Junkyard Photo Journey

I'll show a few of the shots taken at the Margaret, AL, junkyard.

Let's start with this one:

(Click on the image to enlarge it)

This is a small view of an old, rusting auto, giving the impression of other cars behind and around it. It's difficult to get a compelling shot of entire vehicles...

But the idea is always to take a picture of what attracted you in the first place, and that is frequently not a shot of the whole, but of the parts. So here's a tighter shot -- of a portion of a junker:

(Click on the image to enlarge it.)

A wise (in many regards) photographer whose initials are Jack Bains once said that, "when shooting pictures of cars, shoot the parts and ignore the whole." I agree. In fact, I'll take it a bit farther: always include only the parts that interest you and tell your story. Leave out everything else.

So, eventually, it comes down to taking photos of the smaller details. Like this shot of a broken window:

(Click on the image to enlarge it.)


And this is an almost-signatory view of what attracted me to the junkyard in the first place.

Voila: we have gone from taking shots of a junkyard to taking shots of portions of a single car, to finally taking shots of small detail elements on a car. Which is better? Which is best? Depends, doesn't it? Each shot is an integral part of telling the whole tale of the junkyard.

Technically, all the shots were taken with a Nikon D700 camera. I used several lenses while at the junkyard: the 70-200 f/2.8 for a few, though tight work is not the lens's strong suit, the 50 F/1.8 for a very few, the 24-70 f/2.8 for a large portion, the venerable 70-180 Micro-Nikkor for detail shots, and the 14-24 f/2.8 for some of the more sweeping shots. It is a blessing to have aquired so many fine lenses over the years.

All the shots were done on the "Vivid" setting. Saturation and Contrast were cranked up. Way up. There is some Photoshop work here, too, mostly touching up the "Curves" to add some intensity to the images..

Now before you make any attempt to locate and/or visit the junkyard in question, let me hasten to add that we were not warmly welcomed. The owner drove up and was very unpleasant. And before you say a word about us "trespassing," let me add that the junkyard is in an open area alongside a county highway. There was no fence, no signage advising of private property or to keep out, no number to call to request permission to enter...no indication that these were anything other than deserted junkers.

Snow Bunting

Below is an image of a Snow bunting. This young female bird spent much of this winter in Guntersville, AL.

(Click on the above image for a full-screen view of the bird.)

Technical information: Nikon D700 camera, 300mm/F2.8 lens with 2x teleconverter (to yield a 600/F5.6 result.) This shot was made at ISO 400 @ F6.3, and a Nikon SB-900 flash was added at -1.3 stops to add sharpness, color, and contrast. It also aided in separating the foreground from the background. Once again, the camera was mounted on a Manfrotto 055CXPRO tripod for stability. (May I hasten to add that if you're attempting to do quality wildlife photos while hand-holding your camera, you're most likely just fooling yourself.)

This bird -- only the second or third ever recorded in history in Alabama -- was certainly a hard-to-get item, but unfortunately, no points are awarded to the photographer for degree of difficulty. Regardless how rare or hard to approach a subject is, no matter how cold or wet the day, or how long the drive, the image must stand or fall on its own merits. The photographer must apply the best possible techniques to each shot in order to generate shots that are more than snapshots. So get your exposure and white balance right in the moment. Don't just center the subject -- compose the shot. Use a tripod and steady the camera before shooting...and you might want to consider a remote release if you shake the camera during the moment of exposure. Good technique overcomes expensive equipment and poor technique every time.

An important rule to follow for generating better photographs is this: Get closer. You are almost invariably too far away from where you should be. About the only shot that can't be inproved by getting closer is the Grand Canyon. So approach until you no longer "see" your shot; then back up until you do see the shot you are after, and then take the photo. Nowhere is this rule more true than wildlife photography. I generally try for the "insurance" shot, then begin the process of cautiously approaching the subject until I'm satisfied with the shot. But be mindful and considerate of the subject: endeavor to leave the subject unpreturbed and undisturbed.

