galleries, and this blog. Rather harder than you might think. For one thing, the web site is designed by moi and coded by moi. (Tip: Don't hire a photographer because you think their web site is cool. There's a better than even chance they bought the template for the web site.) Anyway, I code the web site, but the galleries are hosted at zenfolio.com, and the blog is hosted by Blogger (a Google service). Getting all three to have a consistent look is almost impossible. Very frustrating. Anyway, it's not going to get done now until we get back from vacation in mid-July.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Perspective correction in Lightroom 3!
Sometimes my prayers are answered. I've been using the Lightroom 3 beta for months, but Lightroom 3 was just officially released, and I was overjoyed to discover that it includes perspective correction tools that weren't there in the beta.
What's perspective correction? Well, here's a photo I took today in downtown Dallas, on the east side.
And here's the same photo, after a little perspective correction on the vertical axis.
Makes a big difference, no?
Here's the photo I was really after. Click to view it full size:
This panorama was actually created in Photoshop Elements 8, and then given final processing in Lightroom 3; so the perspectival correction in the pano was done in Photoshop. But it's nice to know I can now fix single images in Lightroom 3 when I need to.
What's perspective correction? Well, here's a photo I took today in downtown Dallas, on the east side.
And here's the same photo, after a little perspective correction on the vertical axis.
Makes a big difference, no?
Here's the photo I was really after. Click to view it full size:
This panorama was actually created in Photoshop Elements 8, and then given final processing in Lightroom 3; so the perspectival correction in the pano was done in Photoshop. But it's nice to know I can now fix single images in Lightroom 3 when I need to.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Panasonic LX3: How wide is wide?
Yesterday I took a couple pictures at the lake, using the unassisted LX3 at its widest angle (= 24mm in full-frame terms), and then using the Panasonic DMW-LW46 Wide Conversion Lens. Unfortunately, the scene I was photographing didn't have enough distinguishing features in it to show the difference in angles of view clearly. So today I tried again, this time shooting the back of my house.
Here's a shot of our garage, with the LX3 zoomed in as tight as it can go (= 60mm in full-frame terms). Note that in this shot and in the two that follow, I'm standing about 30 ft away from the near corner of the garage.
In full-frame terms, 60mm is a weak telephoto; the "normal" angle of view is around 50mm.
The following shot was taken with the LX3 zoomed out to its widest angle of view (= 24mm in full-frame terms).
And finally, here's the same scene captured using the LW46 Conversion Lens, which takes the LX3 to an effective ultra-wide angle of view of 18mm.
Is the LW46 worth its small price? I certainly think so.
*
Postscript a week later (6-19-2010): Notwithstanding the enthusiasm I felt for it when I was writing about it above, I decided to return the LW46 wide-angle conversion lens. The lens itself really is quite good and I would not discourage anybody from getting it. However, what I decided for myself was that the lens kind of defeated the point of the LX3, which is to have a small camera with some flexibility. With the conversion lens mounted, the LX3 is no longer pocketable. And once the conversion lens is attached, you can't zoom; you're only able to shoot at the effective 18mm focal length. I've decided that, when I need to go wider than 24mm (effective), I can just take two or three shots and stitch them together. See my next post.
More about the Panasonic LX3
In my post yesterday I simply shared a few of the photos I've taken with the LX3. I think I should add a little technical info, for anybody who's actually interested in the camera.
The Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 has very few cons. Perhaps the main one right now is that the model itself is a year and a half old. There are rumors about a new model (possibly called LX5) being released later this year. I didn't worry about it. There's always something newer and better ready for release next month.
So what are the LX3's disadvantages?
Well, first, the telephoto end of the camera's zoom range doesn't reach very far—a mere 60mm in 35mm equivalence. If you want to take photographs of birds, well, don't buy the LX3. I wish Panasonic sold a companion camera with a zoom that ran from, oh, 70-300 in 35mm terms. But they don't. I'm happy to have the LX3's superior wide-angle performance. And to be honest, given my experience in recent years shooting with prime (fixed focal length) lenses on my Pentax DSLRs, I find the LX3's modest zoom range easy to live with. Any zoom at all is a novelty to me.
