Travel photography has a whole set of issues that goes along with it. You have people to deal with for one thing. Often people will walk into your frame and are completely oblivious to your desire to make a photograph. This often means you're standing there for some time waiting for the scene to clear. The most bothersome issue though, has to be weather conditions. If you're photographing something close to home, you have the luxury of returning the next day, or weekend, to get the light you are looking for. This isn't so with travel photography. You might only be in a location for a day or two, or in some cases, only a few minutes and you have to make the best of the situation you are presented with. When you see those beautiful perfect landscape shots, they are usually results of a great deal of time and patience. The great images are often made by people who have the ability to return to a location over and over, waiting for the right conditions for their vision as opposed to jumping out of a car and clicking a masterpiece. That rarely happens. This image is a result of traveling the Cabot Trail in Cape Breton on a bright and sunny day. Very little in the way of clouds to make the sky of interest, or to diffuse any of the harsh light. I was traveling through and this is what I had to work with. The one thing you cannot manipulate is the weather, right?
Photo of the Week #87
Here is another from my autumn trip to the maritimes. This was at Point Michaud beach, it was a mostly overcast day and I used that to play around with long exposures on the beach. I really like the look of long exposures where moving water especially is being featured. The overcast day wasn't the norm the week I was there, I had mostly clear blue skies. Sometimes people laugh because I don't like clear skies, but as a photographer, they have no interest to me. Give me an overcast sky any day, or at least something of interest in the sky.
Sometimes Things Change
Photographers are a funny lot at times. We are fiercely loyal to the particular brand of gear we use. No matter what bodies you use, you love them. That's the way I felt about Pentax after using a Pentax film body and moving up through several versions of digital bodies after that. For the most part, all the cameras available now are perfectly good cameras for general use. That said, there are sometimes going to be situations where one particular camera might not lend itself to a particular type of shooting as well as another might. I found that with Pentax bodies while shooting concerts. I had quite a lot of images ruined by inconsistent focusing.
While shooting a festival one night, I had especially horrible results with a higher than normal rate of "deleters". Concerts have characteristics unlike many other types of photography. You are dealing with not only low lighting, but wierd and fast moving light a lot of the time, which throws off some focusing systems more than others. Add to this, performers' movement and you have a set of circumstances that my Pentax bodies seemed to struggle greatly with. I decided to take my wife's Nikon full frame to the next night's performances, to say I was blown away with the resulting images was a massive understatement! Not only did I have almost no "deleters", I also found that because of being full frame, I had much more editable images as well.
All this got me thinking......it was time to go full frame, but what brand? The Pentax full frame camera had finally come out after literally years of waiting, but it was expensive. Another consideration, would it focus for my needs any better than prior APS-C bodies from Pentax. Also, my lenses at the time were all APS-C lenses, not for use on a full frame body so there was another considerable expense. I had also learned from using my Wife's camera, that Nikon bodies would perform for me while doing the type of work that I do.
When a friend offered to sell me her Nikon D810 at a very good price, the offer was just too attractive to refuse! I saved a lot on the body and with a few high end but used lenses, I am now officially a Nikon shooter and I can say I absolutely love it. My first concert with the new camera was April 14 when I shot The Dixie Chicks in Ottawa and once again, the Nikon performed flawlessly. I am beyond happy with my decision to change brands. It cost me some money, but not as much as the equivalent gear in Pentax would have, and I have gear I have faith in for the type of work I do. Peace of mind means a lot to me in photography.
Photo of the Week #86
Let's get back to landscapes here for a bit. I just spent a little over a week in Beautiful Nova Scotia and spent some time traveling around part of Cape Breton relaxing and shooting some landscape. It's been quite awhile since I'd spent some quality time shooting like that. My concert schedule for the summer has been pretty hectic and taken a lot of my time. The time I've had left I have just spent around home and not really getting out much. Truthfully, a lot of that time has been spent processing and writing reviews. Last week was my time for de-compressing and unplugging from the world. Time for me and it was wonderful. 11 days with minimal internet and no TV, just a good book and time for me. This is a picture that came from this past week, hope you like it.
Photo of the Week #85
Friday night I attended the I Love the 90s Tour at Rogers K-Rock Centre in Kingston. The Headliner was Vanilla ice. I haven't really been a fan of that type of music, but I had an assignment to shoot, so I went with an open mind to check it out. The atmosphere inside was pretty different from anything I'd seen before with non-stop music and dancing. Virtually everyone there was dancing and partying the night away. It is obvious that Hip Hop is alive and well.
