Ramblin’ Man
Yesterday I talked about keeping a point and shoot camera handy in the vehicle. Sometimes though when I’m traveling and I know I’m likely to shoot while on the road I do prep a DSLR and keep it handy. The prep is the important part. I just want to grab and shoot, not fiddle with anything on the camera. First off that means considering the lens. No variable focal length lenses, that takes two hands to adjust and it could be tempting to try and adjust it. I use a 24mm prime lens. Its just right to show a full windshield view without catching too much interior. It’s also a manual focus lens and that has a few more benefits for quick shooting. If the selected focus point of an autofocus lens is positioned on empty sky valuable time can be lost while the lens hunts back and forth in search of detail to lock focus on. Just keeping an autofocus lens switched in manual mode has issues too. The moving parts in the lens are designed to move freely and quickly while being being driven by a very small motor. That also means that the slightest touch or vehicle vibration can move the focus meaning that pre-focusing the lens isn’t a viable option. A lens like the one I prefer that is manual focus only is deliberately designed to have a lot of friction in the focus mechanism with the intent of keeping it where you set it. When it comes to pre-focusing that type of lens there is also the added benefit of having a distance scale coupled with a depth-of-field scale, a combination that rarely exists in an autofocus lens. With my old-school prime lens I am able to choose a reasonable aperture, usually between f/5.6 and f/8 depending on conditions, and preset the focus at the hyperfocal point using the scales on the lens. With aperture and focus preset, the camera operating in aperture priority mode, EV compensation set to -1/2 to account for bright sky, and metering set to matrix mode, I essentially have a big, high quality point and shoot rig. I can pick it up, hold it up over the dashboard and push the button. The image above was taken with this exact setup.
Blue Sky
Still sticking to my impromptu theme for the week. This is one of several example images I like to use when I talk about how the best camera to use sometimes is simply whatever camera you can lay hands on in a hurry to get the shot. Any shot captured with a point and shoot or phone camera beats a shot missed with a fancy DSLR. I try to keep a point and shoot handy in the console or dash of my vehicle whenever I’m traveling so that I can quickly and safely grab a shot through the windshield or window. In this case I was driving on a reservation in New Mexico and for no more than about ten seconds a sunbeam broke through the clouds illuminating the mesa in the distance and creating a small section of rainbow above it. I had just enough time to grab the little camera, turn it on, point it through the windshield, and shoot. Almost instantly after I got the shot the hole in the clouds closed and the light was gone. A few other people who were with me tried but were too slow with their big rigs to get the shot in those fleeting few seconds.
The Macabre Woodpile
This is one of the locations that I like to take people to on my New Mexico tour. It is in a little village, high in the mountains. Every time I come back there is a different arrangement of bones and skulls in the woodpile.
Artistic Inspiration
On the day I photographed this church in New Mexico the air was thick with smoke from a forest fire. I was inspired by the effect of the smoke to create this artistic vision from my photograph.
San Miguel Mission, Santa Fe
Built between 1610 and 1626 it is supposedly the oldest church in the U.S. I made this image on my last trip out west and I found it while looking back through some images as I begin to prepare for the next tour I’m leading.
You’re my Blue Sky, You’re my Sunny Day
Lens flare, saturated colors, repetitive patterns… You know I was totally sucked into this one.
The Road Less Traveled
In the mountains of New Mexico. I’m really looking forward to the next photography tour that I’m leading here later this year.
Church Courtyard
I’ve been taking a little time to clean up and organize my archives. That means that I have run across a few images that I intended to post here at one time or another but never actually got around to it.