Car on Curve, Barber Junction, North Carolina

You know, Lannie, it's amazing how easy it is to identify the pictures of various photographers after you've become familiar with their work. I knew immediately that this picture had to be yours; it could belong to no one else. This is something that interests me, how our personality and individual points of view are so readily apparent in our photographs. We really do put our stamp on everything we do.

Mine are boring.  That's the big hint, Jack.

 

--Lannie

Not at all. Just like in the days of radio, people tune into programs that they like. I certainly wouldn't be here if I thought either you or your work was boring. It resonates with a certain aspect of myself.

Your images are not boring to one who was brought up in the North Carolina piedmont.

Jim Phelp

EF 300mm f/4 L IS on an old Digital Rebel--hand-held. Just playing here.

Thanks, guys.  I enjoy getting away from towns--big or small.

 

--Lannie

Very attractive to my hitchhiker's soul, very familiar spectacle!

 

Cheers, Lannie!

 

PDE

Well timed and composed.

excellent focus in this shot Lannie.  In this series of shots did you change your Metering Mode for each shot??? or were you shooting in Auto??

Thanks, guys. 

 

Gail, I shot that lens wide open at f/4 a lot.  I didn't change much of anything except occasionally stopping down to 5.6 and even to 8.  I virtually always shoot aperture priority so that I can control aperture above all else.  As for auto focus, I usually go with a single spot, but not always in the center of the picture.

 

On this shot of an obviously prosaic subject, I cropped the shot to bring in this part of the original image.  So,  the only real manipulation that occurred resulted in altering the depth of field--but this one surprised me in the middle distances.

 

I can't say that I am still quite satisfied with the separation of the near trees from the far trees just just over the car.  I was going in the right direction, but a little more out of focus on the far trees would have been a bit better, I think.  All of that was not intentional, in this case, but it does remind me of what one can do with depth of field that is more subtle--and one can do it without going to full-frame or medium format.  (Well, to a point one can. . . .)

 

I do think, that is, that one can get a pretty shallow depth of field, even in the distance, on a crop sensor camera--provided that the lens is long enough and the aperture is wide enough.  I really want to play around with this sort of thing some more.  I frankly never realized how the depth of field in the intermediate distances could be so pleasing.

 

These sorts of things are the reasons that I like to play around with novel (for me) lens-camera combinations.  Sometimes the results can be like starting photography all over again--if one has grown stale by using the same old camera-lens combos over and over.  I don't know exactly what else one can do with "landscape" photography that is likely to give many pleasant surprises of an optical nature.  I'm just stumbling around here.  All of this was easily predictable.  I just didn't realize how pleasing it could be.  I guess that means that I don't usually pay much attention to what is happening in the middle to far distances with depth of field.  I am usually trying to pluck out something in focus that is much closer to the camera.  There isn't much else in the photo that does anything for me.  With a tripod, the sense of separation between near and far trees would have been much more obvious.

 

I want to play with these effects in a more natural setting.  An SUV and a road and a railroad track do have their aesthetic limitations.

 

After forty years, I am still experimenting with optics.  One of these days I will get serious about taking some pictures.

 

--Lannie