Everything’s Bigger in Texas! (Deeper Too)

Folks living in the Hill Country understand the old saying “Everything’s Bigger in Texas” because they live it each spring when the heavy rains come and “flash floods” happen all the time. There’s a reason why that flood gauge goes up to six foot. It’s the same reason why folks living in the Hill country know when to head for the hills.

I remember my first visit to the Frio river over twenty years ago. Standing in six inches of ice cold water, I looked at my wife’s brother and asked how those railroad ties twenty foot up in the crossing got so jammed up with debris. He just looked at me dumbfounded and said “well, that’s how high the water got”.

Damn…

Flood Gauge on Hwy 39, Texas
Copyright © 2010 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture priority (Av) using an EF 24-104mm f/4L IS USM lens tripod-mounted. The exposure was taken at 32mm, f/8 for 1/125th of a second at ISO 100 using a Singh-Ray warming polarizer. All post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3 Beta 2. Click on the image above for a larger version.

A Quiet Saturday Morning

Good morning folks! It’s a wonderfully warm and sunny morning here in southeast Texas. A far cry from where my friends in Montana are getting snow in April.

Here’s a simple shot I took at dusk a few weeks ago using a Singh-Ray Vari-ND-Duo filter to achieve a slow exposure creating the silky look to the flowing water. Click on the image below to view the larger size. The secret to this type of shot is using a tack sharp lens on a sturdy tripod to create an image with incredible sharpness and detail in the rocks contrasting with the smooth flowing water.

Quiet Waterfall – Johnson City, Texas
Copyright © 2010 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture priority (Av) using an EF 24-104mm f/4L IS USM lens tripod-mounted. The exposure was taken at 98mm, f/16 for 3.2 seconds at ISO 100 using a Singh-Ray Vari-ND-Duo neutral density filter. All post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3 Beta 2. Click on the image above for a larger version.

Totally Geeked Out Gear Friday

Several months ago I received an email from a reader asking how and why I used my Canon strobes for on-location lighting. The how is pretty easy to illustrate as seen in the images below.

Small Strobes + Pocketwizards + Small Softboxes = Light-Me-Silly

My basic on location rig consists of the following:

Canon 580EX II Speedlites – A real work horse but a bit pricey. Throws a lot of light for a small strobe but gets hot and eats batteries. For a serious Canon shooter, there is really no other choice.

Canon CP-E4 Battery Pack – This is battery food for your Canon Speedlites. Very pricey but holds 8 AA batteries. Don’t leave home without it.

Pocketwizard FlexTT5 & MiniTT1 – Just say no to cords! I rented a set of these to try out and was sold after two minutes. Just say NO to Canon’s ST-E2 infrared transmitter. Works in full manual mode like a champ.

Lastolite Ezybox Hostshoe – This softbox unfolds in about 10 seconds. After spending hours setting up a conventional softboxes, you’ll love how fast this thing gets you to work. Now available in 24″ x 24″ and 30″ x 30″ sizes.

Manfrotto 3373 Aluminum 6′ Stand – Folds to 19″ long and weighs a little over 2 lbs. What’s not to like?

Photoflex Weight Bag – Just add water. Whoever invented this was a genius. Beats lugging around sand-bags all day long. Holds my favorite margarita mix (kidding).

Think Before You Light
The “why” is a little more difficult to explain. I tell this story all the time. I had a nice little weekend gig for a very small Houston manufacturer of oil field widgets. They needed some product shots for a new brochure but didn’t have a lot of money to spend.

I rented a pair of Westcott TD5 Spiderlites after watching a Scott Kelby video about them. The TD5 Spiderlite is a compact fluorescent lamp & softbox providing daylight-balanced continuous light which sounds perfect for product photography.

