My List of Photographers to Follow on Instagram (so far!)

I was a very late adopter to Instagram, but I finally joined lat last year and I'm really liking the experience.  In my short time I've found a few photographers that consistently put out some great work.

So here's my list, in no particular order, of amazing photographers to follow on Instagram (so far):

Dave Black (@daveblackphoto) - actually Dave is the reason I initially joined Instagram. He only posts on Instagram and creates some truly inspirational images. He's a sports photographer and creative lighting genius - whether with a speedlight or large/small flashlight his creative lighting images are incredible.

Kalebra Kelby (@kalebra_kelby) - if you want to see what can be done with an iPhone then this is who you want need to follow. Extremely talented, a great storyteller, and one of the warmest and kind hearted people you could ever meet.

Rob Foldy (@robfoldy) - commercial sports photographer, portraits or action doesn't matter, he nails it every time.

Paul Zizka (@paulzizkaphoto) - landscape and adventure photographer - it seems he's either somewhere at sea level, or thousands of feet above creating stunning images.

Scott Kelby (@scottkelby) - a little bit of everything from travel, to portraits to sports - a great eye for composition and colour, and his images always tell a great story.

Toby Harriman (@tobyharriman) - cityscape, seascape, landscape and timelapse -  he also does some cool things with light and spends a fair bit of time well above sea level.

Mike Taylor (@taylor_photo) - think nighttime, think stars, think milky way - a beautiful collection of images.

Bruce Getty (@gettyphotography) - sunrise, sunset, long exposure, amazing colours, and I'll take a wild guess that he has an affinity for bridges.

Colby Brown (@colbybrownphotography) - landscape and travel photography, pretty sure he's never passed a lake or waterfall he didn't capture beautifully.

Hope you check them out, and you can hit me up on Instagram at the same time!

Cheers!

DC

"The Shoot & The Gear" Part 2 - Milky Way Over Nelson

Welcome back! Moving along with part 2 of this series is "The Shoot & The Gear." I was back in Las Vegas in early August for Photoshop World, my second year attending, and it was awesome...again!

One of the pre-conference workshops I attended was lightpainting with Dave Black. Basically, lightpainting is done in the evening when it's dark, where you hold a long exposure for the ambient light, then move off-camera and use an LED flashlight to "paint with light" on your subject. Check out Dave Black's site to learn more and get inspired to try it yourself.

I mention the lightpainting as it's germaine to how I got the image above. To lightpaint you use a long exposure with the following starting point of f8, 30 sec, ISO 500, and then you adjust as needed to get a decent overall exposure. This is all done on a tripod, obviously. While doing this for over an hour you get pretty comfortable with managing long exposures, and you can get pretty good at predicting how varying exposures will look.

As the workshop was winding down I headed back to the bus, and that's where I looked up and saw the Milky Way (everyone with me had already seen it and were shooting so I was kinda late to the party; I was shooting in the other direction for most of the night). So I set-up and began shooting away. As I mentioned in my original post I shot in both landscape and portrait orientation. Always good to do both just in case you don't make it back to that spot. That way you can decide later on which one you like best.

Here we go with the gear and settings:
- Nikon D810
- 24-70 f2.8 (version 1 since a new version with VR has just been released)
- 24mm, f2.8, 30sec @ ISO 2500
- This was all done in "Manual" mode

I also used the timer setting with a 5 second delay (I was already using that for lightpainting as I needed the 5 seconds to get off camera with my flashlight). However, you can use a cable release or a wireless remote just as well.

I set my focus mode to manual and then to infinity by turning my focus ring all the way to the infinity mark, and then back just slightly. There are a few different focus techniques for shooting stars and such that you can Google, but for this I chose set it to infinity.

Aperture - you always want to shoot with the widest f-stop as possible so you can capture as much light, and as many stars as you can. For me this was f2.8; however, if your widest f-stop is f4.5 then go with that.

Shutter Speed - a good starting point is always relative to your focal length. Basically whatever your focal length is that will be your shutter speed in seconds. In my case I was at 24mm so the closest shutter speed was 25 seconds, which is where I started. I ended up bumping it to 30 seconds as I got a bit more light, and the overall exposure looked better to me. Again, take a few different exposures so you have some options later on.

ISO - I set mine to 2500. Again you want to capture as much light as possible and this is a good starting point. However, if your widest f-stop is f4.5 you may want to push the ISO a stop or 2 higher than 2500. If you need to go higher after your first exposure then you bump bit by bit until you get something that looks good.

Remember, this is all about your exposure triangle of aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. With your f-stop at its widest you only have shutter speed and ISO to play with to adjust your exposure. So start with some base settings and make adjustments along the way to see what works for you.

