SAADigital.com Photography Blog

Waterfalls are one of my favorite scenes to shoot, period.  Usually, a tripod is essential to capture the crisp surroundings of the water while slowing down the shutter enough to create that common blur effect to the falling water itself.  But this time, I experimented a bit with hand-holding the camera.  All these photos in this post were taken with camera-in-hand (D2h, 105mm f/2.8 Micro).

Medera Canyon in the Coronado National Forest is a beautiful place to shoot, and all of these shots were taken within about 20-yards of each other.  Streams are common-place in the forest, and winter snows quickly turns these peaceful little streams into gushing torrents upon snow melt.

I reduced the shutter speed to around 1/15th of a second for the majority of these shots, carefully bracing myself against rocks, logs and other natural objects to help reduce camera shake.  It was an interesting experiment and one that I’m glad that I took.

Toying with the idea of going back out there with a wide angle and perhaps a tripod, at early evening, to capture the water at full-blur with the sharp, bold colors of the setting sun illuminating this gentle stream.  The experience should not disappoint.

I hadn’t taken my camera out in a while, so I decided to spend a Saturday morning in early September capturing scenes in downtown Tucson, Arizona.  Tucson streets get very busy during the day, and strolling through the city streets before thousands of people descend upon the downtown area was a pleasant change.  All photos were taken with my Nikon D-70 and 17-35 f/2.8 AF-S.

Skrappys is a youth performing arts center in Tucson.  Covered with tasteful graffiti, this place continues to be a excellent photo opportunity for Tucson photogs.

Especially in black and white, this shots depicts the typical western city landscape fairly well.

Iron fences are commonplace in downtown Tucson.  Here, I closed down my lens to f/2.8 and focused on the third pillar in from the right.  The 17-35 still amazes me when I close down the aperture.  It remains tack sharp, background blur smooth and absolutely no light-loss around the edges of the frame.

Street lights mounted on buildings are also common in the downtown area.  Gives a slightly more elegant impression of the area.  Notice how well the lens picked up the individual grains of stucco on the wall.

Downtown memorial area of several wars fought, in large part, by the United States.

Sunsets offer wonderful opportunities to photograph some of the most breathtaking scenes that this world has to offer.  Spending a late afternoon and evening in Saguaro National Park West just outside of Tucson, Arizona showed me everything that a western sunset can be.

Before the sun escaped over the western mountains, I took a moment to wander around the park in search of, well, anything that the late afternoon light turned into something magically colorful, like the thorns on this cactus:

This guy means business, and probably takes no prisoners.  Think of this thorn as a fish hook meant for humans.  Yes, they hurt.  But the combination of perfect lighting and my Nikkor 105mm Micro turned this potentially painful discovery into something much more glamorous.

Or how about this one?

I shot this one with my Nikon D2h and Nikkor 105mm Micro stopped down to f/2.8, blurring the background and bringing the “sharp” scene to life.  Pay attention to where you walk out here, or thorns like these will definitely encourage you to only make that mistake once!

One more prickly scene:

No doubt about it, stopping the camera down and reducing your depth of field does a wonderful job at pulling your subject out from the background clutter and bringing it to life on film.  Micro lenses do this exceptionally well, and choosing subjects with sharp edges (and painful consequences) make for a splendid photograph.

As the sun continued to set, I noticed this guy (below) about 100 yards away.  I secured the 80-200 f/2.8 to my D2h and took aim, hoping to capture the brilliant light that softly illuminated this Saguaro – the king of all cactus in the desert.  Capture it I did.

Like virtually every other cactus in the desert, the Saguaro is lined with barbs and thorns all over the exterior, making it just as painful to accidentally run into.  The brutal size of these guys, though, makes that possibility fairly remote – or at least it should.  :)

At about 6pm local time, the sun finally set and I went scrambling to find the perfect spot to photograph the setting sun behind the park.  So, how did I do?

These Saguaros are beautifully silhouetted as the sun sets in the western sky.  As the light dwindles and temperatures drop, photographers find themselves in the middle of an experience quite unlike any other.  The colors that our atmosphere reveals at dusk are amazing.  Clouds often make those colors even better.  Perhaps one day, clouds will role into Tucson.  :)

Fall – it’s the season that ushers in cooler temperatures, shorter days and ample opportunity to capture some outstanding color.  Unfortunately, my photo equipment did not get much use over the summer, so I took the chance late this afternoon to recharge the batteries and run the Nikon D70 through some repetitions again at nearby Madera Canyon in Coronado National Forest.  All shots were taken with the Nikkor 17-35 f/2.8 AF-S, still an outstanding lens.  I shot in aperture priority at f/2.8 the entire afternoon.  The lack of depth of field (DoF) offered some great results.

