CalevPhoto

Make Your Obstacles Your Strengths

I am sure we have all had frustrations when photographing various things.  Perhaps the light isn’t what you hoped it to be.  Perhaps you were expecting to be alone only in a church only to find three hundred other photographers armed with strong flashes also camped out there at the same time.

For me, this happens in particular when I am travelling.  Typically when I travel I have one chance to get the shot.  After that, we will visit a different place or leave the area.  On some occasions when I have a good hotel location, I do receive multiple chances – but the reality is I usually have to take what I get.

Until recently, I found I would get annoyed quickly.  I would get impatient at the person with a camera cell phone attempting to photograph something that just isn’t possible with it but refusing to believe that this is the case while standing right in front of my camera.  Even more annoying was on a recent trip to China a guy sat right in front of what I was photographing and then motioned for me to get away so his wife could take his picture.  OK, I still get frustrated at these people – but I now have a new strategy.

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On Photographing in China

As many of you know, one of my strongest passions is for travel photography.  Every year a great deal of time is spent determining where we will go on our next trip.  Once the next trip is decided upon, I spend a great deal of time debating which lenses and equipment to take on the trip and what types of things I want pictures of.

After spending seventeen days travelling through Beijing and Xi’an in mainland China, then Hong Kong, the following is a post mortem of what wound up working well for me and what did not.

What went well

Having two cameras

This is the first vacation where I took both my 5D2 and my 7D.  This provided quite a few advantages over a single camera – primarily that I did not need to change lenses often and could rapidly switch between closeups and wide angle shots.

The configuration I most often used was a TS-E 24 II on my 5D2 and a 70-200/4 IS on my 7D.  I would often zoom in on details of a building with my 7D, then take the entire building with the 5D2.

I did not always have both cameras around my neck at the same time, and on some short trips I took only one camera (typically the 5D2) so as to not overly annoy my wife, but overall the combo was extremely useful.

Using tilt shifts

As I use my tilt shift lenses more and more, I really am starting to feel that autofocus is truly overrated.  Sure, it is extremely useful for action, sports, and wildlife shots – but for most travel photos it is just a convenience – not a necessity.

On this trip I brought my TS-E 17, TS-E 24 II, and TS-E 90.  By far the TS-E 24 II was the most used.  I also used my TS-E 17 for a number of situations – though for the majority of situations it was too wide.  The TS-E 90 was used sparingly – primarily from our hotel room.

I used shift far more than tilt for most shots.  I did take a few shots playing around with tilt – such as above, but the majority of shots used shift for architecture.

Arranging for private tours in Xi’an and Beijing

Mainland China can be difficult to figure out.  I chose to not bother trying and pay a local to do this for me.  This enabled us to very quickly move from site to site – whereas in other trips we would often spend a tremendous amount of time finding places.

What went OK

China Tours

We used China Tours (ChinaTours.net) to book the private tours.  The guides were cordial and we saw for the most part the places we wanted to see, but what we really did not like was that each day we had to stop at one or more shops and spend a specific amount of time there.  We paid for a tour – not to stop in shops.

For others travelling to China, I would not recommend this agency and I would instead specifically enquire whether any time would be spent in shops.  Once already there, it is generally much better to just hire a taxi – as they were OK with us not wanting to go to shop (they didn’t even ask).

What didn’t work well

Monopod

I did not use this a single time and for our next trip I will not bother to take it.  A monopod works extremely well when shooting with longer lenses such as my 300/4 or 100-400, but for the shorter lenses it is fine to just shoot hand held or when not a tripod is required.

How to take travel shots without people

I am a self professed introvert.  I am very close with my wife and kids and have several close friends, but if you are not in that list I am not a very chatty person. I do not want to smile and have a fake conversation with you, and most of all I do not want your picture.

I also do not want your picture because if you are in my shot and I want to sell it, I either must figure out how to clone you out of the shot or I cannot sell the shot.  So it is in my best interest to take steps to assure that you (and by “you” I mean any one of the other six billion odd people out there) are not in my photograph.

