Tamron Blog: Angle of View

Diptych: Nature vs. Industry

by Jillian Bell

I took a photograph this summer of a plant eaten away by an insect of some sort. I was drawn to the repetition of shape, and how precise the wear marks were. I was curious what made the marks, and why there were spaces, creating the letter "i". Recently, while at a sale day at Dodd Camera in Ohio, I looked up and saw a similar pattern. If you can believe it, the second photo is taken of a fluorescent light fixture hanging above the counter. I cannot say if I was entirely successful, but I tried taking the second photo to mimic the first one. I did not have the first photograph in front of me, but my first thought was how similar these two objects are even though their makeup and purposes are completely different. The photograph of the plant leaf was taken with the Tamron SP 180mm F3.5 Macro at F/4 and 1/30^th of a second. I like it better in color but decided to show in B&W to relate both images better. The fluorescent light photograph was taken with the Tamron 18-270mm VC PZD at F/6.3 and 1/2500^th of a second. Exposure was set +0.05 to allow the whites to really pop. This is a true testament in keeping your eyes open. I have learned to always keep my camera on me. I never know when I will find something interesting to photograph. Thank you for reading.

The Unexpected Guest

by André Costantini

This year the Christmas tree came from the backyard and on the evening that we put it up I noticed a gigantic spider or rather a gigantic shadow from a tiny spider as it walked over the tree lights. But with so many lights trying to find the actual spider became an exercise in futility. And I went to bed knowing that at least the spider was tiny. The next morning I heard some rustling towards the top of the tree and my mind immediately drifted to those urban myths of cactuses exploding with thousands of spiders. So I was somewhat surprised to see a butterfly, who apparently found it warm enough to emerge and thus our Christmas butterfly was born or maybe more accurately had arisen.

My internet detective work led me to believe that the butterfly is an Eastern Comma, on account of the comma like slit in the wings and the coloration. He or she, as I am not in the business of distinguishing the gender of butterflies, was quite cooperative as a subject landing on the finger of my fiance and exposing the innards of it's wings. The butterfly has taken a liking to the bedroom window in the afternoons and the outside of the window curtain in the evenings. She has been with us for four weeks now and seems quite content, especially when some birds unsuccessfully attempted to eat her through the window. But I digress, on the first day of our acquaintance, I was compelled to photograph my new friend. And of the 120 or so images I shot, came a collage, a portrait and an abstract of the butterfly in the tree.

All images were taken with the Tamron SP 60mm F/2.0 macro lens. The collage images were taken at 1/100-125th of a second at 1600 ISO f3.3. The images themselves are not manipulated other then erasing the edges to soften them and laying them out together. Because of the depth of field and the movement of the butterfly with respect to the shutter speed, some blur occurred, resulting in an image that resembles painting. The portrait was 1/125 ISO 800 f3.3 and is two images combined together to increase the depth of field and create more planes of sharpness. Butters in the tree was 1/80th ISO 8000 f4.0. I focused the lens to its closest focus point to get the tree lights to blur into nice round circles and then moved around to get the butterfly silhouette in the foreground.

Sometimes the unexpected guest can become the center of attention, especially when it is a butterfly in your living room in mid December in the northeast of America.

What’s in your own backyard?

by Rob Moody

We’ve been getting a bit of snow in Colorado lately. One morning as I was drinking my coffee, I noticed that the snowfall from the night before looked very interesting on the trees against the blue sky. Doing presentations to the public, I often get statements like, “You live in Colorado and it’s hard to take a bad picture there.”

While I admit I’m closer to the action when it comes to nature photography, you would be surprised what’s in your own backyard. Often times we think we need to travel to a far off land to take great pictures. You are used to your surroundings and don’t find them as photographically interesting as that distant far off land. However, I might however come to your neighborhood and find it incredibly interesting to photograph.

Shooting in familiar surroundings causes you to actively seek out interesting photographs. This is a great exercise. Take a fresh look in your backyard… you might be surprised what you find. All images were taken with a Tamron 18-270 VC PZD Lens.

Adventures with Tamron : Holidazzle

by Jillian Bell

This post is a little late for the holidays, but still worth sharing.

Celebrating it's 20th season this winter, the Holidazzle Parade brings a festive reason to venture out into the cold. It is sponsored by local businesses and is made up of about 15 floats, choirs singing, marching bands, and of course an appearance by Santa Clause to finish off the night. It runs Thursday - Sunday the weekend after Thanksgiving until the weekend before Christmas. Holidazzle is rather unique in the fact that each float, and those walking in the parade are completely covered by lights, glitter, and costumes. The excessive light displays are essential because here in MN the sun is setting by 5:00pm. It has a family friendly atmosphere, all of the floats have storybook themes and if it's too cold, there is plenty of hot cocoa, or a sky way system to watch from above. Personally, I am a fan of holiday light displays. There is a challenge to get good exposure having high contrast, and moving subjects, but I think these turned out well. The exposure for these images floated right around F6.3 @ 1/60th of a second, with my ISO ranging from 1000-3000. For best results, keep your camera on manual mode and under expose by a full stop. Once you figure out what exposure the scene is, setting the camera in Manual over Aperture, Shutter priority, or another mode will keep your exposure consistent. Keep the same rule of thumb for photographing holiday lights on your home. Underexpose slightly, but in this case, you can use a very low ISO to reduce noise, and achieve better detail. Tripods are a must for this application. My favorite part of all these photos, is how vivid the colors are. I don't decorate much at my house, so being able to celebrate the season by other means is appreciated. Wishing you well, whichever season you are celebrating. Thank you for reading.