A second and clearer disadvantage is that the LX3 produces rather noisy images at ISOs over about 400. You can find examples of this in all of the reviews of the LX3. I personally don't find this much of a real disadvantage, either, not because I like noisy images, but because this criticism can be thrown at any small-sensor camera. If you want to shoot in really low light and get stellar results, you buy a DSLR, and even there, some are better than others. The LX3 does have a built-in flash that works tolerably well, but I have reconciled myself to the fact that the LX3 isn't going to be taking photos in the dark.
Third disadvantage: no viewfinder. As it comes out of the box, the LX3 expects you to frame photos using its LED screen. The screen is big (3"), bright and high-res (460,000 pixels), but when you shoot in bright sun, using the screen can be difficult. A built-in viewfinder should provide a tiny duplicate of the LED screen that you can put your eye up to and see clearly even in bright sun. A built-in viewfinder would display your current camera settings, and would zoom as you zoom. However, a built-in viewfinder would also make the camera bigger; see the Canon G10 or G11. In keeping with the Rangefinder esthetic of the LX3, Panasonic decided to release instead, as an add-on, an external optical viewfinder (EOV). The EOV allows you to frame your photo, somewhat approximately, while you hold the camera to your eye. Holding the camera to your eye is a more stable way to hold the camera; and it also eliminates the problem of viewing the LED in bright sun. The drawback of the EOV is that it doesn't communicate with the camera in any way, so you don't get a TTL (through-the-lens) view before you take your photo. Guidelines on the EOV's viewing screen show you the dimensions of a photo with the 3x2 aspect ratio, which is just one of the three aspect ratios at which the LX3 can shoot. So if you are trying to frame your shot with absolute precision, well, you might want to turn on the display screen. But I've found that it's possible to do a pretty good job framing shots with the EOV. And turning off the LED dramatically reduces battery consumption.
Those are the only significant disadvantages or cons that I can think of.
The LX3 has too many advantages for me to list them all. Here are a few that matter to me.
Cons
The Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 has very few cons. Perhaps the main one right now is that the model itself is a year and a half old. There are rumors about a new model (possibly called LX5) being released later this year. I didn't worry about it. There's always something newer and better ready for release next month.
So what are the LX3's disadvantages?
Well, first, the telephoto end of the camera's zoom range doesn't reach very far—a mere 60mm in 35mm equivalence. If you want to take photographs of birds, well, don't buy the LX3. I wish Panasonic sold a companion camera with a zoom that ran from, oh, 70-300 in 35mm terms. But they don't. I'm happy to have the LX3's superior wide-angle performance. And to be honest, given my experience in recent years shooting with prime (fixed focal length) lenses on my Pentax DSLRs, I find the LX3's modest zoom range easy to live with. Any zoom at all is a novelty to me.
A second and clearer disadvantage is that the LX3 produces rather noisy images at ISOs over about 400. You can find examples of this in all of the reviews of the LX3. I personally don't find this much of a real disadvantage, either, not because I like noisy images, but because this criticism can be thrown at any small-sensor camera. If you want to shoot in really low light and get stellar results, you buy a DSLR, and even there, some are better than others. The LX3 does have a built-in flash that works tolerably well, but I have reconciled myself to the fact that the LX3 isn't going to be taking photos in the dark.
