Switching To A Longer Lens

I decided to swap out my usual 17mm lens to my 50mm 1.4 7artisans lens. When I first tried the lens I was not impressed, but now that my manual focusing technique has improved, I found the quality of my images much improved. Its 75mm equivalent focal length has the advantage of a longer working distance between the subject and the camera, which allows for tighter cropping with smaller subjects. Also, I'm seeing something I've not encountered with shorter lenses: bokeh, the Japanese word used to describe a soft, ethereal quality given to out-of-focus backgrounds.

I have never actively sought to achieve "good" bokeh in my photos, I've always felt that bokeh was just a quality attributed to "out-of-focus-ness". And by virtue of the fact that longer lenses increase the apparent relationship between the subject and the background (a.k.a. foreshortening), those creamy backgrounds are mostly the result of simply being both large and out of focus.

My flirtation with manual focusing lenses has made me re-examine what I consider important in a finished print, or in this case, a posted image. Since the average computer screen can resolve only a fraction of the pixels available from a current production digital camera, critical sharpness doesn't carry over well. We should remember that one of the first successful professional digital cameras was the Nikon D1, a cameras that produced three megapixel images on an APS sized sensor. Even my six megapixel D70s have more than enough resolution for most digital applications, but barely enough for a good 8" x 10" print.

Shooting wide open, or nearly so, will throw not in the plane of focus blurry. If my intent was to show the entire plant in fine detail, this photo fails. But if the photo was an example of complimentary colors, it works. Of course, this was my intent all along.

Setting bokeh aside, the longer focal length lenses allow for greater subject to camera distances. If I had my usual 17mm lens, I could not have gotten this close to this cat. With the 50mm, the deed was done without any emotion stress on the subject. I'm am not bothered by the lack of eye contact. After all, cats are the epitome of indifference, so my feelings aren't hurt.

Farewell To The Dawn

Sunrise comes earlier as we distance ourselves from the Winter Solstice. For me, February 12 was a good day for light and shadow photos. While others might call the cityscape "cluttered", the structures often create novel shafts of light. Here, a narrow shaft of light landed on some smart meters on the side of a four-unit apartment building.

This photo isn't as mysterious as you might think. The morning light passed through the breezeway of the apartments behind me and created this rectangular shaft of light.  It's a view you could only see at sunrise.

Again, buildings funneled the light onto this caution sign, in this case from camera right. 

Burnett Avenue is a street that was literally "carved out" of the North Face of Twin Peaks.  Looking up the hill is almost like standing at the base of an urban cliff.

The Twin Peaks area was once heavily wooded, and homeowners will often go to great lengths to accommodate their elderly neighbors. Had I been carrying a lens longer than my favored 17mm TTartisans wide angle, I might have been able to completely crop out the house at camera left, giving the photo the illusion of a vast, untouched forest.

This photo begs the question, "What happened to #306?" Nothing untoward, I hope.

Here is a colorful example of Urban Flotsam. Some white balance adjustments and some increased contrast made this make "pop".

More Urban Flotsam. Mardi Gras beads?

Year Of The Tiger - Millbrae Edition

Each city in San Mateo County has its own personality. The city of San Mateo had a small celebration in the Hillsdale Mall. Millbrae, just to the north, chose to close off two blocks of Broadway Avenue. It erected a stage at one end, while allowing street vendors to set up shop along the rest of the venue. Brick and mortar establishments stayed open for business. I learned from past experience to park at some distance from the venue and approach the event on foot. Since going mirrorless, my bag weighs considerably less than when I carried a pair of Nikon DSLRs with big zoom lenses.

The lead photo was chosen for submission. The troupe had two dances scheduled. The first one, shown here, was simply titled "Chinese New Years Dance". 