Indoor Flower Photography

by Mike Moats

Yesterday I headed to a local florist and picked up a couple pots of Cyclamen flowers. Very nice designed flower but can be difficult to find a nice comp sometimes.

Here is the pot of white Cyclamens I was working with.

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Here is my setup to shoot. LOL, nothing fancy, it's just the stairway in the foyer. The large window on top floods the area with really nice even light.

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I used the natural light and no LED lighting on these images. I have my plamp used for holding the flower. Shooting with my Tamron SP 60mm Macro. I like using the short focal length in the house as I need to work close on the stairway. I varied the f/stops shooting wide open at f/2.0 for a soft look and then at f/22 for more depth of field. I ended up liking the full depth of field images best.

Here is the first image with no processing.

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This is an image I posted on Facebook and many commented thinking it was done with lighting. This look is from the "Solarization" filter in Nik Software Color Efex Pro 4. I added a little of "Vignette Blur" filter around the edges. That's it, no special lighting.

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Here is another version of the same subject shot wide open at 2.5. Also with "Solarization" with different adjustments.

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I shot quite a few different angles and compositions, but these two I liked the best. Here is the original with no processing.

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I wanted to have one image with a nice bright white on white, so used the "High Key" filter in Nik Color Efex 4.

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With the second version I went back to the "Solarization" filter again and got a nice defined look.

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Adventures in Tamron: My Old House

By Jillian Bell

A common thread in my photography is simply searching for inspiration in everyday life. In this blog we are attempting to find inspiration within a stressful situation. I have the pleasure to live in a historic Victorian home, built in 1905. It has always been my intention to fix it up and hopefully sell it in a few years. As all "home improvement" projects go, I am six years into it, and nowhere near the end. Honestly, I was used to the look of half finished projects and desperately needed some energy to finish. To my surprise I was about to get that added energy. May 22, 2011 a tornado flew over my house and cosmetically damaged most of the interior and exterior walls. Six months later, it is December. The siding and roofing has been taken care of. Moving to the interior walls, construction teams have completely gutted the walls revealing only studs. I am thankful being a Technical Representative for Tamron. This opportunity allowed a 2 month hotel stay to happen seamlessly. I go back to the home from time to time, taking photographs of the progress for my scrapbook. There was one day, I was wandering around, cannot say if it was the lighting, or just stepping into the same scene with a new perspective, but I found my inspiration. It started with the first shot, a lonely lamp in the middle of an open floor plan. Maybe this symbolizes hope? (or) coming from a theater background, it's a ghost lamp, always on, giving light into an empty house. The next two are of the old radiators covered in layer after layer of paint. The light coming through the window caught my eye, and the pipe sticking straight out of the floor created a great vertical line. In all the photos below, I looked at the lines, and shapes created through the destruction. I contemplated turning them all B&W, thinking it would better reflect the 106 year old house. Overall, I converted only a few, to better show the lines and texture inside the frame. The next photo is of the floorboards from the room above. This is a forgotten storage space covered in layers of magazines for insulation. They were all from the 1920s, and randomly placed was a perfect portrait framed by a knot in the wood. The last photo is a view of the old chimney. I had never seen it not covered in sheet rock, and I was automatically drawn to the different layers of brick, cement, and wall paper. One of my biggest annoyances of the house when I was fixing it up was how many layers were on everything. Six or seven was common of paint and wallpaper. It was nice to see the walls stripped down. Overall, I have a rare look at the interior, unseen by anyone in decades. These photographs not only show progress, but show a glimpse of what the house used to look like. I went back today and new sheet rock was up, and I'll be picking out paint colors next week. It's amazing how drastically the same space can change in a few days.

As always, keep your eyes open for inspiration. Thank you for reading.

Beautiful old south setting, big, exciting, wild animals, and great weather...

By John VanSteenberg

It's no secret that the first hint of winter has been signaling its onset. So, last week, we did what most cold sensitive folks do; we headed south, to work in warm weather one last time.

We had three major objectives: 1) Do a presentation for the Greater New Orleans Camera Club. 2) Spend a day shooting images and loaning out lenses to practice what we discussed at GNOCC and just to have fun. 3) To visit dealers around town who were starting the holiday sales season.

Thursday night, Jeff Allen and I presented a two hour seminar about making the final image you capture match the image in your head when you are in the excitement of the moment at the scene. (Sort of a 'Beyond the 11 Simple Secrets'.) Friday we visited stores and scouted the fabulous location where we would meet Saturday (The New Orleans Audubon Nature Institute).

Here is a shot of us just before we opened up Saturday morning. We had planned a group photo, but right from the start, we were so busy and the participants so anxious to get started, we couldn't get it done.

Saturday, we had about 70 photographers show up and they borrowed over 200 individual lenses to try (an average of 3 each). The situation was ideal. The Audubon is visually spectacular and the weather was perfect.

The old live oaks, dripping with moss, created a beautiful 'deep south' backdrop to the event. The animals were active and entertaining. The photographers probably entertained them, too. The exhibits were easily accessible ad permitted great access to good vantage points.

by Jean Francis

by Linda Vinsanau

by Tom Longmire

by Tom Oelsner

by William Pino

We are presenting just a few of their images here. They have an entire gallery going up on "www.myphotoexhibits.com" too.

Right after the holidays, we are going to start a series of about 30 free in store classes to help people get the most out of their 2012 picture taking opportunities. Look for one of us at a store near you. We will also be at WPPI, Imaging USA several PSA camera club councils and PSA's National Convention and many other events around the country. Stop by and visit us, if you can. A complete and evolving list of our attendance is located at:"www.tamron-usa.com/events"

Looking forward to seeing you all in 2012.

John