Tag Archives: Alpha

March 25, 2022 · 4:15 am

A Good Photo Should Evoke An Emotion, Feeling, Or Memory

*Cold And Windswept, Yellowstone National Park*

I had driven along the length of the Lamar Valley, then the road curved and headed more northerly, toward Cooke City. I’d already stopped and photographed Soda Butte (you can see it way in the distance a little left of center of this image), but decided to pull over again for a more wide-angle landscape.

Now, this image is nothing spectacular, although I think it’s pretty enough, and I (of course) like it. This image is more of an example of how a photograph can (and should) evoke some sort of emotion, memory, or feeling. That’s the hallmark of a good image, actually. Doesn’t have to be stunning to do that. When I look at this shot, I feel downright cold because I remember just how cold it was that day. I see the dry powder snow blown across the road by the freezing wind that chapped my cold hands. The day had a blue cast to it because it wasn’t a very bright day. The sun was hidden above angry clouds that turned into a winter snow storm later in the evening. The mountains were blue because they usually look blue in winter photos, don’t they? This shot shows that it’s a frigid winter in Yellowstone.

Scene shot with a Sony a7riv (a7r4) and Sony 24-105mm lens.

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Filed under National Parks, Photography, Sony Alpha a7r IV, Yellowstone National Park

Tagged as 24-105mm, a7r4, a7rIV, Alpha, cold, evoking a feeling, February, freezing, Lamar Valley, National Park, photography, snow, Sony, winter, Yellowstone, Yellowstone National Park

July 19, 2021 · 5:47 am

The Sony A1 and 200-600mm Lens

Due to eye surgery a month ago, and inactivity prior to that, I haven’t really taken my cameras out, much. Now that the eye is so much better, I’m hoping to remedy that with a short trip to Mount Rainier National Park. If you’ve looked at my previous post, you’ll know I recently spent a morning out there. Still, though, I didn’t really give my cameras the kind of workout that I’d like.

So, this morning, for a short time, I took my Sony A1 and 200-600mm lens outside the house to photograph the bees that gather on the globe thistle bush next to our back gate. I already knew the bees loved those flowers, but had totally forgotten the flowers were actually in bloom. Although they are on the last legs of blooming, the bees still like to congregate there.

All the images you see here are hand-held. I much prefer that to placing that big honkin’ lens on a tripod because my range of movement is considerably lessened. Yes, I have a gimbal tripod head, but was too lazy to set it all up and lug it and the heavy lens out.

These images are also cropped anywhere from 33 percent to 67 percent of the original. Thanks to the Sony A1 and its 50 megapixels, I can still get a nice, clear image even after cropping.

I am a Manual Setting kind of gal. I learn more about my camera that way and feel like I have more control over exposure. ISO was 1250 because I wanted to make use of that fps since the bees are always on the move. Aperture was f/9, shutter speed was 640.

*Climbing The “Tree” – Original – 68 percent crop*

*Climbing The “Tree” – Noiseware applied to the bokeh’d background*

As you can see from this original versus the finished product, above, there was a bit of noise (grain) at ISO 1250. I used Imagenomic’s Noiseware noise control plug in for Photoshop to control the grain, and selectively used it for the background, since you don’t see the grain issue so much with the flowers or the bee.

This high-resolution camera with its great fps (frames per second) shutter speed is the kind with which you should use a memory card that processes the images fast. The card I had in the camera was rather slow, so I had to wait for the image buffer to finish it’s job before I could capture another round of images.

I’ll be taking this camera and lens with me on my trip to Mount Rainier and hope I see some birds or even – if I am really lucky – furry wildlife. We’ll see. I’ll get back to you.

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Filed under flowers, Photography, Sony a1, Sony mirrorless 200-600mm lens

Tagged as 200-600mm lens, Alpha, bees, flower, photography, Sony, Sony a1, summer, where the trails take you

July 17, 2021 · 12:07 pm

A Matter Of Photographic Perspective

After an over-two-month hiatus due to various issues including eye surgery, I managed to make it out for a day hike in Mount Rainier National Park. I’d been checking the weather reports, and thought that “mostly sunny” meant it would be a relatively clear day during which to see “The Mountain.” As luck would have it, the only time Mount Rainier was actually visible was during that time I was hotfooting it to the restroom because I’d had too much coffee to get me going that morning. Thereafter, the mist/cloud cover shrouded everything in a veil of milky white and totally hid the mountain. It didn’t stop me from getting a little much-needed exercise and capturing a slew of leading line trail shots, but it did keep me from giving my new camera and a new lens a workout.

