Day ten. Finally, double digits! Spent the day wandering around Colonial Williamsburg. Though I could get lots of cool shot of various old things ... turns out the lighting in the buildings there fit the times. So, a lot of them came out far darker than I would have liked, but I rocked the 200 ISO and the flash to the best of my ability. In the end I did come away with more than a few interesting ones and once again completely failed to capture the few things I was really trying to. Oh well, it was as nice of a January day as anyone could have asked for, especially given that it snowed 10 inches a mere two days later.
Day nine. And the blizzard of 2009 is upon us. Not exactly the most exotic of locations, but we were stranded in Alexandria and I had my camera, so I did what I do best. I took an absurd number of pictures and came out with a few good ones. As always, the lighting proved to be my biggest enemy. And I, once again, rediscovered my need for a real macro lens. While the zoom lens is good for faking the effect, it just doesn't cut it for real macro situations.
Day eight. Down at the beach just behind my hotel at Dam Neck. I made a few friends. The sand crabs were friendlier than the sea gulls though. Abysmal heat produced the most boring sky I've seen all week. My photographic outing yesterday, when there was a nicer sky, was thwarted by none other than Mr. Dead Battery himself. Oh well. Mother Nature deemed this a neutral photography day. No direct sunlight, but not truly overcast or nasty in any way, save the boringness of it.
Day seven. Went down to the Cascades. Took over 400 pictures only to thoroughly prove that I was an idiot for leaving my tripod in the car. Quickly flowing water needs a tripod. I can't figure out how to stress this enough to myself. It's more than worth the carrying weight. A difficult shoot otherwise. The sun didn't want to cooperate and the shadows were thick. I either need a better camera or a better photographer. It's one of the two. There was far more wildlife that wanted to get its picture taken than expected though. So, some good shots ... a lot of bad shots ... pretty normal at this point.
Day six. Down at Claytor Lake for Kelsie's wedding. Rode around on a pontoon boat for about a half hour. All pictures were taken while moving. The day provided for a very difficult lighting situation. The sky was massively over exposed while the water and shore line was massively underexposed. Oh well, used the short range lens to capture some awesome wide angle shots of the sky.
Day five. Back up at Mountain Lake, this time for Erica and Keith's wedding. The clouds were moving really fast, causing wandering shadows to play hell with the white balance and light meter, but I still managed a few good shots. The pro photographer there answered my high dynamic range question: his camera has two senors, one for low light, one for high light, that work together to build the final image ... so basically all I have to do is throw more money at the problem. Point of interest, he was using a Fujifilm camera with Nikon lenses. Note: since there was a pro photographer there, a lot of the subjects weren't looking at me.
Day four. Hiked up to Kelly's Knob. Not a spectacular hike or view, plus it was a cloudy day, so none of the long range shots came out. The exercise was appreciated, but the photography was a bit lacking. Oh well.
Day three. Went up to Mountain Lake and walked around the War Spur trail. Went back to the zoom lens so i didn't have to get so close to things to get good macro shots and under the assumption that on the top of a mountain, there would be things worth taking a shot of that're very far away. Brought the tripod in the car in case there was running water and the opportunity to take some long exposure shots, but left it in the car when we got up there and saw how brown everything was and figured that there wouldn't be anything worthy of a long exposure shot. Unfortunately, we were wrong and found a stream, but I don't mind so much, given how difficult it would have been to continually set up and break down the tripod in the area where the stream was. It was very closed in, causing many shadows, thus requiring the long exposure, while making it incredibly difficult to get a tripod in there in the first place. I need to learn how to handle high dynamic range lighting situations. Despite that, I still got a couple of cool stills of the water.
Day Two. Switched lenses for the outing. The indirect sunlight of just before sun down made getting the exposure level right more difficult. Turns out the longer length lens is actually better for macro shots than the shorter length lens. Thought it would have been the other way around, but nope. With the zoom lens, I can get closer to things without having to be right on top of them. Other than looking like less of a dork by being farther away from the subject, it also significantly reduces the chance that my shadow takes a prominent role in the shot.
Day One. Walked around the front yard taking pictures of everything that caught my eye. Trying to learn the interface of the camera. It has a few more buttons that I'm used to playing with. I keep forgetting to check the light meter when moving from shot to shot. I'm also not used to have to use the view finder. Not sure if I can redirect to the LCD without losing all of the information in the view finder, but the whole squinting into the view finder thing is awkward for me right now. I'm sure I'll get used to it quickly though. I also need to figure out how to devise some sort of ultra-mobile tripod. My hands aren't as steady as I would like. You wouldn't think that'd cause too big of an issue given what I'm shooting, but it makes it hard to frame close up shots with slim margins. Basically, I need to figure out how to get the camera to float stably in mid air, pointed in the direction I want.