I have to pick one of these photos to submit for the 2011 Photo Walk Competition. I would love to hear which one you think is best. Please leave a comment below.
Here is the link for more information about the Worldwide Photo Walk.
Thanks, Dan Waters
I was filling the Hummingbird feeder with sugar water when I noticed butterflies flying around the Hibiscus flowers. This might make a good photo opportunity, I set up my camera and waited. Before long the butterfly came and landed, as I was trying to focus and reframe it took off again before I got the photo.
Photo Tip
I remembered a photo tip I once read that said, spray sugar water on the flower and the insect will stay on the flower longer. I tried it and it worked like a charm. The butterfly landed and sat there for quite some time while I took a lot of photos. While it drank sugar water, I took photos, in the end we both benefited, it was a win-win situation.
I was able to capture this close-up photo with a Canon 500 D close-up filter on a 70 to 200 zoom lens. This filter allows the lens to focus much closer. I used a wide aperture, at F/6 .3 in order to control the depth of field and throw the background out of focus. A telephoto lens has a narrow angle of view which allows you to pick and choose what background is best suited to your subject. It also allows more working distance between you and skittish insects. Remember to keep your camera and sensor parallel to your subject while shooting close-ups, especially when trying to limit the depth of field.
This shot of the Monument to a Century of Flight was taken on a rainy evening. I used a wide-angle lens low to the ground in order to capture the whole monument. This was a long exposure, you can tell by the movement in the clouds and the trees.
I visited this monument on a sunny afternoon and took a few scouting shots. Since this is a monument to flight I thought it might be cool to show movement through the air. I envision this photo, as Ansell Adams said, “in my mind’s eye”. I waited for a cloudy evening with the wind blowing the clouds and trees to illustrate this concept. The dramatic light and the movement of the clouds reminds me of a modern day Stonehenge.
If you’re visiting the Outer Banks don’t overlook this hidden gem.
Here is a link for more information about the Monument to a Century of Flight and where it is located.
http://www.monumenttoacenturyofflight.org/
When I was 14 years old I was the designated, family photographer for camping trips our family went on every summer. My family fired me after that first summer trip when they found out I had only taken photos of the beautiful natural scenery we had seen and no people or family members. Even back then I preferred photographing nature instead of people
After that I took a photography course in high school and was mesmerized while watching the black-and-white photos come to life in the developing tray. I guess I’m showing my age. After high school my soon-to-be wife, Tina and I made a darkroom in my mom’s basement bathroom. My mom wasn’t too pleased to find her bathroom windows painted black to keep the light out. I can’t resist telling an old joke, people kidded that “Tina and I went into the dark room to see what develops”. I went on from there to print my own color cibichrome prints from slides.
After we moved to the Outer Banks I was looking for something I could do on my own to make a living and pottery fell into my lap. I’ve been a full-time potter for the last 16 years. During that time I made a lot of contacts with art galleries on the Outer Banks.
When digital photography finally came of age, it was a perfect fit for me, even though I missed the magic of seeing the prints come to life. I have always been interested in computers and Photoshop seemed to come naturally to me. I am still amazed at how quickly photography is changing in the digital age.
Three years ago, in 2009 I had just bought a new digital camera and was trying to convince my wife that I needed a new lens to go with it, when I came up with an argument claiming that the new expensive lens would be a business write-off. I had to make good on my claim and began selling photo cards and bookmarks to the same galleries that carried my pottery. That first year I was able to pay for my new lens and all of my equipment by selling cards and bookmarks. After that I started producing matted prints and teaching photo workshops.
Here are a few of my earlier photographs taken with Kodachrome slide film.
Some parts of the Outer Banks have been hit very hard. I personally know three friends that lost their vehicles in the floods from Hurricane Irene. There are many more like them that need your help!
Donate to the North Carolina Disaster Relief Fund, 100% of the money gets to the people that need it! Here is the link: http://www.ncdisasterrelief.org/
I captured these photos two days before Hurricane Irene slammed into the Outer Banks.
For the next 30 days, 50% of the sale of these two photos will go towards Hurricane Relief on the Outer Banks.
I have found a way to use this smoke from the large fires this summer to my advantage. It has been such a dry summer that we have had two large fires burning near the Outer Banks. These fires have been very hard to put out because they’ve been burning peat bogs. In some cases as deep as 8 feet underground.
While on my way to teach a photo workshop in Corolla I rolled down the car window and the smoke in the air started stinging my eyes, it was that thick. I continued on my way hoping the wind direction would change and clear the smoke. When I arrived at the Currituck Beach Lighthouse I noticed you could see the beam of light in the smoke. I have seen photos of light houses with the beam lit up like this, but I thought they were altered in Photoshop. Apparently you can see the beam of light in the fog also, I just haven’t been there in the right conditions. I rushed around before it was too light and was able to capture these two images.
It’s interesting how an adversity can become a positive help.
I have recently posted 26 new photos of the Outer Banks, NC. Thanks for looking.
We’ve all seen the trick that wedding and portrait photographers do, tilting the camera so the horizon is a diagonal across the frame. This trick can add interest to portraits, if used sparingly.
I have found tilting the camera in landscape photography usually seems contrived and trite, especially if the horizon is in the photograph.
