Rarely have so many images of such (hmm, what's the word I'm looking for...) let's call it-- "usefulness," been available to me after a shoot. Usually I'm rather experimentive when I'm shooting locally. After all, I can always return later and my primary goal is usually to get something different from anything I may have shot there before.
Not so with the Canyonlands trip. Most the shots I took were with the lenses in MF mode set to the best hyperfocal distance for maximum sharpness and DOF. I charted this out pretty well before the trip, and went so far as to make little marks on a couple of the lenses just to help me remember where the best settings were. Boring, yes. But it worked like a charm.
The cheap Sigma 18-50mm DC f3.5/5.6 saw the most use. It's a capable performer from f11-f16, and diffraction is just starting at f16... barely. It's not the sharpest lens in the world, but it's not like anybody is gonna know the difference but me. After careful processing I don't even think another photographer would be able see the difference between it and a 10x more expensive lens, even in a large print (at least to 11x17, which is the largest I'll likely go). Seriously, if used carefully it is one heck of a worthy little lens.
The problems is that, knowing these things made much of the work rather boring. I was rarely tempted to "get off course" and experiment, preferring to go with the settings I knew would deliver good shots. So be it. Now I have over 1000 images, all of them decent technically, and with many of them differentiated only by a change in location.
So now the real enchilada has been in the post-processing. I can't go back and redo the shots, so I have to bring the best out of what I've got. It's been a frustrating challenge.
Today's image was one of the first I tried a B&W to sepia treatment with. Again, I don't see it as a great shot or anything, but I do like the way the treatment works for it. I'll be doing it with some others soon.
2 comments:
Hmm ... shall we call it a Classic? Honestly, it is as good as any image of this subject could be, and the processing is perfect.
Andreas
1) Cheap lenses? My motto... "It is not the arrow, it is the archer."
2) 1,000 images? We non professional photogs are like squirrels... the summer exists for nut gathering to see us through the winter.
3) The image... Awe. Yeah... thatza word. It's one thing to know how the geological process worked. It's another to imagine the millenia... which are unimaginable. Imagine a gnat trying to appreciate us. To that beast we are immortal. Eternal. And to this mesa we are so much less than gnats. We can buzz about it. Ponder it. Then ponder that after a million of our descendants are gone, it will still sit there in that sun each night, barely changed. Less aware of us than we of that gnat.
Your image makes me realize that geological time is to our imaginations... an oxymoron.
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