One last thing about trying to capture the Milky Way is that you really need to have a dark sky. I live near Toronto where there is a lot light pollution so I don't get to see the Milky Way a lot around home, if ever. However, Nelson is about 50 minutes south east of Las Vegas, basically out in the middle of nowhere...no cell service, and no light pollution. You could see the Milky Way with the naked eye, which was really cool! So basically get as far away from a major city as possible and you'll be in a good shape for some serious star gazing.

So that's it for "The Shoot & The Gear" in this series. Stay tuned for the final installment, "The Post," where I'll show how I post processed the final image.

Cheers!

DC

"The Shot" Part 1 - Milky Way Over Nelson

OK folks, time for another instalment of The Shot, The Shoot and the Gear, and The Post. This is where I post a photo, then follow up with the how I shot it and the gear used, and finally my post processing to create the final image.

In this instalment I actually have two shots, one landscape and one portrait. I like to shoot both sometimes and decide late which one I like better. In this case I'm leaning towards the landscape orientation as my favourite, as the foreground adds a nice element to the overall scene. But you can decide which one you prefer.

Stay tuned for the next post!

Cheers!

DC

Haleakala - House of the Sun

Haleakala (House of the Sun) on the island of Maui, a truly amazing place above the clouds. If you get the chance to go then take it, but also take some patience as the drive to the top is a long and winding road. (The image above is looking west at the peak of Mauna Kahalawai in the West Maui Mountains).

The peak stands at 10,023 feet and looks out over a barren wasteland of volcanic rock. Getting up there does take some time as the road is very slow going. The speed limit on the Haleakala Highway in most places is between 15 and 20 mph and there are lots of blind turns (I counted somewhere around 30 blind hairpin turns), but about half way up you begin to rise above the clouds, which is really cool.

If you're not use to altitude then you'll definitely begin to feel it. We stopped at the visitor centre at around 7000 feet to use the bathroom, and as soon as I got out of the car I could feel how thin the air was; a bit more difficult to get a full breath and a slight pressure in my chest.  Up at 10,000 feet was very noticeable. You do get used to it, but you have to take slow deep breaths. It can be very disconcerting if you haven't experienced it before.

We also got really lucky with the weather. We had a clear day, very little wind and no rain. I have heard of other's experiences up there in the blowing wind and rain, and very cold temperatures. When we left Ka'anapali the thermometer in the car read 82F (27C), at the summit it read 49F (9C). I suggested to my my wife that she should bring her winter mittens, we already had our winter coats going down there from Canada in February. I was pretty ok in a t-shirt and hoodie, and my wife was happy to have had her winter coat and mittens.

So make sure you put this on your travel bucket list...it is worth the drive, trust me!

Cheers!

DC

In the Nick of Time!

You have less than 2 minutes to capture a perfect sunset...don't screw it up! 

Sometimes you see a gorgeous sunset, and it’s always slowly slipping away. This was the case for this image…and I almost missed it! 

My wife and I recently vacationed in Maui. On this day we had just returned from visiting Pearl Harbor on O’ahu and were driving back from the airport. We were heading west along highway 30 and the sun was slowly going down. We were on the twisty turny section of road between Maalaea and Lahaina and there was not really a safe place to pull over.

We continued to watch the sun going down and I was getting a bit anxious because I wanted to pull over and grab a few shots before it left for the day. We had just come out of the twisting section of road, and just as the sun was almost touching the horizon a left turn lane presented itself…like it was saying here’s your chance take it or leave it! 

Now for the record, being safe should always be paramount to getting a photo. I mean there is a sunset every night so it’s not worth causing an accident. However, judging by the way others were driving some just don’t care about safety…sigh!

So we pulled off (safely) and I scrambled out of the car, grabbed my camera from my bag in the back seat, and moved quickly to find a spot (by the way the sound silencers on the Think Tank Photo Retro 7 make it easy to get into your bag quickly). By this time the bottom of the sun had already started to drop below the horizon. Just to give you sense of timing my first shot was at 6:23:36 pm and my last shot after sun dropped below the horizon was 6:25:25 pm, so less than 2 minutes. This shot was taken right in the middle at 6:24:38 pm.

I was shooting with a Nikon D810 with the 28-300mm lens. I really didn’t check all of my settings because I was moving pretty quickly. But I do remember doing 3 things…on the run…AF switch on, check (it can get moved going in and out of the bag), VR on, check (shooting handheld with 300mm lens), and I also switched off bracketing mode that I was using earlier. 

I began shooting and made a couple of exposure adjustments on the fly. But I totally forgot to check my ISO so it was still at 100. Aperture was at f6.3 and I had dropped the EV Comp by 1/3 of a stop. When all was said and done I realized that I got away with 1/400^th shutter speed…whew! This shot was racked out at 300mm so having turned the VR on earlier was helpful for additional stabilization.

Sometimes you have to move quickly and make adjustments on the fly, and then hope that you made the critical choices. I was lucky that I got away with it…this time!

Cheers!

DC