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 01.09.10
I posted a flower macro yesterday, so today I thought I should do something a little different. It turned out a to be a beautiful day and I took over 250 images, but in the end, it was the image of the ornamental kale that won out for the photo of the day. But I just couldn’t bring myself to stop there. Besides the photo of the day, I’m posting a small gallery of the other stuff I photographed in and around the Port of Tacoma.
We started the day with a trip north to Seattle to make a purchase from a Craigslist ad. On the way home I suggested that we detour off the freeway over to the waterfront for some pictures. There wasn’t much sun and the light was really flat at first, but the longer we doddled, the more the sun proceeded to break through the overcast.
We started in a suburb called Dash Point, worked our way along the waterfront to Browns Point and eventually to the Port of Tacoma. The sun was setting as we approached the area of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, so we frantically searched for a spot with a view The houses are so crammed in there, that finding a view between houses was nearly impossible, but we finally located one and I got off a series of sunset shots. The last few were actually the best as the sun dipped lower and lower to the horizon.
After leaving the sunset behind I noticed that the sky to the east was quite pink so I asked Dale to drive east in search of a view of Mt. Rainier. We found it, but it had some ugly buildings in the foreground, so you you’ll notice the last picture of the mountain is rather chopped off at the bottom where I cropped out the building. But the alpenglow was so beautiful, I felt it worth leaving in the set.
So here’s the photo of the day shot with Nikon D90 with Tamron 90mm Macro lens. 1/60, f/11.0, ISO 640
And here are the best of the rest of what I shot today, all with the Nikkor 18-200mm VR II Zoom.
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01.06.10
It’s day six of my 365 photo challenge and I finally had a chance to get outside for a few photos. The sky was still gray, but at least it wasn’t raining. Dale and I headed down to Tenino to pick up our grandson Zach and then went looking or something interesting to photograph.
We stopped at a bright red barn and got off a few nice shots and then continued on down to Centralia. There is a house there that has some strange and wacky art work throughout the yard and I thought maybe we’d get some interesting photos there. We did take some rather intriguing shots, and at the time I figured one or two might qualify as my photo of the day.
Then when we were within about a mile of our house the sky changed dramatically. We were in a bit of hurry to get home as Zach and I were supposed to be leaving in about 15 minutes for a camera club meeting. But when I saw the sunset that was developing over Black Lake I told Dale to forget the meeting – this is more important. He pulled the car over and Zach and I ran back about 50 yards to take in the beautiful colors of sunset. It was a good opportunity to show a 14 year old just how quickly the sunset can change and that you need to get your shots off as quickly as possible. Just as I thought I’d seen it all – we spotted a great blue heron perched on a piling. I moved in for the shot, but seconds before I could get it, he flew off – another good lesson for Zach on seizing the moment. I came home with about 20 beautiful shots and it was hard to choose just one. I finally settled on this one partly because of the ducks in the foreground, but mostly for the beautiful pastel bending in the sky that reflected in the lake.
Nikon D90, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm 1:3.5-5.6G II VR at 26mm. 1/60, f/4.0, ISO 640, Picture Control set on Vivid with the saturation level pumped up to max.
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12.11.09
We’re definitely into winter here in the Pacific Northwest. Over the past week we’ve set some records for low temperatures. In Olympia, where I’m located, we have had 6 and 7 degree mornings several times this week. But although it’s cold, there’s been no moisture; which thankfully means no shoveling of snow! The skies have been a beautiful blue, yet it’s hard to make myself get outside in these temperature to take photographs. But today I saw the weather forecast was calling for a change; with warmer temps and rain due back by the weekend, so I decided I better take advantage of one of the last days of full sunshine for awhile.
Yesterday I froze while taking a few photos down at Capitol Lake. Today I learned some tips on staying while photographing. I put on my silk long underwear under my regular clothes. I layered jeans over the bottoms, and on top I added a thin sweater top, along with a down vest, a muffler, and a lined fleece jacket over that. I used ear muffs and a musher style hat for my head and I put some foot warmers in my shoes and hand warmers in my pockets. I also wore a very thin pair of gloves that allowed me to work the controls on the camera without having to take them off. Keeping the hand warmers in my pockets gave me a chance to warm up my fingers between shots. They worked great and I’ll certainly be buying more soon.
The McLean Nature Trail is just a couple miles from home. I go there a lot in the spring and fall for photo shoots, but I’ve been thinking that at this time of year I’m really going to have to look extra hard to find beauty in the woods. I decided to challenge myself to go out and not only find it, but to use just one lens to capture it. I choose my Tamron 90mm Macro. Next time I think I’ll take the 18-200mm to give myself more flexibility, but today was a good day to get some practice with the macro and to see just what it could do. I love taking macro shots, but I’m usually shooting flowers and insects. There were none of those today at McLean, but the frigid temperatures of the past week left some very interesting ice and frost patterns. One particular frost picture came out very blue and I adjusted it a little to give it a purple cast. It’s not vert natural looking, but it’s still one of my favorites because of the interesting frost crystals! As you look through the gallery, I hope you’ll find the beauty in the winter woods that I’ve tried to capture.
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12.09.09
 Nikkor 80-400mm Zoom I bought a new lens – well, about a month ago now. I’ve been wanting to write this article for awhile, but I hadn’t had a chance to use the lens very much up until now, so I had no example photos for a gallery.
What I bought was an AF VR-Nikkor 80-400mm 4.5-5.6D. This lens sells for about $1649 on Amazon.com, but I picked it up used for $850 from a Craigslist ad in Seattle. I’m so excited. This is exactly what I need for photographing wildlife – especially in Denali National Park next summer.
I’m finding that the lens takes a little practice to learn to use it properly. It’s a lens you can hand hold, but a tripod gives best results. The trouble with photographing wildlife, however, is that a tripod is too limiting. You need to be ready and fast to get the shot, and you might have only one chance. So learning to hand hold this 5 pound monster is important, but it can be done.
Even though the VR (vibration reduction) does take some of the shake out of hand holding, it can’t compensate enough to shoot at the same shutter speeds you’d use with a smaller lens. I’m finding I get my best hand held results when I use a shutter speed of at least 320th of a second. So having good lighting is important since f4.5-5.9 isn’t going to allow for low light shooting without a tripod.
You’re supposed to turn off the VR when using this or any other VR lens on a tripod, but in some of the Oregon coast photos below, I had to leave it on because the wind was blowing so hard, that even on the tripod, the camera was vibrating. But the VR worked and I got clear pictures of the sea lions along the Oregon Coast and some of the light houses.
I’m still learning and I’m going to try to get a lot more practice using this lens before summer comes. Shooting from a school bus window at Denali wildlife will not be optimal.. At least the bus stops for wildlife sightings!
Hopefully I’ll be posting many more photos from this lens in future articles. And I’m also hoping my skills will improve with practice. Here are a few of the better ones I’ve taken so far. The first few are some I took while traveling the Oregon coast earlier this month, and then some duck and geese shots taken today down at Capitol Lake in Olympia. The lake was partially iced over, so some of the ducks and geese are standing on ice. I can tell you one thing for sure, my hands were freezing by the time I finished. It was probably 25 degrees or so while I was shooting.
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Colleen Easley lives in Olympia, WA with her husband Dale and 2 cats. Photography has been her hobby for 40 years. Currently she is working on a 365 project which requires that she take at least one photo every day and publish it to her blog. You may follow her on Twitter and/or Facebook by clicking the links below. To see all the photos of her 2010 project, click the link below under LINKS.