Third disadvantage: no viewfinder. As it comes out of the box, the LX3 expects you to frame photos using its LED screen. The screen is big (3"), bright and high-res (460,000 pixels), but when you shoot in bright sun, using the screen can be difficult. A built-in viewfinder should provide a tiny duplicate of the LED screen that you can put your eye up to and see clearly even in bright sun. A built-in viewfinder would display your current camera settings, and would zoom as you zoom. However, a built-in viewfinder would also make the camera bigger; see the Canon G10 or G11. In keeping with the Rangefinder esthetic of the LX3, Panasonic decided to release instead, as an add-on, an external optical viewfinder (EOV). The EOV allows you to frame your photo, somewhat approximately, while you hold the camera to your eye. Holding the camera to your eye is a more stable way to hold the camera; and it also eliminates the problem of viewing the LED in bright sun. The drawback of the EOV is that it doesn't communicate with the camera in any way, so you don't get a TTL (through-the-lens) view before you take your photo. Guidelines on the EOV's viewing screen show you the dimensions of a photo with the 3x2 aspect ratio, which is just one of the three aspect ratios at which the LX3 can shoot. So if you are trying to frame your shot with absolute precision, well, you might want to turn on the display screen. But I've found that it's possible to do a pretty good job framing shots with the EOV. And turning off the LED dramatically reduces battery consumption.
Those are the only significant disadvantages or cons that I can think of.
Pros
The LX3 has too many advantages for me to list them all. Here are a few that matter to me.
- Optically outstanding Leica lens, with a wonderful wide-angle reach of 24mm (in 35mm film SLR terms) and a max aperture of f/2 to f/2.8. In a sense, the LX3 is what any serious photographer wants: a terrific lens, with a camera attached.
- The LX3 supports raw capture. Actually, this was one of the main things that drew me to the camera, but the more I shoot with it, and considering that I'm using it only for personal photos rather than for work for clients, the more I'm leaning towards shooting jpeg in the camera. Still, I'm happy to know that the raw capability is there if I want it.
- The LX3 gives me the ability to control just about everything, indeed, the number of options and controls is a bit bewildering at first, even to someone used to working with a pro DSLR. The LX3 does have the standard PASM exposure modes (program, aperture-priority, shutter-priority, and full manual). P has a program-shift feature that resembles the K20D's hyper-program feature, so in a way, you don't need A or S at all. What I'm discovering, however, is that the camera is smart enough that I can put it into P mode and just shoot.
- The big, high-res LED is even better than the displays on my DSLRs, and I'm still enjoying how good pictures look on the back of the camera.
- I can focus manually if I need to.
- Amazing close-focus (macro) capability. The LX3 can focus from 1 cm. And here the LX3's small sensor provides an advantage over shooting with my DSLRs and the excellent macro lenses I have: at a given focal distance, smaller sensors yield greater depth of field.
- The LX3 has the rare ability to shoot at multiple aspect ratios, while maximizing the use of the sensor and at the same time maintaining the same angle of view on the scene. It took me a while (and a little calculating) to realize how interesting an achievement this is. The LX3 doesn't just crop, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that it crops all three of the basic aspect ratios (4:3, 3:2 and 16:9). As of firmware version 2.1, the LX3 can also take a 1:1 aspect ratio shot.
- The LX3 has an internal buffer that can be used to store a couple of photos. This is brilliant. A month or two I grabbed a camera and ran to the lake to photograph a gorgeous rainbow. Jumped out of the car, framed my shot—and then realized that the camera didn't have a card in it. If I'd grabbed the LX3, I would have been able to take the shot anyway.
- Build quality. The LX3 is a nice piece of work that feels like a serious, old-fashioned camera. A lot of other cameras sold these days, including some that are expensive and take very good photos, feel like cheap toys by comparison.
In a nutshell
In short, the LX3 has a terrific lens, is a pleasure to shoot with, and yet is going to keep challenging me, because I know that, if I take a lousy photo with the LX3, I can't blame it on the camera.The Panasonic LX3: The perfect personal camera (for me)?
I haven't shot with a fixed-lens, compact camera for about five years. But recently I decided I wanted a camera compact enough to go everywhere with me, comfortably. The only problem was that the camera also had to take truly outstanding pictures. My research and testing led me to the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3. I've been putting it through its paces lately and I'm impressed with what this little camera can do.
