"One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time." -Andre Gide



Sunday, February 28, 2010

How to Photograph Water

Instead of learning why Haiti's earthquake is worse than Chile's, we drove up the coast yesterday, during the tsunami warning, to take pictures.  Basically, I am a total hack with a great camera and an amazing landscape. I feel like I’ve cheated somehow. I don’t even know what an f-stop is, but I will now proceed to give you advice on how to photograph water.


The first rule of thumb is to take lots of pictures. In this digital age, who cares? What does it cost to take 400 pictures? Essentially nothing! So, I took about 400 pictures and then deleted all the ones I didn’t like . . . which was, oh, about 300 of them!  I used my 55-200mm lens the entire day.  And, I probably should buy a tripod . . . you will soon see why!

The second lesson I learned is to keep the horizon horizontal. It seems basic, I know. Bear with me.
Clearly I have demonstrated that a crooked water-sky line ruins the picture! 
These turned out a little better . .

The third lesson I learned is that it is really hard to photograph a rainbow.  I was using auto-focus and the camera didn't know what to focus on.  Even on manual focus, I didn't know what to focus on!  Trying to decide which particle of water was the focal point was . . . a little schizophrenic!
Anyhow, it ended up being a wonderful afternoon excursion.  We doubled back on this beautiful scenery today for Truman's long run.  He did 18 miles!  I did 6.

1 comment:

  1. Great photos!
    I think the trick is definitely to just take a ton of pictures! Lighting helps... I never use flash.
    18 miles!! That's nuts!! I was going to start training for a half marathon but one day I was running and I thought my knees were going to break in half (cold weather + down hill = no bueno!), needless to say I've taken some time off from running.

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