Workshop Preparation Post #3: Tripods

Lake LBJ Overlook – Kingsland, Texas
Copyright © 2009 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture (Av) priority using an EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens tripod mounted. The exposure was taken at 32mm, f/11 for 1/6th of a second at ISO 100 using a Singh-Ray warming polarizer and two-stop, soft graduated neutral density filter. Post capture processing was done entirely in Adobe’s Lightroom 3.

Click on the image above for a larger version.

As many of you know this spring’s Texas Landscape Safari is scheduled for later next month (April 21st – 24th, 2013) 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.

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 1/6th 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!

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Cloudscape – Kinglsand, Texas

Here’s a simple shot that illustrates a key concept in landscape photography; patience!

Cloudscape – Kingsland, Texas
Copyright © 2009 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 40D set on aperture (Av) priority using an EF 24-105m f/4L IS USM lens tripod mounted. The exposure was taken at 40mm, f/13 for 1/4th of a second at ISO 100 using a Singh-Ray warming polarizer filter. Post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3.
Click on the image above for a larger version.

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A few years ago a friend told me about a great spot for landscape photography hiding in plain sight in the Texas Hill Country. Kingsland is a quiet bedroom community stretching along the shores of the Colorado and Llano Rivers at the point where they merge to form Lake LBJ. It’s a short drive west from Marble Falls on Ranch Road 1431 to a wonderful spot overlooking Packsaddle Mountain to the west.

It takes perseverance to find a good location and a great deal of patience to wait until the light is just right. I find that on almost every photographic outing I’ll waste 20% to 30% of my shots way too early in the evening before the light has had time to saturate and the evening clouds to form.

If you’re anything like me, you want to setup as quickly as possible and start shooting that wonderful location you’ve driven so far to find. Patience you see, does not come naturally to most of us and learning to wait is just not in my Irish nature. But I’m learning and these days I’ll usually pack a light-weight folding chair and a good paperback so that I can sit comfortably while waiting for the light.

Sunsets take time. They begin with a little warmth and glow and slowly evolve into deeply saturated reds, yellows and blues. After 30 – 40 minutes more they deepen to ambers, indigos and violets and sometimes when the atmosphere is just right they sky may begin to glow a rich, deep purple before turning to true black.

So the next time you’re out looking for some great sunset shots, remember to be patient. Take one or two shots every tens minutes or so and plan to stay put for at least two hours. Let nature take it’s course and enjoy the wonderful show.

Life is too short!

Workshop Preparation: Tripods

Lake LBJ Overlook – Kingsland, Texas
Copyright © 2009 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture (Av) priority using an EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens tripod mounted. The exposure was taken at 32mm, f/11 for 1/6th of a second at ISO 100 using a Singh-Ray warming polarizer and two-stop, soft graduated neutral density filter. Post capture processing was done entirely in Adobe’s Lightroom 3.

Click on the image above for a larger version.

As many of you know this spring’s Texas Landscape Safari is scheduled for later next month (April 25th – 28th, 2011) 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.

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 1/6th 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!

All Good Things Must End

I have been privileged in this life to do work for and to become friends with some of the most incredible people on the face of this planet. As you grow older and begin to realize that you have fewer days ahead than behind, you come to appreciate just how much these relationships enrich your life. The true measure of a man is not how much money he makes but how many friends he can call upon when the #$%^ hits the fan.

This week a dear friend of mine sold his “small business” to a much larger company for a tidy sum of money. Now I’m not going to name names but if you read the business section of your local Texas paper or go online, you can figure it out. My friend has run this not so small business for the past 25 years and has grown the business tremendously during the past decade. I’d like to think that I had some small part in that success and I have enjoyed working with these folks more than I ever thought possible.

It’s been a privilege and a pleasure to do work for this company for the past nine years but alas, all good things must end. Sadly, the new parent company is really big, headquartered outside of Texas and won’t be needing my services any longer. I was a small fish in an already crowded pond but now I’m a minnow in the ocean and the sharks are circling. I’ve known this was coming for the past two months and was grateful that my friend thought enough of our relationship to let me know. But this does leave my personal compass spinning wildly at the moment.

The energy, oil & gas business in the gulf coast has been hit badly in the past year with the BP disaster, the moratorium on deepwater drilling and the glacial pace at which new offshore drilling permits are being issued. Most small to medium size businesses in Texas & Louisiana have been hit hard and aren’t spending a dime on anything right now.

I’ve worked in this industry for 27 years and I know that may make some readers uncomfortable, but the folks finding oil & natural gas are no different than you and I. Most work for small to medium size businesses and they have bills to pay and groceries to buy just like everyone else does. They do very difficult and sometimes dangerous jobs, hundreds of miles offshore, for twelve hour shifts, six days a week. When they return home, they kiss their wives, play with their kids and go to church on Sunday. They’re good people and I’m proud to call some of them my friends.

