90 — Tilt shift lenses for landscape photography — Interview w/ Darwin Wiggett

November 24, 2010 By 16 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #90 fea­tures an inter­view with Cana­dian land­scape pho­tog­ra­pher Dar­win Wiggett. It was recorded on a photo tour in the Alberta Rock­ies led by Dar­win. In the inter­view Dar­win dis­cusses why he often uses a tilt shift lens in land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy. For those that have never heard of a tilt shift lens, it’s a lens that has the abil­ity to tilt and/or shift while attached to your cam­era. The tilt­ing aspect of the lens allows you to get amaz­ing depth of field (REGARDLESS‚ of aper­ture) because the lens can tilt in the same direc­tion as the plane of focus. The shift aspect of the lens allows you to cor­rect non par­al­lel lines in cam­era when pho­tograph­ing a build­ing for exam­ple. It also allows for easy panora­mas. Dar­win is a fab­u­lous teacher so take a lis­ten and it will all make even more sense. We also talk a bit about test­ing your lenses, res­o­lu­tion, aper­ture, depth of field and image circles.

An exam­ple of a tilt shift lens

Note how the image on the right has SUPERB depth of field because the tilt shift lens was TILTED into the plane of focus. Image at left uses a regular wide angle lens.

Note how the image on the right has SUPERB depth of field because the tilt shift lens was TILTED into the plane of focus. Image at left uses a reg­u­lar wide angle lens. ‚©D. Wiggett

Note how the lighthouse is straight in the shot at right due to the shift correction on a tilt shift lens

Note how the light­house is straight in the shot at right due to the SHIFT cor­rec­tion on a tilt shift lens. Image at left uses a reg­u­lar wide angle lens. ‚© D. Wiggett

Links /resources men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Work­shops and photo tours with Dar­win Wiggett
Jay Maisel Doc­u­men­tary for inspi­ra­tion
Show us where you live is the reg­u­lar assign­ment this month on our pho­tog­ra­phy forum
Time (No clocks) is the level 2 assign­ment this month on our pho­tog­ra­phy forum
Nikon’s 24mm tilt shift lens at B&H
Canon’s 24mm tilt shift lens at B&H

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Thanks to Ice­Cream­Man and Benny who posted a blog com­ment about our last pod­cast. Thanks as always to every­one that sent com­ments by email about our last pod­cast. Although ALL com­ments are appre­ci­ated, com­ment­ing directly in this blog is pre­ferred. Thanks as well to all the new mem­bers of the bul­letin board. Most of the links to actual the prod­ucts are affil­i­ate links that help sup­port this site. Thanks in advance if you pur­chase through those links.

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. |Sub­scribe with iTunes |Sub­scribe via RSS feed |Sub­scribe with Google Reader |Sub­scribe for free to the Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email
You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography podcast Interviews, Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: , , ,

Freeman Patterson exhibition — Montreal till Nov.15/09

November 9, 2009 By 1 Comment

If you live in or near Mon­treal and love artis­tic land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy you OWE it to your­self to take a drive to Dol­lard Des Ormeaux to see the Free­man Pat­ter­son pho­tog­ra­phy exhibition.

Sun­rise at Koker­boomk­loof — ‚© 2006 Free­man Patterson

This exhi­bi­tion is AWESOME. Free­man Pat­ter­son has been shoot­ing land­scapes around the world and teach­ing work­shops for many decades. I’ve been a major fan of his for a good twenty years and I con­sider him to be a mod­ern mas­ter land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy artist. Every­thing about this exhi­bi­tion screams qual­ity. The images them­selves are gor­geous and I spent a good sev­enty min­utes look­ing at each and every one. The com­po­si­tion of each pho­to­graph is very well thought out as you would expect. Free­man is a teacher and expert at visual design and you’ll note the atten­tion he has paid to the fore­ground midground and back­ground. There’s excit­ing stuff going on in all 3 of those zones.‚ But every­thing else in the pho­tographs work too; expo­sure, colour and the print­ing. Gor­geous print­ing on heavy water­colour paper that reveals great tonal­ity from pure white to deep black with excel­lent shadow detail in most prints.