One of the most remarkable of the many remarkable features of the LX3 is that the lens, an optical gem made by Leica, goes wider than just about any other compact camera: to 24mm in 35mm film equivalence. At the telephoto end of the lens's zoom range, it only goes to 60mm, which isn't much of a telephoto at all. In short, this is a camera made to go wide, very wide.
This makes it perfect for working inside.
Or outside, in the wide-open spaces.
I used to think that telephoto reach was what I wanted most from a camera. I've changed my mind. Now I want everything double-wide, and the LX3 delivers.
The LX3 also lets me get close, really close. It's a good thing that my model here (Beebe the guinea pig) and I are on pretty good terms.
Wide and close can be nice. I was only an inch or two from this flower:
Although sometimes, simply very close is all that's needed. This was taken from less than an inch away:
I've been a raw evangelist for a while. "Raw" capture is what every digital camera's sensor does. When photographers say they "shoot raw," they mean that they like to save all of the data seen by the sensor, so they can work with it on their computers later. The LX3 supports raw capture, and indeed, that was one of the reasons I bought it. (Most compact cameras do not.)
But I've discovered that the LX3's in-camera conversion of raw data to jpeg format is outstanding, and although it seems like heresy for me to say this, I'm tempted to start shooting jpeg with this camera. I spend too much time processing photos for clients. I'd be happy not to spend so much time processing my own photos. This picture was created by the camera's built-in jpeg procesing engine and it's indistinguishable from the jpeg that I created myself in Adobe Lightroom 3 from the raw file:
In short, the LX3 seems to be the perfect personal camera, at least for a wide-angle photographer like me. The Panasonic wide-angle conversion lens, available as an add-on for the LX3, takes the camera to an amazing ultra-wide angle focal length of 18mm (in 35mm film camera terms), and I think I'll find a use for that focal length when we go to Yellowstone National Park later this year. In fact, I think I'm going to leave my Pentax DSLRs and all my lenses at home and rely on the LX3. I'm confident it can do the job.
*
Postscript 6-15-2010: For details on what I like most about the LX3, see my next post, here.
Double-wide
One of the most remarkable of the many remarkable features of the LX3 is that the lens, an optical gem made by Leica, goes wider than just about any other compact camera: to 24mm in 35mm film equivalence. At the telephoto end of the lens's zoom range, it only goes to 60mm, which isn't much of a telephoto at all. In short, this is a camera made to go wide, very wide.
This makes it perfect for working inside.
Or outside, in the wide-open spaces.
I used to think that telephoto reach was what I wanted most from a camera. I've changed my mind. Now I want everything double-wide, and the LX3 delivers.
Up close
The LX3 also lets me get close, really close. It's a good thing that my model here (Beebe the guinea pig) and I are on pretty good terms.
Wide and close can be nice. I was only an inch or two from this flower:
Although sometimes, simply very close is all that's needed. This was taken from less than an inch away:
Raw or jpeg?
I've been a raw evangelist for a while. "Raw" capture is what every digital camera's sensor does. When photographers say they "shoot raw," they mean that they like to save all of the data seen by the sensor, so they can work with it on their computers later. The LX3 supports raw capture, and indeed, that was one of the reasons I bought it. (Most compact cameras do not.)
But I've discovered that the LX3's in-camera conversion of raw data to jpeg format is outstanding, and although it seems like heresy for me to say this, I'm tempted to start shooting jpeg with this camera. I spend too much time processing photos for clients. I'd be happy not to spend so much time processing my own photos. This picture was created by the camera's built-in jpeg procesing engine and it's indistinguishable from the jpeg that I created myself in Adobe Lightroom 3 from the raw file:
The perfect personal camera (for me)
In short, the LX3 seems to be the perfect personal camera, at least for a wide-angle photographer like me. The Panasonic wide-angle conversion lens, available as an add-on for the LX3, takes the camera to an amazing ultra-wide angle focal length of 18mm (in 35mm film camera terms), and I think I'll find a use for that focal length when we go to Yellowstone National Park later this year. In fact, I think I'm going to leave my Pentax DSLRs and all my lenses at home and rely on the LX3. I'm confident it can do the job.