Wildlife is different when it comes to getting closer. Your subject may spook and depart, or at the very least, alter its behavior when it notices you attempting to approach. It's a zen kind of thing, but you should practice and develop a method that enables you to get close to wildlife. My advice is to avoid direct eye contact, to make as small as possible a figure in the field, and to avoid  appearing "sneaky." You need to develop a persona in the field that seems as though you are benign, merely wandering in the general direction of your subject. It takes a while but it does pay off.

Rain on the Roof

Below is a shot of raindrops on my sunroof.

(Click on the image to view it in full-screen mode)

It has been a particularly cold, wet, miserable, winter in Birmingham, AL. Cold and unpleasant enough, in fact, to make it untenable to get out and shoot nearly as much as I'd like. So to compensate, it's been necessary to find alternative outlets -- to shoot whatever I have a chance to work with. This sometimes means "inventing" subject matter. So I was driving back after lunch in yet another day's pelting rain. As I arrived back at work I reached back to the back seat floorboard to grab my umbrella, and I noticed the pattern the raindrops were making on my sunroof. It seemed interesting, so I got my D700, grabbed my venerable 70-180 Micro-Nikkor lens, laid across the console, and popped off a few shots. Invigorating!

Due to the cloud cover, the exposure required no compensation for backlighting. And in this rare instance, I didn't use a flash. The hard part was getting the camera still enough to ensure a sharp image, as there's little opportunity for a tripod when I'l laid out across the front seats of my BMW. So I gave up some ISO (800) in order to get a high shutter speed (1/125) and a shrp image without camera shake. Getting the camera parallel to the sunroof was equally important.

The 70-180 Micro-Nikkor is (was) a remarkable lens -- the only zoom macro lens ever built. The lens is relatively light and complact, and uses the common 62mm filters. It isespecially useful because the photographer can use the zoom to alter the composition without running the camera back and forth to anything like the degree required by fixed focal length macro (micro) lenses. The lens is very sharp at all focal lengths, and balances and handles well. In a pinch, the 70-180 mm focal length makes the lens a good all-around mid-range tele zoom. The drawbacks? The F/3.5-5.6 aperture renders the lens a bit slow to be a useful portrait or low-light lens. The AF is slow, particularly when compared to moden AF-S lenses, and the AF./MF slider is unforgiveably bad. That and the tripod mount is rather dinky. But apart from those complaints, this is a beast of a lens: great range of focal lengths, extraordinary sharpness, and relatively affordable. The pity is that Nikon only iported the lens for a very few years. It's been gone for a decade or so now, and the legend of the 70-180 continues to grow. I seem to recall having bought my lens new for $795 in the 90's. Used copies sell for almost twice that now.

As we thaw out and dry out from the winter I'll be posting more and more outdoor work in the weeks and months to come. I hope. Look for more examples of the 70-180 Micro-Nikkor as I use it for widflowers, butterflies, and the like.

Broken Window

This is an image of a broken side window on an old car that I found in a (private) junkyard in St. Clair County, AL. I went back to visit the same yard a bit later and got chased. So don't bother trying to find it. Pity.

(Click on the photo to view a full-screen version of the image)

There are few things that attract me more than rust, broken glass, and peeling paint do. Ask any of my poor students : ) -- they've been out on the field trips and seen the look in my eyes when I find a "new" dilapidated old car or building. The thing is, there's so much you can do with that kind of scene, from macro to landscapes, to using them as backdrops for people pictures. And I like to shoot attractive people in front of these junkyards or decaying buildings -- it's so easy to make a girl look good in front of a falling-down house or an old rust bucket of a car.

A big consideration on setting this shot up was parallelism: I had to work to get the camera back parallel with the glass, so that the plane of sharp focus would extend from top to bottom and from left to right on the glass. If the camera had not been absolutely parallel to the broken window, there would have been a streak or a line of sharp focus and then a great deal of fuzziness.