Free­man exhibits about 18 large sized pho­tographs that are around 20 X 30 inches. All the prints are for sale in small lim­ited edi­tions. The Gallery is located in the Dol­lard Civic Cen­ter (across the street from Marche de L’Ouest) 12001, boule­vard De Sal­aberry, Dollard-des-Ormeaux, Qc. H9B 2A7 (Gen­eral Tel. # (514) 684‑1011).‚ Look for the LIBRARY, the gallery is in the base­ment of the library build­ing. Tues.-Wed. 12–4 PM, Thurs.-Fri. 2-5PM, Sat.-Sun. 1–4 PM and there are guided tours avail­able. The gallery is closed on Nov. 11th for remem­ber­ance day.

I have seen NO pub­lic­ity for this show…which is a trav­esty as this work is aching to be seen by pho­tog­ra­phy lovers. So take a drive to the West Island and you won’t be disappointed!

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries Tagged With: , , ,

73 — Landscape photography tips — improving boring landscapes

October 23, 2009 By 6 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #73 is all about land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy and how to improve your land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy. Many new­bies and advanced ama­teurs con­sis­tently won­der if their land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy is any good. This pod­cast offers up a fair pile of tips to help get your land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy to the next level. Some of the things we talk about include; light­ing for land­scapes, the back­ground and the fore­ground, what makes land­scapes inter­est­ing, expo­sure and land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy, fil­ters in land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy, tripods and post production.

Landscape photography
Yosemite Val­ley, Win­ter 1940 by Ansel Adams

Note the points of inter­est in the fore­ground, back­ground and midground, note the full range of tones and note how skill­fully our eyes are being guided. This is no acci­dent, it’s the result of great plan­ning (the light) exe­cu­tion (exposure/filters/composition) and fin­ish­ing touches (dark­room post-processing — done these days using a graph­ics program).

Landscape photography
Fish­ing spot by Kat

Kat has a great han­dle on the range of tones, expo­sure and com­po­si­tion here and I really like this shot. It’s miss­ing just a lit­tle some­thing of inter­est IMO to get the big “WOW!” Per­haps if a large rock was dropped in the midground with mov­ing rip­ples that would have done it.… this shot is so close it just needs a hint of some­thing “extra”.

Landscape photography
Fly with me…across Aus­tralia (part of a series) by Mad Aussie

This one con­tains the “Wow!” fac­tor for me. Great colour, range of tones, expo­sure and com­po­si­tion. Note the reflec­tions in the fore­ground, the rocks in the midground and that awe­some sky in the back­ground. I love how the midground and back­ground seem to meld into one another.

Links /resources men­tioned in this podcast:

The Ansel Adams gallery
Dar­win Wiggett — Fab­u­lous land­scapes
Rule of thirds pod­cast
His­togram pod­cast
October’s “Scary-Mysterious-Halloween”‚assignment on the Photography.ca forum
Please join the Photography.ca fan page on Face­book
My Face­book pro­file — Feel free to “friend” me
My Twit­ter page — I will fol­low you if you fol­low me (Hey that’s a Gabriel lyric) — Let’s con­nect

If you are still lurk­ing on our forum,
feel free to join our friendly :) Pho­tog­ra­phy forum

Thanks to‚ jack­la­bel, and Kent Wil­son who posted a blog com­ment about our last pod­cast. Thanks as always to every­one that sent com­ments by email about our last pod­cast. Although ALL com­ments are appre­ci­ated, com­ment­ing directly in this blog is pre­ferred. Thanks as well to all the new mem­bers of the bul­letin board.

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. I Sub­scribe with iTunes I Sub­scribe via RSS feed I Sub­scribe with Google Reader I Sub­scribe for free to the Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email
You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: , ,