Adam Turow’s Photography Blog

I spent three very enjoyable days (August 21-24) on a photography and mountain biking trip to Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. Jim Thorpe is a very small town (named after the famous athlete) located in the Western Pocono Mountains, approximately 2.5 hours from New York City.

I went to Jim Thorpe with the intention of photographing a 25 mile organized bike trip I was making through the Lehigh Gorge. As it turned out, the biking was fantastic but the photography was poor due to the very bright harsh sunlight encountered on the day of our trip. Since light is everything in photography, I packed my camera in my Lowe-Pro Slingshot bag and left it there unused for the entire 5 hour ride. I could have tried using a polarizing filter to cut glare or made images in the shade, or used fill flash to shoot portraits but decided against these options preferring to enjoy the beautiful scenery and bike ride instead.

One important aspect of photography I have learned over the years is knowing when to shoot and when not to. I will rarely if ever, photograph in bad light even when presented with a good subject. It’s just not worth it.

I spent the next two days in Jim Thorpe photographing architecture and old trains very early in the day and again in the late afternoons and early evenings. I carried with me my Nikon D300 with the new Nikon 16-85mm f3.5-5.6 ED VR lens. I really liked using this lens. I found it equally as sharp and much lighter in weight than my professional 17-55 2.8 ED zoom when stopped down to an aperture of f8. There is some barrel distortion that shows up at the 16 to 24mm settings which affected some my architectural photos but this is a normal phenomenon common to most consumer and some professional grade zoom lenses. The Vibration Reduction feature built into the 16-85 was a godsend and worked as advertised allowing me to shoot at 3 stops below the recommended minimum shutter speed of 1/focal length for hand-holding. With VR activated, I was able to shoot down to 1/15 sec. and obtain sharp photos.

If you are an outdoors oriented individual and enjoy bike riding, hiking, historical sites, fishing, scenic drives and photography, a visit to the town of Jim Thorpe will be worth the time and expense.

A few examples of the images I made on this trip are presented below:

There are three classes being held at Unique Photo in the next couple of weeks that will be of interest to intermediate and advanced photographers interested in learning lighting techniques and color management.

The first course is Lighting Techniques for the intermediate and advanced photographer scheduled for Thursday, August, 28 from 6 to 8PM. This course is for photographers who want to become more proficient in the use of professional strobe lighting equipment. In this class, you will learn how to create professional quality portraits using Butterfly/Hollywood Glamor Lighting, 45 degree Rembrandt Lighting, Profile/Rim Lighting, Loop Lighting, Split/Hatchet/Slash Lighting, Ring Lighting and Hard and Soft Lighting set-ups. The instructor for this class is Jim Morton. Jim is the Director of Educational Sales at Dyna-Lite, Inc. located in Union, New Jersey. Jim will be demonstrating Dyna-Lite professional flash equipment during his presentation.

The second class is Learning the Nikon Wireless Flash System with Christopher Knapp from Nikon Technical Services. In his two-how presentation on Thursday evening, September 11, from 7 to 9PM, Chris will demonstrate how to use Nikon’s complete line of Speedlights including the new SB-900 flash.

The third session held on Wednesday, September 24, from 6 to 8PM is titled, “Understanding Color Management”. The instructor for this program is Joe Brady who is the manager of graphic arts and color systems with the MAC Group, in Elmsford, NY. Joe will present a detailed and comprehensive overview of color management and describe why its critical to digital photographers. In addition, Joe will demonstrate color management software and tools available from the MAC Group.

To register for these courses please click on the following link: www.unique-university.com

On July 25-27, 2008, I attended the New Jersey Festival of Ballooning at Solberg Airport in Readington, NJ.

This event has been held annually at this location since 1983. If the weather conditions are ideal as far as wind and storms are concerned, photographers have the opportunity to shoot as many as 150 balloons in the air at one time.

Photographing hot air balloons is more difficult than one might imagine. In order to produce high quality images of hot air balloons, photographers need more than a basic understanding of composition, exposure, camera settings and lens focal lengths.

If you are a beginner, make sure you are familiar with your camera so you can operate it quickly without hesitation when action is happening fast. Based on my experience, the ideal lens for balloon photography is a zoom in the range of 18-200 mm (on a cropped sensor DSLR) with vibration reduction or image stabilization capabilities. In addition, make sure you have extra batteries and a high capacity memory card (s).

