Experiments & a Field Trip

This afternoon was spent working with students on a field trip. After a whole class discussion about knowing your preferences, and working against your "go-to" approaches, I decided to spend the whole field trip working with my longest lens (a 70-200mm lens at the 200mm end) as so often I work for entire field trips with ultra-wide lenses.

Digital original

The decision paid off almost immediately with an image of a small waterfall - the longer lens let me make a much more stylized composition than I would have usually created, and while I used a long shutter speed as usual, the motion blur was more about smoothing out the flow, the blurring any swirling and turbulence, which is usually my focus.

Digital original

An early sprint growth against a beach, lawn and water makes for a simple study of light and beauty with a long lens and large aperture.

Digital original

After getting home from the field trip, I made another set of images using a full set of extension tubes on my macro lens, this time focusing it on a dandelion. It proved really challenging to focus, and the depth of field was also really frustrating (very shallow, even at a relatively small aperture). It is essentially a perfect storm of issues, with diffraction, close focus (which reduced the brightness of the light severely) and depth of field all presenting serious issues. All that bring true, I still am determined to work the issue through.