Fireweed, Brainard Lake, Colorado
Sometimes you head out with one photographic plan in mind and need to switch to another. As Dewitt Jones often puts it: Â “If you go out to shoot waterfalls and Nature (God) is giving you clouds that day, shoot clouds!”
That was the case when Bob (my brother-in-law) and I drove from Denver to Brainard Lake near Ward Colorado in hopes of catching a nice sunset. We wanted something like this photo (at the top of another article).
But it was overcast, dark, drizzly, and a bit breezy when we arrived at the lake. No sunset to be had. Remembering Dewitt’s advice from an article in Outdoor Photographer, we decided if “Nature” was giving us flowers instead of sunsets, we would shoot flowers.
Due to the occasional breeze I set my ISO to 400 so I would have a shutter speed of 1/25 second. Any slower and a sharp photo in the slight breeze would be just about impossible. An aperture of f/8 gave me a little bit of depth of field for the Fireweed and still kept the background somewhat blurred.
I used mirror lockup to minimize any mirror induced vibration during the slow shutter speed. Most cameras have some blurring due to mirror vibration at shutter speeds from 1/8 to 1/30 second when using longer focal lengths or doing closeup work, so mirror lockup is just about essential. I used the camera’s two second self timer to lock up the mirror and the shutter would fire two seconds later. Even with all of these precautions, most of my photos were slightly blurred due to the breeze.
I could have gone to a higher ISO in order to use a faster shutter speed but I didn’t want the additional digital noise that would be the result. Flash would freeze the flowers but destroy the mood of the photo. It was the best set of compromise choices I could make to get the photo I wanted under the circumstances. With no breeze at all I would have set the ISO to 100, used a longer shutter speed and kept the f/8 aperture.
Somewhere early on in the process, Bob took a picture of me taking the picture at the top of this article.
Jim Doty Jr. by Bob Walker
You can see my tripod mounted camera and the green double bubble level in the hotshoe. I found this photo this past Saturday while looking for something else entirely. Curious, I looked at the metadata for the photo to see which photo excursion we were on and when Bob took this photo: August 14, 2008. 7:07:05 pm. Canon EF 28-135 mm at 75 mm. 1/25 sec, f/5.0, ISO 100. I took that date and time and went back through my own photos to find the picture I was taking at the time.
Incidentally, Bob’s exposure indicates about 5 1/2 stops less light than basic daylight exposure, which is about 1/40 the amount of light on a sunny day, so it really was pretty dark.
Curious what else we did on August 14, I pulled my photo trip log for 2008. We left Denver at 5:08 pm and arrived at Brainard Lake at 6:56 pm. We took pictures there, went to nearby Long Lake (a beautiful location), came back to Brainard Lake, took more pictures, and we left at 8:27 pm.
We stopped for a late dinner (photographers never eat at normal hours) at the Millsite Inn near Ward at 8:38 for some of their wonderful comfort food. Love that place. We left at 9:23 and arrived back in Denver at 10:53 pm.
We didn’t get the photos we planned on when we headed out, but we had long since learned to enjoy whatever Nature decided to provide. We had a great time thanks to Dewitt Jones’ fine advice.
The title of this article is Bob’s short version of Dewitt’s advice and article. I shared it with Dewitt and he likes it.
Fireweed Photo Info: Canon EF 24-105mm lens at 105 mm. 1/25 sec, f/8, ISO 400.
Bob’s Photo Info: Canon EF 28-135mm lens at 75 mm. 1/25 sec, f/5.0, ISO 100.
Links
For more information on how ISO settings, shutter speeds and apertures work together, along with depth of field information and working with existing light conditions, Read Digital Photography Exposure for Dummies, a five star rated book at Amazon.com. It also has chapters on landscape and flower photography. Learn more my book here and order it here.
Getting Maximum Sharpness – Advice for using mirror lockup and other techniques for getting crisp, sharp images when you want them to be sharp.
DewittJones.com – Dewitt Jones has done a lot of work for National Geographic and quite a bit of commercial photography. He now does a lot of speaking engagements and seminars and has several videos and training films available.
Celebrate What’s right With the World – Sign up to receive Dewitt’s weekly “celebrate” photos and share your own.
Outdoor Photographer – If you are a nature and landscape photographer, I highly recommend this magazine.
Millsite Inn – A great little out of the way place to eat if you are near Ward Colorado. Allenspark and Estes Park are to the north. Nederland is to the south and Boulder is southeast. The Millsite Inn is on CO 72 (the “Peak to Peak” scenic highway) and less than 1/2 mile north of the turn off to Brainard Lake (just past Ward if you are going north).
Millsite Inn near Ward Colorado.