Note the lighting, though. Photography is all about lighting, at least good photography is... When you see subject matter that strikes you as having the potential for a great shot, one of the first things to evaluate is the light. The best subject -- with the best equipment, technique, composition, and exposure -- can always be brought to nothing with bad lighting. So the challenge is to place the right subject in the most advantageous light, and then exploy all the bells and whistles: lenses, settings, composition...and you'll be hard-pressed to make a mess of the lighting and successfully "fix it in Photoshop." get it right while in the taking moment, please. So part of the reason for this shot's success was timing: waiting until the light was illuminating the glass, but not the interior of the car that housed the window. So I found the window, framed the shot, and then found the lighting to be less than optimal. So I went off to shoot other pictures for some while as I waited for the sun to get in the right position to light the shot the way I wanted. When the light was right, I came back to the spot, set up the shot and took it.

This shot was taken with my Nikon D300 camera mounted on a tripod and a Nikkor 200mm F/4 Micro (macro) lens. Tremendous lens, incidentally, if a bit long in the tooth. (The lens is the older AF-D variety, and sports the godawful AF-MF slider contraption [mine has already been repaired once, and probably needs it again soon.] ) And of course this lens dates back to pre-VR days, so it should always be shot off a tripod to ensure sharpness. Yet and though, the 200 micro-Nikkor allows fantastic working distance, and it is just SO sharp that you could shave with it. But for me its primary reason for existing in my kit is that the long focal length compresses the foreground and background to such a degree that depth-of-field in focus is extremely shallow, which serves to isolate the subject. And see how it works on this shot? No intrusion at all from any potentially distracting elements. And this shot was taken at F/8! The smaller aperture was to maximize sharpness (most lenses achieve their greatest sharpness around F/8 - F/11.)

Vegas Memories

The image below is the ceiling in the Bellagio Casino & Resort in Las Vegas:

(Click on the image to enlarge.)

This is a shot of the ceiling near the reception/registration area in the Bellagio in Las Vegas. This image is taken with a Nikon D700 with a 50mm/1.8 lens. The camera was mounted on a Manfrotto 055CXPRO4 Carbon Fiber tripod for stability during the relatively long exposure. The tripod affords the luxury of being able to opt for a low ISO and therefore achieving optimum image quality while maintaining sharpness. And by the way, I always have that 50/1.8 in the bag with me. It's tiny and light, and it lets in so much light that it becomes the go-to lens for low-light shooting in so many instances (wedding receptions, certain events) where a tripod is impracticable.

The lesson to be gleaned from this shot is: Look Up! I was part of a judging committee for a photo competition last week, and in going through the submissions, I was struck by how important it is to avoid pat and obvious compositions. Think about it: the vast majority of photgraphs are taken with the camera at eye-height, with knees locked. Sadly, many photographers are simply recording exactly what is directly in front of them with little thought given to options regarding perspective and composition.

One of the things I feel a photographer should impart to the viewer is a sense of surprise -- adventure. And an excellent way to achieve that is by seeking new ways to look at the subject -- by varying your approach to the subject. Don't simply settle for the obvious.

Boy, do I love Las Vegas. Love it. So much. Try to get there as often as I can. There's the restaurants, the shows, and of course for me, Vegas is just a paradise for photographers. Although it's not such a much for nature shooters, it's an amazing scene for low-light, landscape, macro, and people work. In the course of wandering the Strip, you'll pass through multiple Casinos/Resorts. Look up. The ceilings in many are gorgeous, each more ornate than the last. And that's just the ceilings. Try the opportunities for landscapes, too, as the place is quite vast. Me, I can wander the Strip for hours on end, and everywhere I look, there's another great photo op right in front of me. And I have to remind myself when faced with the grand scale on which Las Vegas is built, to look for details: look for the oft-ignored aspects, look for off-angles, the interplay of lights, colors, shapes...what a treat it is to shoot in Vegas. I hope to be there again in the coming few months. Hope I run into you on the Strip out there. If you see me, stop and say hello.