The Hollywood Park Shoot

A few of you have asked me about Hollywood Park. Honestly, I think there's more to it than where I shot, but here is a shot of the 3 turrets I referred to in the Zoom Zoom post. I dodged and burned a little, and a little too much at that. One of these days I'll get better at that, but for this particular post it's not that important. This was shot with a Sigma 10-20 super wide angle lens. Oh yeah--if your subject is a turret, and it has a pointy top to it, don't cut off the top of it. This is the only one of the pictures of the 3 structures together that I kept, so I'll have to go back and do it again.

I mentioned that the Zoom Zoom picture was one of several. See the little windows in the turrets? There are little faces in there. I shot 3--here's a triptych.


The middle face is in the Zoom Zoom post. I think my dodging and burning is much better on these, but that may change--I haven't sharpened these yet. Converted to black and white using channel mixer. And actually, I'm going to crop #1 and #3 much closer to resemble the middle picture. I smell 16x20 on foamboard.

Zoom, Zoom

After seeing a picture in the Capture Arkansas project, I made a venture to Hollywood Park in Hot Springs. It's about halfway between Oaklawn and Hot Springs Country Club, in what seems to be a bit of a shady part of town. There are three odd turret-like structures made out of natural stone (I'll post a picture later); two of them have little "windows" in them, and in those windows are these little bas relief faces. Odd faces. Spooky little faces.

Anyway, I decided to try a zoom lens trick where you open the shutter and then zoom the lens before the shutter closes. I took over 30 shots, alternating between starting wide and zooming in, starting close in and zooming out, switching lenses, changing exposures, etc. I started with my super-ultra-wide Sigma 10-20 and learned that you don't get much action over 10mm, so I switched to my 18-135 and found that this worked better. Apparently, telephoto to wide is the way to go, although I'm not sure that's what I actually did on this shot. I was aiming to get something supernatural. I think I got close. I've got a few more that I'll post in an update later this week.

EXIF Data: D80 at ISO 100, f/16 for .60 sec., focal length variable.

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

Perspective

If you're curious as to how your photographs stack up to the rest of the people out there, go check out the Strobist Flickr group. I've learned a lot from this group, and it's just flat out amazing how many pictures get posted per hour on this group.

Lots to learn.

Empty Seats

These chairs are two of several that sit on the front porch of the Buckstaff Bath House in Hot Springs. This was taken the morning of July 4, 2008. Camera on tripod. SB-600 Speedlight is sitting on the window ledge, out of frame camera right, bounced into the awning and triggered by on-camera flash in commander mode (i.e. Nikon's CLS).

Nikon D80
Sigma 10-20 at 14 mm
Manual exposure (f11 at 1/3 sec)
ISO 100