I had to get off the beaten trail for most of these shots.  The nature trail begins at a bridge that leads over a small stream.  Instead of crossing the bridge, I walked down underneath it and followed the stream uphill a bit until I hit private property, at which time I turned back and followed the trail a bit until the sun set enough where the evening light was no longer available.

I took a few different shots of this dead leaf that fell into some tall grass growing alongside a narrow stream.  Even at f/2.8, the lens picked out the blades of grass near the focal plane very well, and the color of the leaf really stands out against the surrounding green.  I was on my knees for this shot – don’t be afraid to get a little down and dirty to give your photos a more unique perspective.

This is a shot looking up towards a grouping of leaves with the sun behind them.  I’ve always liked these kinds of shots for the colors they produce, especially in the fall after the color change.  The DoF falls off pretty quickly behind the focused-on leaf.  In fact, the background of the shot can hardly be identified.

Here is another shot looking up towards a leaf with the sun behind it.  This one is a little brighter overall, but still offers the same brilliant fall color as the other shot.  I like the blurred foreground better in this shot, and notice how well the lens captured the small veins running through the leaf.

Last shot of this kind, and I especially like how the composure of this photo grabbed some of the small branches that these leaves are growing from.  The branches here provide perspective for the shot and adds a certain element of depth even with the lens stopped down to f/2.8.

This is a tree trunk illuminated by brilliant late afternoon light.  Again, the lens delivered incredibly crisp detail of the tree’s bark and the D70 exposed both the highlights and the shadows very well.

In the interest of full disclosure, I got this shot entirely by surprise (but not by accident!).  I took the camera strap off from around my neck and held the camera out over a narrow stream, carefully balancing myself on a rock, and took this shot looking underneath the log from a tree that fell across the stream.  Thus, this was a “blind shot”; I had no idea what I was getting, but sometimes, those shots can turn out to be some of your best.  This shot was one of them.

Early evening sun fell across these rocks as I made my way along the nature trail in Madera Canyon.  This shot took a little climbing to get, but it was worth the effort.  Unfortunately, the sun set shortly after I took this shot, and my time in the woods with my camera quickly came to a close.

I decided to once again discover why I paid so much money (around $1500 at the time) for the Nikon 17-35 f/2.8 AF-S professional lens, and boy, did I ever!   While certainly old, this lens remains tack sharp, fast and a joy of a lens to use for almost any wide-angle scene. I originally bought the lens to photograph a wedding for a family friend, but this glass doubles as an outstanding all-around wide-angle lens.   All these shots were taken with the Nikon D-70.

The lens really grabbed the color off of this prickly pear cactus in bloom here in early spring.

Excellent detail of the high, wispy clouds that occasionally filtered the direct sunlight.  Had to get on my knees to snap this scene and look almost straight up.

I threw the camera into aperture-priority and stopped down to f/2.8 to significantly narrow my depth-of-field. This is the true power of such a well-manufactured lens like the 17-35. Even when stopped down, the edges of the frame remain sharp and the background is given a smooth, blurred look that can quickly enhance almost any wide angle scene. In this case, the flowers on top of this prickly pear were brought out in excellent detail against the blurry background.

The detail of the rocks that this lens captured is outstanding. Again on my knees for these rock shots, almost every grain of dust was picked up from this lens, again stopped down to f/2.8, pulling the rocks out and away from the background and setting them in perfect focus.

I almost did not take this shot, but I’m glad that I did – with the camera stopped down, it creates a real interesting effect on this old, rusty aerosol can. It is clear how shallow the depth of field is and how well the lens picked up the relatively short focus area.

Here are several other reviews about this lens:

• Ken Rockwell’s review
• Thom Hogan’s review
• PhotoZone’s review
• Moment Corp’s review
• NaturFotoGraf’s review

I took a few days away from my day job and decided to take a trip up to Moab, Utah to visit my folks while in the area with their 4-wheel off-roading club.  Beautiful landscape was abound, and I spent several hours trekking around Arches National Park about 10 miles north of the town.

From the welcome sign onward, the park offered spectacular views of breathtaking red rock formations, stunning arches and a dizzying array of walking trails through the desert landscape.

I brought my little Canon SD880IS point and shoot and Nikon D70 digital SLR.   Trekking through the walking trails, weight was an issue, so I left my Nikon D2h back for the week and grabbed my more reasonably-weighted photographic tools.

I found my SD880 to be a perfect little companion on the trails.  Small enough to easily shove into my pocket, but nice enough to be able to reliably take good quality photographs for use on the Internet, the camera does an excellent job of bridging the gap for serious amateurs who don’t want to lug around heavy equipment, but are still picky about the quality of their photos.