*
Postscript 6-15-2010: For details on what I like most about the LX3, see my next post, here.
Monday, May 24, 2010
What people like, face to face
Last Sunday (May 23, 2010) I had the pleasure of spending the afternoon sitting in a beautiful garden and talking for most of the day to strangers about a few of my photos. I was there as part of the East Dallas Gardens and Artisans Tour. My wife and I have been going to these art fairs for as long as we can remember, but this was the first time I'd taken part in one myself as an "artist" or exhibiter or (as I would prefer) a craftsman. And it was a treat.
In this post, I simply want to comment on a few of the photos that I was showing that day. If you came by, you will already have heard some of this from me in person.
I was quite sure that people would comment on this photo, taken at the start of our hike down into the Grand Canyon last December.
I expected it to get comments in good part because I'd made a large (20" x 30") print and had it beautifully custom framed by Decor Art & Frame on Greenville in Dallas. Frames matter! But I'm proud of the photo. Most of my Grand Canyon photos look like everybody else's. It's hard to take a striking photo of a cliche. But we had the good fortune (as well as the challenge) to be hiking down the Bright Angel Trail last December during a fairly significant snow storm. And this gave me a view of the canyon that, while not unique, isn't very common, either. I was happy to get the Kolb Brothers historic photographic studio into the photo. For the same reason, I've always been fond of this photo, taken five years ago from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, on a day when clouds had settled into the canyon:
If you want good photos of a popular place like the Grand Canyon, one way to increase your chance of success is to keep going back.
In my tour display the other day, I also included a couple of my favorite photos of White Rock Lake. I had a couple of the Mockingbird Lane foot bridge. One in the fog, taken with an ultra-wide angle lens:
And another, one of my favorites, taken with a telephoto lens and from a slightly different vantage point, during a rare snowstorm in Dallas (February 11, 2010):
I think it's interesting to compare the photo above, with this photo that was taken just about the same time:
I like this second photo, too. I like having the jogger in the photo, for scale and also for color. Wish that the car was missing, though. And this second photo has too much going on: the tree, the jogger, the car, the snow. The first photo is, well, simpler: it's a picture of a bridge in a snowstorm. There's a tree in it, too, but the tree is way off to the side and not really part of the "subject." I mean, if you are going to photograph a tree, photograph a tree, like this:
Or this, from the Dallas Arboretum:
Of the photos of White Rock Lake in the snow last February, next to the bridge photo (above), this was probably the most popular photo among my visitors:
That's Lake Highlands Drive, just east of the Bath House on the east side of the lake. Actually, I was taking a photo of the Bath House and the lake, and I wasn't happy. Then I realized why: the lake didn't have snow on it. I turned to the left, and got the photo above. Maybe we have a special appreciation for the beauty of snow here in Dallas. We don't see much of it.
People liked the photos of the lake in the fog, too, including this photo of the old boat house near T. & P. Hill:
And this picture of the boats at the Corinthian Sailing Club:
That photo, like the photo of the bridge in the snow, was not "Photoshopped." Fog is a wonderful artistic filter.
Perhaps my favorite, of the photos I displayed last Sunday, is this photo that I took several years ago of my dog Abby running in our back yard:
The technique here is simple: pan the camera sideways to follow the movement of the subject. The background inevitably blurs. Here, it produces a very painterly image.
Kids liked the running dog. But this seemed to be the favorite photo of many of my adult visitors:
Many people assumed it was two photos, stitched or "Photoshopped" together. Nope. That's my mother-in-law on the left, and my daughter on the right, and the photo was taken at my dinner table. I looked up from dinner, saw the photo, and snapped the shot. That white, blank wall behind my mother-in-law really is that white, blank and lonely. And behind my background there really is a shelf with dishes, a hallway with a photo, and a bedroom door. But of course what really make the photo is, first, my mother-in-law's expression. She's not actually unhappy. She just doesn't want to expend the effort to smile. And the second key element is my daughter's hat. Yep, that's what she wore to dinner. What can I say? It was a new hat.
