29 Aug 2010 |
Blog -
Photo Blog
Written by John Shea
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Today's photo is a bit of a cheat. I took this several days ago while on vacation. But my little netbook just doesn't have enough muscle to stitch together a huge photo like this. So it had to wait. On the right of the photo you can see Lake Placid. To the left is McKenzie Pond. One of those big peaks (not sure which), is Whiteface, which is where a lot of events took place in the 1980 Olympics. Now, this photo didn't turn out as well as hoped. For one thing, I forgot my tripod. So this is hand held, which is not the optimal method. Worse, I shot it with a very short focal length, which created a bit of a distortion. I'll know better next time.
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 It was a rewarding and productive vacation but it was finally time to pack up and go home.
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He (she?) had not. But it was a bit deeper in the marsh, making it harder to get the shot. And along the way, I got this great shot as well.
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Here they helped. As I was shooting this patch of lilly pads, the clouds drifted overhead, causing a nice transition line between blue sky and dark cloud. It gives this picture that extra little something that makes me happy. And that lone blossom right along that line doesn't hurt either.
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Technically, there is nothing particularly noteworthy about this shot other than I took my time to get all the details right. Also, because it was raining, I had a towel over the camera and constantly used it to wipe the lens clean. This was about the sixth version of this shot before I got one without big obvious raindrops on the lens.
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I took many other shots from the top of the mountain, some of which feature better views than this one. But this was my favorite shot because it included my family sitting back and taking in the beauty of that view. That gives it a lot more emotional resonance for me. Maybe not for you, because you don't know these people, but for me it makes it a lot better. I used one of my favorite photographic techniques for this shot. I adjust the camera for the sky primarily and then used the flash to light up the people in the foreground. Usually if you adjust for the sky, anything in the foreground becomes a silhouette. But using the flash corrects for that, usually resulting in a pretty dramatic image.
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 This fun fellow is a huge fan favorite at The Wild Center in Tupper Lake, NY. Those rocks at his (her?) feet are his toys, which he will bat about like a cat chasing a bit of string. Otters are great fun to watch. They rarely sit still and when they get in the water, they are incredibly nimble and acrobatic. No exaggeration, I could watch otters play for hours on end.
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 It rained all day. And then it rained all night. But then I saw some flashes of lightning out the window so I quickly got out on the porch and set up the camera to take some long exposures, hoping to capture lightning on film (memory card?). There was no further lightning, so that was a bust. But that's not to say the results were bad. Quite the opposite really. Much to my surprise, since it looked pitch black to my eye, was this eye popping lake view. And I mean eye popping. What I've posted here has actually been tweaked on the computer to tone down the color of the grass. It was actually bordering on garish before that.
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 Parasailers, landing on their towboat.
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