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My Impressions of Turkey

Earlier, I wrote a blog about what went right and wrong in Turkey, but I never wrote a post about what I truly thought of the place. So, without further ado…

About a month ago, my wife, kids and I traveled to Turkey for seventeen days. We spent time at three main places – Antalya, Cappadocia, and Istanbul – in that order.

First up was Antalya.  We really liked Antalya, but the six days we spent there were probably one day too much.  Five days would have been much better.  The old town is very nice and I had a lot of fun walking around one morning, getting shots of the interesting houses there.

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Let’s Chase Some Pigeons!

Kids get different things out of a vacation than we adults do.  While Nelya and I marveled at the Blue Mosque and Haghia Sofia in Istanbul, Eitan and Nathan marveled at a square with thousands of pigeons they could chase.  To them, this was heaven and they spent ample time there chasing said pigeons.  Of course, I couldn’t resist getting my camera out to get some shots.

I am certainly no expert in pigeon shots – these being my first attempts – but the following is what I did learn.

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The Reality of Lighting when Traveling

We have all read a great deal of blogs about pros as well as books by pros.  In these books, there is a great deal of information about lighting, but the golden rule is if you want to take good landscape photos the best light occurs either early in the morning or in the late afternoon.

The reality of course, is that this is often not an option for us mere mortals. We do not have the flexibility to get up at the wee hours of the morning and trek to a good spot that we scoped out the day before and stay there for several hours getting good shots.  If we did this, our families would kill us.

Therefore much of the light we get to shoot in is of the worst kind.  It occurs when the sun is high above during the mid day.  The other reality is that you may find that the sky is cloudy and ugly on that particular day.  However, this does not necessarily mean that all hope is lost.  There are a number of options available to you and in this post, as well as future ones, I will go over these in more detail.

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Back from Turkey – what worked and what didn’t

After nineteen days of travel in Istanbul, Antalya, and Cappadocia, we are finally back!  Actually we got back a few days ago, but it has been difficult getting back to this time zone and taking care of various issues.

The trip was very interesting and was one of the better trips we have taken.  Everyone had fun and I set a personal record with over 2000 pictures taken and 80GB of data.  Rather than discuss at length what we did, I thought I would cover what went well and what did not in terms of the photography planning I did for the trip.

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A hike at Twin Falls State Park

As those of you who have kids will know, a chance to get out and take some shots around town is a real treat.  Therefore, when a coworker asked if I would like to go hiking at Twin Falls State Park and my wife said OK, I jumped on the opportunity.

The park is not very far from Seattle and is one of the many nice waterfalls we have around here.  This is one of the great benefits of living here.  While back East we had Niagara Falls (which I have seen perhaps a hundred times but never photographed) after that the waterfalls taped off a bit.  Not that case here – as we have a good number of waterfalls over a hundred feet tall.

Ironically, I feel that the best shots from the trip were not of the waterfalls itself.  They are nice waterfalls, but I believe it is necessary to get down to the waterfall level for a truly nice shot.  Unfortunately conditions were not favorable that day towards doing that. Continue Reading…

What equipment to bring on a jungle trek

Sometime ago I had the opportunity to take a once in a lifetime trek to Manu National Park in Peru.  At the time, I only had a P&S Sony Cybershot 717.  However, now that I know more about photography, I thought I would share with you what I would take if money were no object and if I decided to return to Manu – which I certainly hope to do someday.

First, I will divide the trip into the different types of photos you may take – landscape, wildlife, and macro.

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Let’s take a trip to Singapore!

While recently going through my photos, I noticed that I never posted anything about our trip to Singapore several years back.  The likely reason for this is I had a P&S at the time and the photos suck, but it still was an interesting travel destination.

At the time, Eitan and Nathan were 23 months and 10 months old.  Nelya wanted to take a nice relaxing vacation.  Her ideal vacation was resting by a beach, but she wasn’t against shopping.  My ideal vacation was exploring an exotic location.  I spent months searching for the ideal destination, with the end result being the island of Sentosa in Singapore.

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