What's the lesson here, boys and girls? Keep the camera with you, even at the dinner table. You just never know...
In this post, I simply want to comment on a few of the photos that I was showing that day. If you came by, you will already have heard some of this from me in person.
The Grand Canyon photos
I was quite sure that people would comment on this photo, taken at the start of our hike down into the Grand Canyon last December.
I expected it to get comments in good part because I'd made a large (20" x 30") print and had it beautifully custom framed by Decor Art & Frame on Greenville in Dallas. Frames matter! But I'm proud of the photo. Most of my Grand Canyon photos look like everybody else's. It's hard to take a striking photo of a cliche. But we had the good fortune (as well as the challenge) to be hiking down the Bright Angel Trail last December during a fairly significant snow storm. And this gave me a view of the canyon that, while not unique, isn't very common, either. I was happy to get the Kolb Brothers historic photographic studio into the photo. For the same reason, I've always been fond of this photo, taken five years ago from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, on a day when clouds had settled into the canyon:
If you want good photos of a popular place like the Grand Canyon, one way to increase your chance of success is to keep going back.
White Rock Lake
In my tour display the other day, I also included a couple of my favorite photos of White Rock Lake. I had a couple of the Mockingbird Lane foot bridge. One in the fog, taken with an ultra-wide angle lens:
And another, one of my favorites, taken with a telephoto lens and from a slightly different vantage point, during a rare snowstorm in Dallas (February 11, 2010):
I think it's interesting to compare the photo above, with this photo that was taken just about the same time:
I like this second photo, too. I like having the jogger in the photo, for scale and also for color. Wish that the car was missing, though. And this second photo has too much going on: the tree, the jogger, the car, the snow. The first photo is, well, simpler: it's a picture of a bridge in a snowstorm. There's a tree in it, too, but the tree is way off to the side and not really part of the "subject." I mean, if you are going to photograph a tree, photograph a tree, like this:
Or this, from the Dallas Arboretum:
Of the photos of White Rock Lake in the snow last February, next to the bridge photo (above), this was probably the most popular photo among my visitors:
That's Lake Highlands Drive, just east of the Bath House on the east side of the lake. Actually, I was taking a photo of the Bath House and the lake, and I wasn't happy. Then I realized why: the lake didn't have snow on it. I turned to the left, and got the photo above. Maybe we have a special appreciation for the beauty of snow here in Dallas. We don't see much of it.
People liked the photos of the lake in the fog, too, including this photo of the old boat house near T. & P. Hill:
And this picture of the boats at the Corinthian Sailing Club:
That photo, like the photo of the bridge in the snow, was not "Photoshopped." Fog is a wonderful artistic filter.
My favorites
Perhaps my favorite, of the photos I displayed last Sunday, is this photo that I took several years ago of my dog Abby running in our back yard:
The technique here is simple: pan the camera sideways to follow the movement of the subject. The background inevitably blurs. Here, it produces a very painterly image.
Kids liked the running dog. But this seemed to be the favorite photo of many of my adult visitors:
Many people assumed it was two photos, stitched or "Photoshopped" together. Nope. That's my mother-in-law on the left, and my daughter on the right, and the photo was taken at my dinner table. I looked up from dinner, saw the photo, and snapped the shot. That white, blank wall behind my mother-in-law really is that white, blank and lonely. And behind my background there really is a shelf with dishes, a hallway with a photo, and a bedroom door. But of course what really make the photo is, first, my mother-in-law's expression. She's not actually unhappy. She just doesn't want to expend the effort to smile. And the second key element is my daughter's hat. Yep, that's what she wore to dinner. What can I say? It was a new hat.
What's the lesson here, boys and girls? Keep the camera with you, even at the dinner table. You just never know...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)