JCO portrait at Wild Animal Park

We spent Valentine's Day hiking around the wonderful botanical gardens at the San Diego Wild Animal Park; a part of the park that we have never explored before. I found it quite nice and relaxing. There were diverse landscapes from shady conifer forests, winding streams and water falls, bridges, canyons, to arid rock and cactus gardens. A nice place to visit for portraits and plant or macro photography. In fact, I saw quite a few photographers wandering around that part of the grounds.

I present here a couple shots of JCO in the conifer garden. One thing I noticed as I reviewed my shots was the lack of sharpness and contrast in many of the shots. I'm starting to notice this more and more in my "walk-around-lens", the Tamron18-200mm. I'm not sure if it is the lens (I was getting used to the sharpness of my 50mm prime) or camera shake (potentially more of a problem when I'm zoomed in) , but I'm starting to think that a vibration reduction (VR) or optically stabilized (OS) lens may help. Of course better technique might also help, but slowing down, steadying the camera, relaxing and squeezing the shutter is a lot to think about when you're trying to capture a moving toddler. I think a lens rental and perhaps a new lens purchase is in my near future.

Under the Lip

This is one of my favorite surf photos. It was taken with an old Tokina 800mm manual focus lens that my neighbor had in his garage. I adapted it to my camera by buying a t-mount for Nikon. Of course, none of the exposure metering functions worked so I needed to manually set the shutter speed, aperture ring on the lens and ISO to control exposure. The histogram and image review were my guide for setting the correct exposures. Since these were taken early in the morning, exposure continuously changed as the sun rose higher and higher above the horizon. Since I was manually focusing on a moving target with a very long lens, I knew I needed lots of depth of field, and a relatively high shutterspeed, so I mainly used ISO to adjust exposure. Most of the time, I tried prefocusing on the breaking waves and waited until a surfer passed through that zone. As the surfer passed through the zone, I panned with him and typically took several shots in burst mode.

After about three sessions shooting this way here are some tips that I've learned work well.

• Mornings (on the west coast) work well because of the bright directional light coming from above your shoulder lights up the surfer and the face of the wave. Noon and afternoon present too much contrast and harsh shadows.
• Shooting low on the beach make the waves look bigger behind the surfer.
• A monopod helps stabilize the lens, reduce fatigue, and gives you more flexibility than a tripod to pan and move around.
• Keeping a keen eye on the surfers body language helps you anticipate that decisive moment.