Here is a situation where tilting the camera can help the composition and turn a so-so photo into a keeper. Close-ups of flowers with long stems lend themselves to this technique perfectly. Photographing long stem flowers level and keeping the stems perfectly vertical usually results in a static image. The stem tends to divide the photo, often down the middle of the frame in a unflattering manner. If you tilt the camera so the stem is coming out of the bottom left or right side of the photo you will turn a static image into a wow image. As long as the horizon is not in the frame no one will be able to tell that you tipped the camera. Who’s to say the flower didn’t grow that way? Another advantage to tilting the camera is that you are able to include more of the flower in the image, compared to capturing it vertically. It also creates wonderful leading lines, that leads the viewer’s eye into an image.
Tilting the camera is not only for portrait photographers, it is also a useful technique that can dramatically improve compositions of nature photographs as well.
This technique even works with other objects as long as the horizon is not in the photo. This pier piling was actually vertical, but by tipping the camera it made a more interesting photograph.
As Ansel Adams said, “You don’t take a photograph, you make it.”
Every Wednesday morning since May 24, I have been riding the ATV vehicle on the beach at Duck NC looking for sea turtle nests. I found one today July 6 2011. The tide was very low at six in the morning so there was no chance of me missing the tracks. The tracks and nest I found were from a loggerhead sea turtle. I feel pretty fortunate, some of the volunteers have been riding the beach searching for nests for four years and still haven’t found one. They say it’s unusual for a first year volunteer to find a nest.
A full-grown loggerhead sea turtle can weigh up to 300 pounds and reach 84 inches long. They are considered an endangered species and that is why the Network for Endangered Sea Turtles or N.E.S.T. volunteers ride the Outer Banks beach every morning in the summer from the Carova line to the end of South Nags Head searching for sea turtle nests. The volunteers ride the beach first thing in the morning because the turtles nest at night and it’s easier to spot a turtle crawl before footprints obscure it.
Nesting CycleA mature female sea turtle comes onto the Outer Banks beaches to lay 75-150 ping-pong sized eggs every three weeks during the nesting season. So the same turtle may make three or four different nests in one season (May – August). It may be up to three years before the turtle returns to nest again. The nest cavity is 18 – 22 inches deep and it it takes 55 to 80 days before the eggs start hatching. This incubation period depends on the temperature in the nest.
If the mother did not crawl far enough from the high tide line before nesting, or if the nest is near an escarpment, it must be relocated to a suitable spot. There are five types of turtles that nest on the Outer Banks, Loggerhead the most common, Green Sea Turtle, Kemp’s Ridley, Leatherback the largest, and Hawksbill.
Allow room for a nesting sea turtle to go about her business. Do not shine lights or use flash photography while she is nesting.
Be sure to turn off outside ocean facing lights, sea turtle hatchlings head toward the light and not towards the sea like they’re supposed to.
Do not disturb sea turtle nest markers. If you’re lucky enough to see turtle hatchlings do not pick them up or disturbed them as they make their way to the ocean.
Sand castles become turtle traps! Please fill in holes and flatten Sandcastle structures before leaving the beach.
Here is a link to the Network for Endangered Sea Turtles (N.E.S.T.) for more information:
http://www.nestonline.org/index.htm
When photographing lightning safety should be your first concern. I only photograph lightning when I can sit in the car while the camera is taking the photographs on a tripod near the car. Cars are a safe place in a lightning storm, be sure to keep the windows rolled up. Take lightning seriously, it is dangerous!
I use a short telephoto lens 70 mm to extreme wide-angle 16mm. You should have a lot of sky in your image, because that’s where the lightning is. I always mount my camera on a tripod and use a remote release that is able to lock in the on position, (almost all of them do). Set the camera to aperture priority, F8 or F11, and let the shutter speed fall where it will.
Early morning and late evening are the best times to photograph lightning because shutter speeds are longer and you will not have to take as many photos. Use an empty large memory card and set the camera to continuous shooting mode. Start shooting using the lock on the remote release and get back into the car. If the camera fills up the memory card before it records a lightning strike delete all the images and start over. Since rain usually accompanies lightning a plastic bag comes in handy to protect the camera and lens.
A lightning trigger, which opens the shutter at the instant the lightning flashes is the easiest way to photograph lightning in daylight hours. I believe they cost around $300 and I have not yet tried one. A polarizing filter will enable you to take a little longer exposures during daylight hours without a lightning trigger.
A bolt of lightning can travel at speeds up to 140,000 mph and can reach temperatures of 54,000°F, (hot enough to turn sand into glass, known as fulgurites which can be found on Outer Banks beaches. A 15 foot long piece of fulgurite was found in Michigan.). 54,000° F is six times hotter than the surface of the sun.
There are close to 16 million lightning storms in the world every year.
Thunder is the sound of rapidly expanding gases along the heated lightning strike.
Lightning is actually not much thicker than a pencil.
Lightning can strike the same place twice.
Lightning strikes the earth with an electrical discharge of approximately 100 million volts.
North Carolina ranks in the top 10 of the most dangerous US states with 629 deaths and injuries.
A car traveling on I-35 near Des Moines, IA was struck directly by a bolt of lightning. The car stopped dead in its tracks, but the startled driver was none the worse for wear. The car had major electrical damage, many small holes in its body, and all four tires eventually went flat. The roadway beneath the car had a yard wide, several inch deep crater. The driver’s first name was Rod and the most enduring effect of the incident is that his friends now insist in calling him Lightning Rod.
A very good website for more interesting Lightning facts:
http://www.sky-fire.tv/index.cgi/lightning.html#whatis
It’s best to photograph lightning from further away, a place with a long and expansive view would be perfect. You have to take a lot of photos to get a good one, but it’s worth it. I took over 60 photos to get these two and it was a fierce storm. It surprises me how few lightning photos there are compared to how many times lightning has struck. Be safe out there and have fun.