There's an old photographer's rule that the best community photos will contain one of the Four Bs: Babes, Babies, Beasts, or Blood. You can't go wrong with photographing babies or children, providing you use your discretion and get permission from a parent or guardian whenever possible. While this is a public performance, it's still an important public relations gesture, as I'm a Daily Journal photographer, and am therefore a di facto representative. In addition, it's also  important to identify any organizations that send performers to these events, as everybody likes to have their efforts acknowledged. I will often introduce myself to the event MD and ask if I can see the program so I can properly identify the participating organizations. If you explain exactly why you need the information, you'll usually get their cooperation. Besides, they soon realize it's easier to let you photograph the program than to spell out the names of the organizations. When I get home, I usually Google the name of the organization in case some additional information is called for.

The second performance, a Ribbon Dance, is shown here.  As usual, I made a lot of photos so I'd have a variety to choose from. Unfortunately, the four dancers were spaced too far apart, so their faces would be too small to recognize. The ribbons were visually interesting, but their inclusion created too much empty space. While I could have moved closer to the stage, I've found that it sometimes emboldens all the Mommies, Daddies, Uncles and Aunts to start crowding the stage, creating something of a mini-scrum in the front row. 

I thought this shot had some potential until I saw the blue safety rails growing out of this young dancer's head. The rails could not have been more perfectly placed!  Had I noticed it sooner, I could have moved to the left or right, but I try to stay in one spot as much as possible. 

One other point against the photograph: The framing cuts off the tips of the dancer's feet. This may be putting too fine a point on the composition, but it has always bothered me when an appendage falls off the edge of the photo. This may seem that I violated my own rule with the image I submitted. I consider it a much stronger image in spite of the act that some legs were lost, since the contrast of the red a gains the black background and the "Rule of Thirds" composition keeps your attention on their faces.

Someone very creative went to a lot of effort to sew two lion costumes for their two dogs. For a few moments I thought there was a photo here, but it seems like dull, flat lighting and short working distances were working against me. They were fun to look at, and added a bit of whimsey to my day. Maybe I'll catch them next year.

Year Of The Tiger

 

1/180th second, F 20, ISO 400. Flash Assisted.

Gung Hay Fat Choy! A San Francisco Lion Dance troupe performed at the Hillsdale Shopping Center on Saturday January 29. Lunar New Year celebrations were a pretty common thing on the peninsula prior to the Pandemic, and after a year of lockdown, are starting to reappear. In years past it was an indoor event, but moved outside due to Covid restrictions. 

I arrived a few minutes early so I could circle the "stage" to find a suitable shooting location. When working in an open venue like this one, you hope that the performers will turn to face everyone in the audience from time to time, since you're pretty much stock when the performance starts. And it they do, you have only a few moments to make your shots before they turn away.

The troupe performed a number of balancing moves on special steel pillars, often leaping from platform to platform. After some shooting and chimping, I found that the lack of foreground detail made the photo look too flat. Also, my camera-mounted flash didn't have the horsepower to improve the shadow detail to any appreciable extent, even at full power. I decided to wait until the Lion got a bit closer to the crowd.

With the Lion closer to the camera, I made some shots of the more athletic acrobatics. I didn't like two aspects of this photo. First, the spectators at camera left are overexposed, so in subsequent shots I tilted the flash head up and to the right. This feathers the light on the spectators, lessening the impact of so much light delivered from so short a distance. Second, because of the upright orientation of the Lion, there's a lot of empty space. If the Lion was on all four legs and a little close, it would occupy more area within the frame.

If we re-examine the final image, you can see I could zoom the lens in for a tighter composition. Because I feathered the flash "beam", the spectators weren't as overexposed. This allowed me to darken (burn) the skin tones so they wouldn't draw attention away from the Lion.

Just to keep the record straight, there were about 100 images made during the 30-minute performance. And no, I had no way of knowing that this would be the image I would submit, but I instantly knew it was a contender. The shot was neither posed nor directed, and I had to take whatever came my way. I must add that since I started using mirrorless cameras, I've been able to preview the image in the viewfinder moments after the shot is made, so I'd know if the image had "legs" and a good candidate for submission.