A Photo Story

I visited Brazos Bend State Park this past weekend mostly to photograph the super moon, but also to practice photographing birds.  The park is amazing during the evening and incredibly full of life.  At one point I was fairly close to one bird watching as he tried to find food.  He stood above the water watching and then would slowly place his open beak in the water and wait.  Sometimes he moved his beak very fast to splash the water around attracting fish.  I thought for sure I would have the perfect photo op if I could just be patient.

Black-Crowned Night Heron (?)

Then, off to the left of where my camera lens was perfectly pointed, a second bird appeared with a huge fish in its beak!  I swung my lens towards him, but there was a plant between the two of us.  That bird was ready for flight, and I knew I  had a split second to decide if I should move to get a better photo and possibly scare the bird, or I could wait patiently and hope that he settled down first so I could move later.  There was no way he was going to settle down, so I moved to get the shot.  Of course, the bird saw me and flew away with the fish in his mouth and out of range of my 200mm lens.

Green Heron

At least I got a few shots off before he flew away, but every time I look at the photo I can’t believe there is a plant in the way of the perfect photo!  If you know the bird species, please comment.  I would love to know what I’m photographing.

Spring is here in Texas and to celebrate here are several flower photos from the front of my house:

Camera Settings:  Nikon D300 with Nikkor 105mm Micro lens, 1/80 sec at f/11, ISO 400.

Camera Settings:  Nikon D300 with Nikkor 105mm Micro lens,1/125 sec at f/13, ISO 400.

Camera Settings:  Nikon D300 with Nikkor 105mm Micro lens,1/200 sec at f/13, ISO 400.

In my quest to find choose an interesting abstract photo to post this week for my 52-week photo project I’ve been taking macro photos of the plants outside my house.  Here’s one of my runner-up photos.  I don’t know if this counts as true abstract photography, but I liked the detail.

Camera Settings: Nikon D300 with Nikkor 105mm micro lens, 1/3 sec at f/36, ISO 400

This week’s 52-week-photo-project them is simply, “abstract.”  I love abstract art and my previous favorite abstract photo was posted on this blog.  Spring is practically here and the bush in my front yard is flowering.  I took advantage of the sunny day to create some more abstract photography.  I came up with this effect by zooming the lens while the shutter was open.  I paused at both the beginning and the end of the zoom and moved the zoom fairly quickly between the two.  The resulting image almost looks like two images super imposed on each other because of this pause.  Take a look:

Camera settings:  Nikon D300 with the 70-200mm f/2.8 Nikkor lens, 2.5 sec at f/22, ISO 100

Many interesting photos have leading lines that lead the viewer through the photo.  One of the easiest ways to create a leading line is to use a road.  There are both interesting and non-interesting photos of roads.  For instance take this photo:

There is a road, there is a car, and there is a background, but the photo falls flat.  There is nothing very interesting about the photo that my eye can follow.  Now take this photo:

There is a road and a car and a background, but see how your eyes follow the road into and through the photograph.  That’s the leading line.  In fact every time you come back and look at the photo, your eye starts with the car, then sees the road and follows the road through the photo.  Your eye might also catch the flowers on the right side of the photo and follow that separate leading line into the photo as well.  This is not a perfect leading line because the line takes me into the back left part of the photo and there is no line leading me towards the back right where there is a building and trees.  Now look at this leading line:

Your eye probably starts with the sign, which was the subject of this photograph.  However, then your eye leaps to the road which leads you through to the back of the photo where you can see the background and the rest of the landscape.  Here are some more examples of using roads as leading lines.  Spend a few moments on each photo and let your eye follow the lines through the photo.  Make a note of how your eyes travel and which parts of the photo you both are drawn to and which parts are hard to see because of the way the leading line is positioned.

If you are just starting out to experiment with leading lines, I suggest you stand off to the side of the road and look through the viewfinder of your camera until you see the road make a diagonal line across the photo like the photo above.  The next step would be to find a road that curves and try to position yourself off the road so the turns in the road take you through the entire photograph.  Your leading line should guide the viewer to the parts of the photo that you deem most important.  You are the artist, so you can choose where you would like to lead your viewers.