One morning while shooting in Silo City I went off exploring and found another silo complex that had been overrun with weeds and obviously was a place of some wild parties. Lots of graffiti decorated the complex and I had a good time looking at many angles and shooting the location.
I have published a number of images from Silo City. This is a location of grain silos in Buffalo. I have published a number of images from Silo City in the past on this blog. I had the opportunity to shoot a model for one day of my three that I spent shooting there. She happened to be a dancer and was able to strike great poses. I was trying to show the human life form in contrast to the machinery of this place. I really like this image.
I had the opportunity this past winter to visit Lofoten, Norway. It’s an amazing place. Almost like a fairy tale. Tall mountains, big skies, and gorgeous coastlines. I won’t lie to you, but it was crowded with photographers. Plus it was hard to photograph there. There aren’t pull offs on the roads and there is no shoulder, just gullies. We saw a lot of people who slid off the road into these gullies.However, if you didn’t mind walking and parking a bit of a hike away you could find locations like the one in the picture above. I did a 35-second exposure for this shot. It blurred the sky and smoothed out the water. While I really loved the location I probably won’t visit there again as the crowds of photographers makes it hard to enjoy.
I see some cool things and places in my travel. This image reminds me of a secret base in a James Bond movie. It is a water intake facility stuck out on Lake Erie. We took a Buffalo fireboat to get here. It is really a cool place and old. It is the intake for the city’s water supply. I shot this with a wide angle lens. I had lots of fun exploring this structure.
Day 4 & 5 of the Luminous-Landscape Winter Iceland workshop. Weather changed a bit as to be expected. Extremely high winds came in and that made photography challenging. We haven’t had real good light for sunrises or sunsets the past few morning but we are out there anyway. With the kind of lighting we were challenged with went withB&W for a number of today’s photos. We are here until next Thursday and have waterfalls on today’s agenda. More coming. A number of clients on this trip have been with me before on workshops. Always good to see and photograph with friends.
Absolutely amazing is all I can say for the last 48 hours. I have been to Iceland dozens of times and I can’t remember the last time I shot so much in such a short period. Weather helps and we have been blessed with great weather. All that is supposed to change by tomorrow. We did an ice cave, glacier walk, glacier canyon, and more bergs on the beach. The group is small and allows us to do more together as a group. Great people with us on this trip. Lots of fun. More tomorrow.
Because someone asked. All images have been shot on a Sony a7r II with various G-Master lenses.
On our last day we took a walk through this fishing village. The sky was gray and it was dusk. But, there was so much to see. I let the camera handle the higher ISO and just shot what I saw. This was so classic with the fishing hut and boat.
Ok, I’m not one for the iconic image of a place but I must confess I shot it. It was crazy when taking this photo. It was made from a bridge just a short walk from the hotel – cabins we were staying in. The bridge must have had 50 photographers on it all shooting the same things. I absolutely hate that. i don’t like being where there are other photographers. It disturbs to no end. Seems everyone wants the same shot and here I was just as bad as them. So, enjoy the photo but know I feel bad about putting up an image so many other have done.
As you can probably tell I really enjoyed Lofoten except for the fact that there were too many other photographers there. Everyone that I encountered were trying to make iconic images as they must have seen on websites. except for a few instances, I wanted to see things differently. Thus I tried a lot of long exposure and I looked for patterns and things in the landscape. This image was made to show depth of field in the foreground with small details and to then allow the rocks and surf to become part of the image too. I used a new filter system by Wine Country to handle the ND filters I used. I’ll be doing a review on this system in the next few weeks. Hope you enjoy this image.
One of the things every photographer hopes for when visiting the northern latitudes is the opportunity to see the Northern Lights. I was fortunate enough to have a few great opportunities on my recent Lofoten Norway trip. These lights are tricky to shoot. If you are a photographer you’ll find that first, you need to set your lens to infinity. This is not easy with most of today’s lenses. I use a 14mm Rokinon lens that has an infinity stop. I know just how far to back off the infinity mark to get a sharp image. If you are using a lens that doesn’t have an infinity stop you’ll need to manually focus it on infinity then tape the lens down so the focus ring doesn’t move. You’ll set the camera’s ISO to 3200 and the widest f-stop. No depth of field needed when shooting something at infinity. I start my first exposure at 8 seconds and I turn on noise reduction. This adds an additional 8 seconds after the exposure is made but assures a cleaner image. You can’t use a histogram so you’ll have to make a judgment call from the screen on the back of the camera to determine if you need more or less exposure. If is too dark raise your ISO. Don’t shoot over 8 seconds if you can help it. I find an exposure of 4-8 seconds to be great for most lights. You’ll get the hang of it pretty quickly. Then all you do do is shoot away as the sky puts on a show that will amaze you.