So I have some tough choices to make and I’m not quite sure which path I’m meant to follow.

• My industrial & product work started our well this year but has almost completely dried up during the past six months. My oil field knowledge and small business background was a real plus in this market and I wisely stayed away from the larger accounts that other commercial shooters would vie for. (CON)

• My landscape and nature photography print & web sales have grown significantly this year and I’m amazed at how many new clients found me “online” from my Blog, Google, Flickr and Twitter. And yet, some of my biggest sales were the result of word-of-mouth referrals. (PRO)

• I’ve also been dipping my toe into the real estate and B&B (bed & breakfast) photography market outside of the Houston area. So far, it’s been a great niche market that’s been ignored by most commercial shooters. (If you’re a commercial photographer in central Texas I promise not to go after your headshot business if you leave the B&Bs to me. We all gotta eat!) (PRO).

• Last but not least, interest in the Texas Landscape Safari workshop to be held next April has been incredible and I’m already looking at holding two workshops back-to-back to accommodate the number of folks planning to attend. (PRO)

So I find myself at a crossroads knowing that sadly, all good things must end.

Endings – Kingsland, Texas
Copyright © 2010 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture (Av) priority using an EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens tripod mounted. The exposure was taken at 45mm, f/13 for 2 seconds at ISO 100 with a Singh-Ray warming polarizer filter. Post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3.

Click on the image above for a larger version.

Why Megapixels Really Do Matter

When I teach my workshops or speak in front of groups of serious amateur photographers, I love to shake things up a little bit, just to get folks thinking “outside the box”. I’ll often start out with a statement like “there is only one reason for someone other than a working professional to own a 21 megapixel camera and it’s because size really does matter”. It’s fun to see the men in the class sit up just a bit straighter after making a statement like that and the women blush slightly.

Of course I’m talking about megapixels here. Quite honestly, any camera with a 10 megapixel can take shots that can be printed up to 24″ x 36″ without any special processing and still look great. What you get with the very high megapixel sensors like that found in the Canon 5D Mark II or the Nikon D3X is incredible flexibility in cropping your image in a number of different ways without loosing significant resolution.

Take the shot above for example. The original capture was a normal 2 x 3 ratio landscape orientation shot with the crescent moon in the far left of the scene. The evening I took this image the light was fading fast and I wasn’t able to recompose for a vertical shot as I would have liked. Upon reviewing the image in Lightroom, I felt that a tight vertical crop balancing the crescent moon and the “wave” of the land would look better in print and the 21 megapixel sensor in the Canon 5D2 allowed me to create the final image with plenty of resolution to spare.

A few years ago, only the high-end professional sports or fashion shooter could afford a 18 or 21 MP camera. Today, this technology has become very affordable in the Canon 1D Mark IV (16MP – $5000), the Canon 5D Mark II (21MP – $2500), the Canon 7D (18MP – $1500) and the Canon 60D (18MP – $1000) cameras. Everyone from a working pro to the advanced amateur or serious hobbyist can benefit from the continuing megapixel race and don’t let anyone tell you different. It is a race that both Canon and Nikon aim to win.

And before you start flaming me on this issue remember this; as technology continues to advance we can look forward to even higher resolution sensors that not only produce less digital noise but which also extend the dynamic range they are capable of capturing. These advances in technology are fueled in no small part by the megapixel race we all write about with such disdain. Advances in new technology often come directly from a competitive marketplace where companies “race” to gain market share. I for one, hope the “race” for a better sensor continues for years to come.

Crescent Moon – Kingsland, Texas
Copyright © 2010 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture (Av) priority using an EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens tripod mounted. The exposure was taken at 97mm, f/8 for 8 seconds at ISO 100. Post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3.

Click on the image above for a larger version.

View Location on Panoramio & Google Earth: Crescent Moon – Kingsland, Texas

My Favorite Spot in the World

Ask any landscape photographer where his or her favorite spot is. Chances are they can name it in an instant. Every landscape photographer has one. It’s their “go to” place for inspiration, encouragement and reflection.

My favorite spot is in Kingsland, a quiet bedroom community stretching along the shores of the Colorado and Llano Rivers at the point where they merge to form Lake LBJ. It’s a short drive west from Marble Falls on Ranch Road 1431 to a wonderful spot overlooking Packsaddle Mountain to the west.

If you’re interested in shooting there just click on the Google Map below for directions. You won’t be disappointed!

Kingsland Overlook – Kingsland, Texas
Copyright © 2010 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture priority (Av) using an EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens tripod mounted. The exposure was taken at 70mm, f/16 for 1 second at ISO 100 using a Singh-Ray LB warming polarizer and 3-stop graduated neutral density filter. All post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3. Click on the image above for a larger version.