Watkins Mill Tree

This is a tree that I've long admired. It's adjacent to our local community golf course. I was trying out my wide angle lens (20-35 mm) that I had from my Canon EOS film SLR, before I got my new DSLR. Jeff, my photographic consultant :), told me that this lens would be a little soft and he was right! I do hope to play with it some more, on wider apertures and closer shots, rather than landscapes, but for these tree shots, I just used the poster edges effect to clean up the soft edges.


f/22, 1/25 sec., 24 mm, ISO-400



f/22, 1/60 sec., 20 mm, ISO-400



f/22, 1/80 sec., 35 mm, ISO-400 (cropped)

I really like the tree so much. It's branching is so very awesome. I'll have to try to shoot it again sometime with the tripod and the 28-135 mm lens.

Here's another tree, on the other side of golf course.


f/22, 1/30 sec., 31 mm, ISO-400

Location: Watkins Mill Road (MV golf course)
Date: 01.02.2008 (it was sooooooo cold that morning, my hands were like ice cubes.)
Time: 8:50 AM

A Morning in the Woods: DoF

So I originally went to study DoF. Before all the other distractions set in. And I originally intended to use the tripod. Until I got distracted. Still, I did take some shots to compare DoF at different apertures.


f/4


f/8


f/11


f/16


f/22

And here's a comparison of f/3 and f/22, just for extremes. I like f/3 better for this shot, I think.





























I'm not sure what I learned from this, other than I am still have a hard time getting crisp DoF with this lens. And I even like the aperture wide open on the first set of shots. The color is better. So, how do photographers get shots of the woods where so many of the trees, from front to back, are in focus? Is a matter of a more powerful lens? Inquiring minds want to know.

A Morning in the Woods: Light

I had a dream the other night that I was shooting in this little park, from this exact perspective. Weird that photography has permeated my consciousness like that. I got up early and drove there the next morning. Of course, how could I not?


f/5.6, 1/50 SEC, 20 MM, ISO-100

Post-processing: auto levels, darken highlights, small increase in saturation, poster edges filter (I liked the way the poster edges darkened the lines of the tree branches against the sky.)

I ended up using a different shot on my 365 blog, one that I got after I had packed everything up and was driving out. I passed this other side of the park, saw the two benches and decided it was worth pulling everything back out to see what I could capture. I actually drove past it, and back around, before comitting to it. Now, I'm glad I did.


f/5.6, 1/30 SEC, 31 MM, ISO-200

Post-processing: auto levels, darken highlights, small increase in saturation, dry brush filter (I liked the way the dry brush simplified the lines and softened the foreground.)