Just Enough Focus - Page 58 of 182 - inspired photography with just enough perspective

May 2, 2017May 2, 2017

On the way to St Armand’s

On the weekend we decided to head to Sarasota for dinner and I had a vague thought to grab the camera. On the way to St Armand’s Circle we saw this scene as we approached the bridge. Since I had my camera I pulled over to capture the sun nearing the horizon. Although it looks white here, the sun was glowing red from behind what appeared to be atmospheric dust. Every so often dust from the Sahara blows across the Atlantic and creates a filter-like effect that’s good for photography.

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This is another panoramic image. I was using a 35mm lens and took three vertical images and then stitched them together in Lightroom. Unlike the panorama of Miami that I posted yesterday, this does not have as much detail. Nevertheless I am fond of this technique for capturing landscapes because it produces very little distortion. It’s similar to turning your head from side to side.

I get a little wistful when I see a sunset and don’t have a camera. So I’ve gotten in the habit of carrying one even if I don’t plan on talking pictures. You never can tell when something might come up. If I use a small prime lens then the camera is not so bulky. Then, if I feel I need to go wider than the lens allows, I can simply create a panorama with as little as two side-by-side images.

Sarasota Gallery

Anyway, this is my favorite location to take photos in Sarasota and I had it in the back of my mind that I might see something as we dove by. I’m glad I listened to that little voice in my head. Hopefully I’ll keep listening.

April 30, 2017

Miami Sunrise Panorama

I was a little lucky to capture this Miami sunrise panorama. We had just docked at the port of Miami after a weekend in the Bahamas. Because we docked at the last terminal it afforded this unique perspective of the city to the west and South Beach to the east. South Beach faces the Atlantic and so the sun is rising over the ocean.

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Regarding that, I was looking at this picture and wondering to myself why the sun was rising over the ocean? In all my photos from the west coast of Florida the sun sets on the ocean. I realized of course that this is the east coast and, I live on the west coast facing the other direction. Sometimes I get disoriented when traveling.

I grew up in the California Valley and I could always orient myself with the Sierra Nevada Mountains; they lie to the east. Out of habit, when traveling I try to orient to some elevated landmark. But Florida is flat so I rely on the sun for bearings. Naturally it seemed to me the sun was rising in the wrong place. At least that’s my excuse for now.

more panoramas

Because this is made up of multiple shots stitched together the resolution is very high. This prints out at about six feet by two feet at full resolution. That allows for details not possible with a single frame. It’s little like standing in the deck of the ship with binoculars and looking out, only in this case I used a high-resolution camera and a lucky perspective.

April 28, 2017

Weekend State of Mind

I post a lot of sunset images because it’s one of the main attractions of the area I live in. If the conditions are right on a Friday or Saturday its even better because it seems everyone is in the same kind of weekend state of mind. Any evening can be good but Fridays and Saturdays have their own special quality.

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Weekend State of Mind on Longboat key, Florida

Last weekend I took a little hike to this secluded beach. Other than that you need a boat to get here. These people were taking pictures of the sunset and had a boat. I, on the other hand, was taking pictures of people taking pictures of the sunset and a boat. Funny how that worked out, eh?

Most of the visitors have left Florida but it’s actually the best time of year to be here. There are very few crowds, the weather is mild and because it’s changing we get these types of clouds most evenings. Soon we’ll have high humidity and heat but now that seems a million years away. In reality we have only the current moment and if we are concerned about the future we miss an entire lifetime of experiences happening now.

Yet I find myself thinking about the days of the week. On Monday, Friday seems like a long way off. In reality I could go out taking pictures any day, even Monday. This idea of the weekend is an artificial construct of ours. The best days to go out and take pictures are the days you go out and take pictures. Having said all that, I still look forward to the weekend.

beach gallery

The weekend is the gas station of the soul; it’s when we get filled up to do stuff during the week. Weekends are for hikes or boat rides, for sunrises and sunsets, for more thinking and less doing. In reality weekends are a state of mind, they could be any days we choose. Nevertheless, until someone does away with the workweek I’ll recharge the batteries starting Friday night.

April 27, 2017April 27, 2017

Not Enough Focus

More than once on the blog I’ve mentioned that I prefer pictorialism to realism. I also prefer impressionism although I struggle for ways to express that in photography. One simple way however is through blurred images. This is an impressionistic street scene with not enough focus.

