I had a business chat scheduled for 2:00 this afternoon, and at 1:30 I challenged myself to take a strange lens (in this case, my 300mm), walk out the front door, take a shot, and get it into Photoshop before the call started. Now, a 300mm lens is typically not the first lens you would choose for a nature study like this, but that was part of the fun. I walked down through my meadow and found all sorts of possible compositions, and the clock was ticking! In the next few minutes, I grabbed about five quick compositions, without even chimping. The shot that leads this post, is fine, but it’s really just a snapshot. The composition is pleasing, the overlapping ranges of dead trees in the background is interesting, and the long lens certainly makes the birch stand out as the main focus…so to speak. However, you could probably get nearly the same results with your smart phone.
The cream of the crop (<yes, that photo pun was intentional) was the image below of the little cluster of cinnamon ferns unfurling. It’s not a portfolio shot, and may not be quite as crisp as if I had fussed over the scene for a long time with a macro lens, but hey, I made a pretty good image and I didn’t miss my chat!
So, challenge accepted, and met!
Here’s the big Fickr version of the birch tree, and of the ferns.
Meta (for both images): Pentax K-3, 300mm f/4 lens at f/8, ISO 100, 1/30th of a second, no bracketing, no focus stacking, no chimping, just shoot and run
