The Biggest Secret of Photography!

Ansel Adams got his famous Shot “Moon and Half Dome” on his way to happy hour. Yes, he pulled his Cadillac over at 4 PM and grabbed his Hasselblad and got that shot. Got back in his car and drove off to have some more fun. Ironic how photographers now line up in droves to try to get the same shot. Ansel loved to get shots of the moon, and was prepared to jump when he saw that shot.

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The Biggest Secret of Photography! I have tried it and it does work. It worded for Ansel Adams.

Want to know what it is ... click here.

Always have your camera !

btw - Ansel Adams adjusted both exposure and development time in order to get the widest range of tones possible in his photos.

more on the "zone system" here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_system

now you've gone and done, haven't you?

and yeah, I go everywhere with at least one, even to work such that I was able to capture the following that were there for all of one day and then it melted away....
from last year, our only snowy day, gone by afternoon..and pretty rare that a lake will freeze over so smoothly, there was no wind during the night, almost a perfect mirror.....



and just yesterday, again, by noon the ice was totally gone..

taken with the G-9 in Macro mode using a flash (for the first three)



and the above colorized (for no particular reason)





and one shot during the morning with natural lighting


There are many, many others that i would have missed if I hadn't had my camera with me.
And since you let the first one out of the bag, I might was well let the other one out....
The other secret is not only always have your camera with you, but to always LOOK AROUND as you travel, you never know when the next great shot will appear, opportunities wouldn't reach out and touch you, you have to do the reaching out!
some of my favourite shots (and ones I have gotten the most compliments on) are the ones that were "spur of the moment" because I did have my camera and I purposely was constantly scanning to find them. And it doesn't take anything fancy either, just the will to stop, to look, and shoot.

RM

"zone system" here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_system

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Good reminder BluegrassPicker

Some of the digital cameras even have a setting to shot at least three shots

• on the nose
• one stop up
• one stop down

and maybe even more adjustable than that. One of these days I will read the manual.

rocketman said:

now you've gone and done, haven't you?

There are many, many others that i would have missed if I hadn't had my camera with me.
And since you let the first one out of the bag, I might was well let the other one out....
The other secret is not only always have your camera with you, but to always LOOK AROUND as you travel, you never know when the next great shot will appear, opportunities wouldn't reach out and touch you, you have to do the reaching out!
some of my favourite shots (and ones I have gotten the most compliments on) are the ones that were "spur of the moment" because I did have my camera and I purposely was constantly scanning to find them. And it doesn't take anything fancy either, just the will to stop, to look, and shoot.

RM

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One other great secret which is well illustrated in the shots you posted ..

Look for the small details. Ever been on a tour when people pile off the us and hen what photographers there are start to take shots of the big scene. Fair enough - for a start.

But then get up close and personal with the small details that abound - especially the signs and closeups of the monuments so one can remember later just where the picture was taken.

Yeah, its also called "bracketing" as listed in many manuals, either by ISO, F-stop or shutter speed, depends on the camera as to what mode(s) it uses. some will allow for 5 shots (2 stops UP and 2 DOWN), others only have it for one stop up and one stop down. Course Ansel did his manually,, (some would say old school I guess )

Me, I'd call it dedication to his art!

RM

PAULBACH said:

One other great secret which is well illustrated in the shots you posted ..

Look for the small details. Ever been on a tour when people pile off the us and hen what photographers there are start to take shots of the big scene. Fair enough - for a start.

But then get up close and personal with the small details that abound - especially the signs and closeups of the monuments so one can remember later just where the picture was taken.

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speaking of which, one thing I have started doing since getting a GPS enabled phone is to take a picture with it that duplicates one with the camera, that way it records the GPS location with the photo so I then have a record of the location. Or if you have a regular GPS with waypoints, set a waypoint with a name set the same as one of the image numbers(name). Again you can use that date later to retrive that location. this works really well when there may not be a sign or placemarker, like out in the woods or some remote spot. I have a ton of pictures that I would love to be able to reshoot under better lighting, differnant angles etc, but can't for the life of me remember where I took them!
RM

A friend once asked a press photographer he knew if there were any secrets to his career. The answer was kind of simple: f/8 and be there.

// marc

Sharpest aperature down two stops?

Not too much has changed. - or has it? I remember that was pretty much the formula years ago along with a couple of rolls of film - just in case.

Used to be the sharpest results were two stops from the maximum aperture. Most lenses maximum aperture were at f2.8 orf3.5 so moving up two stops to F8 seems right. (Rolliflex)

Is the same two stop rule true with today's lenses? There are many more lenses and I suspect there is all manner of optical magic going on other than the closing down 2 stops.

But then with P&S cameras and the automatic feature on even advanced SLRs and cameras like the G-10 I wonder how many of us even worry about F4, F5.6 or F8?

With the computer designed lenses we have today I don't think lens resolution is the limiting factor, especially for people hand holding a P&S. It's a question of holding the camera steady - even if it has some form of built in vibration control. Shooting from a tripod will make a gigantic difference in sharpness.

You are on to something. When I was in England with the Navy I used to carry a monopod for shooting most of the pictures and all those pictures are razor sharp - even the ones at night!

PAULBACH said:

Used to be the sharpest results were two stops from the maximum aperture. Most lenses maximum aperture were at f2.8 orf3.5 so moving up two stops to F8 seems right. (Rolliflex)

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My walk around lens is a Canon EF-S 17-85 f/4-5.6 IS USM. It is sharpest at 5.6, even though that is wide open at the longer lengths. The interactive diagram at the top of http://www.dpreview.com/lensreviews/canon_17-85_4-5p6_is_usm_c16/page3.asp shows that this particular lens is best at about 35 mm, f/5.6. It's down right terrible at 85 mm, f/32.

I wish I had that type of diagram to look at for every lens I'm interested in.

And you're right about using a monopod. I should take mine with me more often. Not that it will help when I'm still pointing the camera, most of the time, at uninteresting subjects.


// marc

I called this one "Dancing in the Moon Light"

Shot of the wife in the Harvest Moon 2009.