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I shot this on my first outing with a new lens, the Sony 85mm 1.8. I didn’t purposely take this out of focus, it was a mistake, but I immediately liked it. It makes me think I should do more. I prefer images that leave something for the imagination; they are more engaging.

I use a variety of techniques to abstract images but rarely lack of focus. It’s a valid form of simplification and now I wonder why I haven’t used it more. I think maybe it’s because I’m normally preoccupied with ensuring focus is tack sharp. It’s hard to break that habit, but if done intentionally and for a specific purpose, lack of focus is a way to impart a feeling or impression.

It’s ironic that the most expensive lenses for photography are the ones that provide the most pleasing out of focus. The out of focus area produced by a lens is called “bokeh”. Reviewers will rave about the area of an image that is out of focus and how pleasing it is. The ability to focus a lens is a given, but to have out of focus areas at the same time, that’s another matter entirely.

Street Images

In fact that’s why I bought this lens, because of its ability to create pleasing bokeh while maintaining sharp focus on something else. Only in this case nothing is sharp. I could say I did this on purpose but you know I didn’t. I like the effect but in this case it was not enough focus dot com.

April 26, 2017

Harbour Master Tower

Last week we stopped in the Bahamas on a weekend cruise from Miami. The harbor master tower is the first thing you see at dock. I think it was built before the ships got so big. I took this from a lower deck but you could look down on it from the upper decks and our ship was one of the smaller in port that day.

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This continues on a theme of minimalism. Actually I’ve been on this theme for a while but I don’t always publish the images. I do little studies, with lampposts, trees and buildings, shooting up to simplify the composition. Simplification is the gateway to minimalism; it also accentuates unique qualities of a thing or place.

This image creates an illusion of height, yet the building is no more than a few stories high and there are rooftops just below the frame. But because of how this is composed we imagine it much higher. Minimalism evokes imagination, which in-turn transcends realism.

Since I’m always on the lookout for these I’ll likely put together a book at some point. I get ideas from looking at works of other photographers. One whom I follow on Instagram is Sebastian Weiss. Check him out at the link here https://www.instagram.com/le_blanc/

architecture photography in the gallery

This kind of view is way of looking at the world that is focused on the isolation of something unique. I think we see beauty when we notice uniqueness. It’s all around and all we need to do is narrow our view until we recognize it; at least that my current theory.

April 25, 2017April 25, 2017

Secluded Beach on Longboat Key

This past weekend I took an excursion to a secluded beach on Longboat Key. At least I thought it would be secluded. As it turned out I was only one of about a dozen photographers there. One was doing an engagement shoot, one a maternity shoot, a couple were shooting landscapes and finally a camera club showed up as well. There was a spectacular sunset so I’m pretty sure everyone got good shots and left happy. I know I did.

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This beach is only accessible by boat or hike; it’s not right off the highway like most beaches in this area. At less trafficked shorelines like this you can usually see remnants of past hurricanes. There are spots like this up and down the coast if you know where to look. They are reminders of big events, especially as it pertains to tropical storms altering the landscape of the coast.

This was one of my last shots before hiking back. I got plenty of others but the simplicity of this scene is what I was drawn to. It’s rare that trees or stumps are isolated so I’m always on the lookout for them as photographic subjects. Simplicity resonates in images because it naturally invites interpretation.

minimalism in the gallery

At low tide the beach is exposed where these trees stand, but this was high tide and the beach was completely covered by the sea. However I was standing at a line of mangroves that protect the rest of the island from erosion. If it weren’t for the mangroves there would be nothing left of barrier islands along the coast of Florida.

April 24, 2017

Amsterdam in the Early Morning Hours

Here’s another image I took while walking around central Amsterdam in the early morning hours. I was only here for a week so I made the decision to stay on North American time. That meant I was still wide awake very late which works well for night photography. I could capture the lights reflecting on the still waters of the canals to my heart’s content.

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A couple of times I left my tripod back at the hotel. To get these long exposures without shaking the camera I would make due by balancing it on a bike seat. All of the little bridges have bikes leaning against the railings. All I had to do was pick one with a relatively wide seat and gingerly set the camera down. I used a wireless trigger so that I didn’t need to touch the camera to activate the shutter.

That little system worked quite well and to be honest, it’s a technique I’ve used in many other places as well. I don’t always want to bring a tripod especially when shooting street scenes at night. For that I’m grateful for the high ISO performance of Sony cameras, it allows me to do things that were unheard of just a few years ago. For street photography you want to travel light and be able to react quickly.

