nature: April 2008 Archives

With the price of gas crippling my travel budget, I've not gone on any long distance trips lately, so I 'make do' with locations close by.

This male cardinal was photographed in my backyard on Monday. It was shot with a 70-300 mm lens, at about 1/250 and f4.5, I think. No tripod.

Bright cloudy days are terrific for photography. No shadows, highlights retain their detail, the recent rain washes the dust off everything, and the colors pop.

Don't put away cameras because it's damp or cloudy. You might be surprised with the results.

A group of friends got together over the weekend to talk about photography. We talked about composition, lenses, camera bodies, what we look for on outdoor excursions. All the usual photo stuff.

But much of the talk centered around tripods. When to use them, when to leave them in the car, how tall, how heavy, the heads on them. In all the photo books, you'll read this command From Above (my caps)-- "Always use a tripod". Period. No questions.

Baloney.

A tripod has its uses, and mine is witness to heavy use. But like a macro lens, a filter, flash, extension rings, only use it when necessary. Yep, it looks really sexy when people see you working behind it. You're busily checking buttons and dials-- know that they are very impressed. Well, some people are impressed, usually those who don't know any better.

Here's a good rule to remember--

The Cherry Blossom Festival committee says that about a million people crowd into Washington D.C. during the two weekends of peak blossoms. The peak bloom was Saturday, and it seemed everyone who was there was carrying at least one camera.

So, with all these cameras, how do you come up with a photograph that's not been done before? Or, as Bob Dorksen, a terrific photographer friend in Cleveland once told me, "Excellence is always excellent." In other words, if it's a good picture today, it'll be a good picture tomorrow. And, getting something different isn't always the best choice.

As he also told me, and I've remembered since 1970...