While I was hiking and photographing, I came upon the scene in the two images above. I thought it might be interesting to talk a little about photographic perspective. The first image has more of the trail in it than the second image. Which one do you like better? There’s no right or wrong answer here – it’s all a matter of your own perspective. But, you can see how an image may look slightly different, don’t you, depending on the position of the lens? It’s something to consider when you, yourself, are out there with your camera. Lens placement can make the same scene look slightly or quite a bit different. And, you can really see this change if you happen to be using a wide-angle lens, like a 14mm or a 16-35mm. This image was made with what you’d call a standard zoom: 24 – 105mm. And no, it wasn’t cropped. I simply zoomed the lens in a little bit to cut off some of the trail.

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Filed under Mount Rainier National Park, National Parks, Photography

Tagged as 24-105mm, a7rIV, Alpha, hiking, leading line, mirrorless, Mount Rainier, Mt. Rainier, Pacific Northwest, perspective, photography, Sony, Sunrise area, trail, Washington, Washington State, where the trails take you

July 11, 2021 · 8:30 am

The Lure Of The Leading Line

Or maybe I should have titled this post “The Lure Of The Trail.” Both are appropriate and actually meld into one another. I love leading lines – they are my favorite theme – and my favorite type of leading line is a trail. That trail leads the viewer’s eye deeper into the composition and onward to whatever adventure awaits. And trails within forests are my favorite, if for no other reason than the forest’s interior glow surrounded by green and brown shadows.

All of the images above were captured with my Sony Alpha 7riv and a 16-35mm lens during my 2020 October visit to Redwood National and State Parks. And all of these images were captured along one of the many trails in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park in northern California. The tops of the trees are veiled a little bit in mist, as this trip was during the height of all the wildfires in California. Smoke drifted in from everywhere.

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Filed under California, forest, leading lines, National Parks, Photography, Redwood National and State Parks, Travel

Tagged as 16-35mm, a7rIV, Alpha, autumn, brown, California, forest, green, hike, hiking, leading line, leading lines, mirrorless, October, path, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, redwoods, Redwoods National and State Parks, Sony, state park, trail, trees, where the trails take you, wide angle, wide-angle, woods

March 28, 2020 · 1:51 pm

Angular Unconformity Along OR Hwy 207 To Mitchell

I love geology. I went to school to study it. So when I travel, I like to read about the geology of the places I visit and the roads I travel. In hindsight, I wish, now, that I’d have bought and looked through the Roadside Geology of Oregon, by Marli B. Miller *before* rather than after I’d driven to John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. At least, then, I would have been able to follow the mile markers and understood what I was seeing.

Anyway, I’d stopped here because I happened to turn my head to look at the scenery right when my car was passing by these awesomly-colored outcroppings. Turns out, my inner geology radar must have been working intuitively. What you see here is called an angular “unconformity.” An angular unconformity is – in easy terms – when you see tilted beds (the green and reddish outcropping of beds) overlain by straight beds (the red-brown lines of columnar basalts you see above. It shows there is a gap in the geologic time record. So, if you are following a series of formations along a geographic distance, you might suddenly see that one formation or sediment layer of that formation is totally missing from the order of deposition, and all you see is this contact line dividing angular tilting beds from straight layers above. Any of this make sense? If not, then just admire the pretty landscape.

This image was captured using my new Sony Alpha a7r IV and 24-105mm lens. I am loving this camera!

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Filed under Geology, HDR, Landscape, Oregon, Photography, Sony Alpha a7r IV, Travel

Tagged as A7r IV, Alpha, angular unconformity, full-frame, geology, Hwy 207, landscape, March, mirrorless, Oregon, photography, scenery, Sony, travel, unconformity, where the trails take you