Yet when I’m out walking around I’ll invariably see something like this scene and I wish I had a tripod. Then it becomes a little game of figuring out what I can use to stabilize the camera. I use all manner of things like balancing on a fence railing, stabilizing the lens with the camera strap, even placing the camera on the ground and shooting up.

night photography gallery

As a result I’m hard on camera bodies. They get scratched quite a bit. But for me the scratches on my camera body are like notches on a belt. It’s funny but a scratched up camera feels to me like a comfortable set of well worn shows; we’ve seen a lot together.

April 21, 2017April 21, 2017

Super-yachts of the Bahamas

I took this shortly after sunrise as our cruise ship entered port in Nassau. As yachts go this is pretty big, I’m not sure if this is a government craft or just one of the many super-yachts of the Bahamas.

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It got me thinking about why people own these. Personally, I don’t think I would want one. I’ve been on rough seas on a big cruise ship and I certainly would not want to go through that on a small boat. The sea does not care how fancy a yacht is, it will be tossed around like a toy.

I had the same thought when we passed other big yachts near the Atlantis Resort and Casino. Maybe the people that have these only sail in fair weather and remain close to home. That I could understand. They are awesome to look at but I think they are no match for the wrath of the sea.

My hat is off to fishermen who work the seas for their livelihood like the guys on The Deadliest Catch. Watching that freaks me out a little. How they manage through storms is beyond me.

sea images from the gallery

I think this attitude of mine comes from a fear of falling into the ocean and drowning. It might stem from an incident when I was an infant and almost drowned. Although I don’t remember it, I was apparently face down and sinking in a lake.

Anyway, I have nothing against these high-end boats. If I did have one I’d be having fair-weather parties on it all the time. However at the first sign of a storm you’d find me firmly on land. In the meantime I’ll just stick to cruise ships and buy crab legs from a store. I’m not really in the market for one of these anytime soon.

April 20, 2017April 20, 2017

Bradenton Beach Under the Light of a Nearly Full Moon

This is Bradenton Beach under the light of a nearly full moon. I was taking pictures with a friend and everything was illuminated by the glow from the moon. Coming to the beach at night is an experience that is completely different from daytime. For me it’s a meditative experience. The overwhelming sensation is the sound of the waves.

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If possible I try to take pictures of people in night scenes like this. That’s not always possible but with a moon glow and a high enough ISO it sometimes works. In this case there are people with a lantern at the end of the pier. Generally taking pictures of people during long exposures is not possible because when they move they appear invisible. To appear invisible is an oxymoron, but I digress.

Also when shooting at night around urban areas I’ll get those light streaks in the sky from aircraft. Normally I don’t notice them at the time but afterwards the streak is obvious. I suppose you could calculate speed based on the distance of the streak and the length of the exposure. Nevertheless these also occur with moving boats on the water.

night photos from the gallery

Taking photos by the beach at night is a lot of fun. If I didn’t have to get up the next morning I’d probably stay out all night. However I’ll usually leave in a relaxed state of mind with the sound of the waves faintly echoing in my head. After that I have no problem falling asleep.

April 19, 2017April 19, 2017

Urban Scene at Sea

When I visit big cities I like to take pictures of buildings. Repeating patterns are like puzzles for our brains because we automatically look for slight differences. Maybe that’s related to an evolutionary survival trait like looking for predators in the tall grasses of the African savanna. However this is neither Africa nor a big city. This is an urban scene at sea, aka a cruise ship docked in the Bahamas.

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Urban Scene at Sea – An RCCL Cruise Ship

This is Royal Caribbean’s Harmony of the Seas. If I’m not mistaken it’s the largest cruise ship in the world right now.

I was on a small ferry traversing the port as we passed this behemoth docked at the terminal. It is about twenty stories high and as long as an air strip. This is just one small section of one side. These mega ships are more akin to cities than boats.

This last weekend I was on cruise ship several times smaller than this, and even that was still quite big. Big enough to have several pools, a rock climbing wall, a casino, clubs, bars and restaurants. So take all that and multiply it by three or four.

urban scenes in the gallery

A few years back I was on the Aurora of the Seas, which at the time was the world’s largest. To be honest, it took me a week to figure out where everything was. It’s a little like visiting Disney World, it takes a while to get your bearings. Since that time we’ve cruised on much smaller ships, like the one this last weekend. And even then there were places on the ship I never saw.

If they make these ships any bigger they might just become indistinguishable from big cities.