Working with these lights couldn’t be simpler and I had everything setup in 30 minutes and began to shoot. Since the lighting is continuous, you don’t need a flash trigger or cords and adjusting the lighting is accomplished by turning on or off each of the four bulbs and by positioning the light/softbox closer to or farther away from the product. Since the lights are compact fluorescents, there is no heat to speak of and you can position the light/softbox really close to get that wonderful soft, wrapping light that makes a product really “shine”.

Did I mention that no cords or flash triggers were needed? After about an hour of shooting their stuff I’m just about ready to pack up when an employee comes over with his trusty Nikon D90 and asks if it’s OK for him to take a few shots of the widgets for their web site. I begin to tell him that his camera isn’t going to work with my strobes & trigger when it dawns on me that THERE ARE NO STROBES and his wonderful little D90 will take complete advantage of the beautiful continuous lighting I’ve spend the past few hours setting up.

Talk about a blinding flash of the obvious (no pun intended). Continuous lighting works only too well in the field, which is why it was the first and last time I’ve used the Westcott Spiderlites on location. Yes, I got paid for my work but that senior moment cost me half of what I could have earned.

Lesson learned!

Workshop Preparation – The Little Things Count

In landscape photography its the little things that count. One of the most important aspects of creating a well composed landscape image is knowing where “level” is. This is especially true when your background is hilly or mountainous like the shot below. We use our sense of “level” so much every day that a person will look at an image on the web or in print and instinctively know if it’s not perfectly level.

Quiet Falls – Johnson City, Texas
Copyright © 2010 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture priority (Av) using an EF 24-104mm f/4L IS USM lens tripod-mounted. The exposure was taken at 45mm, f/16 for 3.2 seconds at ISO 100 using a Singh-Ray Vari-ND-Duo neutral density filter. All post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3 Beta 2. Click on the image above for a larger version.

 

Luckily, the folks at Adorama sell a great little Hot Shoe Bubble Level 337 made by Manfrotto that takes all the guesswork out of finding a perfect “level” in our landscape images for about $33.00 (USD).

Texas Landscape Safari Preparation – Ball Heads

Sandy Creek – Llano, Texas
Copyright © 2010 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture priority (Av) using an EF 24-104mm f/4L IS USM lens tripod-mounted. The exposure was taken at 95mm, f/9 for 1/500th of a second at ISO 100 using a Singh-Ray warming polarizer. All post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3 Beta 2. Click on the image above for a larger version.

One thing I forgot to mention in my last post is that most high quality tripods are sold “bare”, without anything to attach them to your camera. This is where the ball head and clamp come in. Good quality ball heads are designed to support heavy loads, move smoothly and lock solidly. Ball heads are easier to use and much more stable than the old fashioned “pan & tilt” tripod heads. Aiming and leveling can be accomplished as one motion, and solid lockup is accomplished with a tightening of only one control.

The best designed ball heads also offer variable tension that makes them easy to control. Tripods with ball heads are much easier to pack and carry than pan & tilt heads since they have no long handles to get in the way.

But the ball head is only half the story. The other half is the clamp system which is used to attach your camera to the ball head. Mounting your camera using the standard ¼”‑20 screw is far too slow and insecure. Instead, many manufacturers adopted the “Arca-Swiss” standard which uses an open-ended dovetail channel with compressing side jaws that grip the mounting plate or bracket attached to the camera. This unique setup provides a quick and easy clamping system that is very solid and secure.

When used in conjunction with an L-Plate designed for your specific camera the quick-release clamp system allows the landscape photographer to quickly switch between shooting horizontally and vertically as shown in the images below.

Really Right Stuff
In my opinion the best design and highest quality ball heads, clamps and camera plates are made by Really Right Stuff, a great little company in California owned and operated by Joe Johnson. The folks at RRS are incredible to work with and their attention to detail in the design and manufacturing of camera support systems is second to none. That’s why you’ll see nine out of ten professionals using RRS gear including guys like Joe McNally, Moose Peterson, Scott Kelby and Kirk Tuck.