Hot air Balloon Photography Tips:

• Shoot creative and unique compositions using your artistic design skills. Try to avoid the typical tourist or record shot.
• Tell a story with your photos by shooting a variety of images including flight crews at work, balloon inflation, balloons in flight, balloons landings, balloon glow (inflation of balloons in the late evening or in the dark) as well as the many spectators present (especially kids).
• Zoom in tight and fill the frame with the balloons to empahise their color, detailed patterns and shapes.
• In addition to tight close-ups, use a wide angle lens to capture the dozens of balloons that will be in flight at one time.
• Make as many photographs as possible at the beginning or start of a launch before the balloons get too high in the sky.
• If possible, try to obtain access to the launch area to get shots of the flight crew setting up and inflating their balloons.
• I prefer to compose my images with many balloons instead of one singe balloon. This leads to more interesting compositions.
• Attempt to capture the local scenery along with the balloons. Look for reflections in bodies of water if possible.
• Action happens very fast. Get in position early and be thourghly familiar with your camera’s features, settings and controls.
• Shoot as many images as possible when action is happening. This isn’t the type of photography to be conservative as far as saving memory card space or using film.
• Don’t waste time reviewing your images on your camera’s LCD. Wait until later and do this on your computer
• Include people in your photographs to provide a sense of scale
• Balloons launch early and late in the day so the light is usually ideal. Work with front, side and back light
• Shoot in RAW if your camera has this setting. Since you will be working quickly, exposure and white balance errors can be fixed later in post proccessing.
• Be sure to shoot in both the vertical and horizontal formats. Many of my most successful images are shot vertically.
• You may need to shoot at a higher IS0 (depending on the intensity of the light) to keep your shutter speeds high and allow for greater depth of field.

The next balloon festival I will be attending is the Pocono Balloon Festival at Shawnee Mountain, PA on October 17, 18, and 19. Hope to see you there.

Another digital essential that resides in my camera bag is a fast, versatile, affordable, lightweight Nikkor 50mm f1.4 lens (effective focal length of 75mm on my Nikon D300). A fast prime lens of this focal length is great for available light applications whether used indoors or outside as an event lens or as a fast portrait/travel/landscape lens.

I enjoy working with short telephotos in the classic portrait range of 70 to 135mm (50 to 85 mm on a cropped sensor DSLR). These are my favorite focal lengths because they allow me to crop my images tightly eliminating distractions and wasted space. In addition, the natural perspective, distortion free images created by theses lenses are in tune with my personal vision and how I see the world.

The shallow depth of field (DOF) produced by this lens at apertures of f1.4 through f2.8 will enable you to artistically blur backgrounds and place emphasis on your main subject. Brokeh (the rendition of out of focus areas) is almost as good as Nikon’s more expensive portrait lenses, namely the 85mm f1.8.

In addition to the shallow DOF characteristics as described above, this fast short telephoto (on a cropped sensor digital camera) can be used to stop action or subject movement even in low light without having to resort to flash or use high ISOs. This is a very valuable feature that’s useful in all types of photography.

Optical performance is amazing, especially when stopped down to f2.8 and below. At f1.4, the lens is a good performer and is capable of producing sharp photos. Stopping down to f2.0 results in snappier images with better contrast. When set at f2.8, my results were terrific, with outstanding optical quality and a very attractive DOF. For distance shooting, an aperture of f8 to f11 produced tack sharp, highly detailed images with great color and contrast.

The 50 f1.4 is a fantastic low-light companion lens to have in your bag, especially if you are using one of the slower aperture multi-purpose zooms.

Nikon D300, Nikon 50mm f1.4 @f8

There are thousands of photographic accessories on the market, some of which are convenience items and some that are required or “Must Haves”. In the coming months, I will be writing about accessories I’m using in my photography. My intent in writing these posts is to inform and educate. I will never recommend a product I have not thoroughly tested or personally own.

To start things off, I would like to recommend two inexpensive accessories (priced under $20.00 each or less than $35.00 in total) that I’m using everyday and would not want to be without.

The first item is the Giottos Rocket-Air Blower (large size). This product lives in my camera backpack and is indispensable to me. I use it to clean dust and debris off my camera body, lenses, and lens caps. I have also used the Rocket-Air to clean dust off my DSLRs imaging sensor with excellent results. This product is made by Giotto’s Industrial Inc., and is distributed by HP Marketing.

The second item is the Gepe Card Safe/Extreme Memory Card Protector. This product protects your valuable memory cards from damage. This is an extremely well made product that is both waterproof and crushproof. After using the Card Safe, I will never again store my memory cards in any other protective device. The Gepe Card Safe/Extreme Memory Card Protector is also distributed by HP Marketing.

These products are available through Unique Photo at http://www.uniquephoto.com/