Abstract in the Park

I am starting to warm up to the idea of just getting out and shooting. Sunday, I took Hadley and Annalee to the park and I was determined to shoot something. Anything other than kids on swings and slides.

This picture is of a side-by-side slide, converted to black and white, and very little else. One thing I did notice is that, although this was shot at f8, the focus is not sharp from the front of the slide to the back. Why? I suspect the compression from the zoom lens was the culprit. Lesson 1: There's this thing called a LCD screen--use it and zoom in to check sharpness every once in a while.

EXIF data:

Nikon D80 + 70-300 VR at 300mm
ISO 100
f8 at 1/320


This shot was inspired by those pictures you see from the desert southwest. You know, somebody has crawled down in one of those wind-blown, striated rock formations and taken a picture that looks like one of Saturn's rings on acid. It's a close up of a plastic rock wall-looking thing near the slide shown above. Not a whole lot was done to this in post--simple black and white conversion using channel mixer, minor curves adjustment, unsharp mask, and some selective dodging and burning to accentuate the curves (guys like that sort of thing, you know). I dig the potential of this one, and I'll go back with the tripod and get a sharper capture.

Nikon D80 + 70-300 VR at 122mm
ISO 100
f9 at 1/100


Lesson #2 (and this applies to both shots). Both of these shots were taken in a small park in bright sunlight at a little after noon, hopelessly poor light for shooting many things. But remember, black and white is about contrast--whites, blacks and many shades of gray. Mid-day light is harsh because of the shadows it makes, and shadows makes for good contrast in a black and white photograph. This one needs more black, but you get the idea.

Capture Arkansas

Update: As of August 19th (5 days left to submit), Boy Fishing is up to 83 votes (thank you Brandie and Shane for letting me post the photograph) and Hitching a Ride is up to 37 in its 8th day of being posted. I Am Sorry picked up 6 today.


There are about 11 days left in the Capture Arkansas project. Tons of photographs have been submitted for this project, and a great number of them are excellent. I have submitted 10 photographs (well 9 actually because one somehow got posted twice). The picture of Beck Perry fishing has picked up nearly 75 votes to lead my little pic pack. I'm thrilled--that's one of my favorites. The hitch-hiking grasshopper has picked up over a dozen votes since I posted it Monday. Everything else runs the gamut in a surprising way. A couple of the pictures that I think are interesting have fewer than 10 votes. The Cooper Chapel picture has some fundamental flaws, but it's second or third in my vote count. One Tree Hill has 7 votes, but was warmly received at Nikonians. Nice little marketing test.

I want to thank Dalas for making me aware of Capture Arkansas in the first place. I also want to thank those of you who have voted for my stuff. Go check out the site if you haven't--it's a great pictorial of our state.

Hitching a Ride

I was hauling off some weeds and yard stuff out to our little nature dump yesterday. Driving through chest-high grass, this grasshopper decided to hitch a ride. On Saturday, I had put my camera in the truck and left it--just the camera and 18-135mm kit lens. I didn't have my full bag, so this was a lesson in getting a shot with what you have on hand (I would have loved to have used my 70-300 VR to get in closer). Even though this shot is at f5.6, the close-in range lets the compression do its job and limit the depth of field.

I struggled with the crop. I really wanted to leave this guy some space to jump, sort of a kinetic composition. Then I had the unintended reflection that I really felt made the shot unique. Then a little bit of the Rule of Thirds. Then there's my tendency to compose on the right side. Were it not for the reflection, I would have probably put him in the bottom right hand corner and brought in a lot of the out-of-focus green background to give him a grassy place to jump. But I like the reflection, and it just worked out to where I could get him in the top right third of the frame and still convey (I think) some space for him to jump (which he did when I tried to move in for a closer shot.)



EXIF information:

D80+18-135 lens at 135mm
ISO 100
f5.6
1/160 second
aperture priority mode