The advice I give to most serious amateurs is to buy the best tripod and ball head you can possibly afford and buy them only once. Really Right Stuff gear is expensive but worth every penny. The workmanship is something I’ve only seen in medical devices before and the various parts fit together perfectly, time after time.

I’ve put an RRS L-Plate on every camera I currently shoot with from my 5D mark II to my G10 and can lock them into my BH-30 LR / Gitzo Traveller in just seconds to capture that perfect light at the end of the day. I honestly can’t imagine using any other brand than Really Right Stuff.

Texas Landscape Safari Preparation – Tripods

As many of you know this spring’s Texas Landscape Safari is scheduled for later this month (April 24th – 27th, 2010) and I thought I’d help folks get ready by discussing some “tools of the trade” used by every landscape photographer. So over the next three weeks I’ll be posting images of the gear I use along with some shots made possible by this gear. Honestly, it’s just plain fun to “geek out” over gear every once in a while.

A Quiet Evening – Johnson City, Texas
Copyright © 2010 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture priority (Av) using an EF 24-104mm f/4L IS USM lens tripod-mounted. The exposure was taken at 28mm, f/12 for 2 seconds at ISO 100 using a Singh-Ray warming polarizer. All post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3 Beta 2. Click on the image above for a larger version.

The single most important piece of photographic gear you’ll ever purchase (after your camera and lens) is a set of light-weight, good quality tripod legs. A good tripod can make the difference between a shot that “looks” sharp on the camera’s LCD and one that “is” tack sharp when printed at 24″ × 36″. Remember, the number one cause of soft images isn’t poor focus, it’s camera movement.

Click on the image above and look at the crisp detail of the rocks and trees compared to the silky smooth look of the water. Getting this type of shot required a 2 second exposure in the late evening and the slightest camera movement would have completely ruined the image.

Good quality tripod legs are not cheap and you can expect to pay somewhere between $300 – $800 (USD) depending upon the materials of construction, size and weight. I currently use two different set of tripod legs these days; one for studio & on-location work (Gitzo GT2541 Mountaineer) and one for hiking (Gitzo GT1541T Traveller). Both are constructed from carbon fiber making them very light-weight but extremely strong and durable.

I’m an unabashed believer in Gitzo tripods (probably the only French product I’ve ever bought) and highly recommend them to any photographer. Both of my tripod legs have seen the extremes of heat, humidity, mud, sand, gravel and just plain dirt and they work as well now as the first day I bought them. You may buy four or five cameras over your lifetime as a landscape photographer but you’ll only need one Gitzo tripod!

Sabrina Henry – Someone You Should Know!

There comes a time in your life when you realize that you have fewer days ahead of you than behind you. When you come to understand that the journey is far more important than the destination. When the people you meet and the relationships you forge are like ripples upon the water, growing larger and spreading farther than you ever thought possible. When a simple act of kindness brings you untold joy!

I want you all to meet Sabrina Henry. An avid photographer with a keen eye and a wonderful spirit. A warm, friendly soul from Vancouver, British Columbia (that’s the great white north to folks in Texas). A fellow blogger. A fellow tweeter (what’s plural for Twitter?). And a person of great compassion as you can see in my favorite image she took during a recent trip to Africa.

Copyright 2009 Sabrina Henry

I arrived home this evening to find a package waiting for me from Mpix (the printer I use). Inside was a beautifully mounted print of this image that so reminded me of the work of those Life and Look magazine photographers in the 1960’s. This photograph speaks volumes about the Maasai girl behind the blanket and about the person behind the camera. I can’t tell you how tickled I was to receive this image and how that simple act of kindness made my day. It will hang proudly in my office for years to come. And when my grand-children ask me about it someday I’ll tell them about Sabrina Henry.

PS: To my friends at Adorama, Happy Pesach. To my friends Mark, Ray, Matt, Jerod and Sabrina – Happy Easter. He is Risen.