Well, end of the weekend, almost time to return to the grind. We went camping for the weekend so I haven’t been near the computer to maintain a post a day pace…..although I’m not sure I ever committed quite to that anyways. So we went out to Giant City State Park, which is down near Carbondale. We were hoping to mix in some relaxation in our cool retro, new to us 1955 Silver Streak Jet camper trailer, along with some photographic adventure. Think off-brand airstream here. One of these days I’ll make a picture series about the trailer for the blog. I should probably be thankful we still have the trailer after my wife attempted to blow the trailer up by way of the propane stove/oven. That was our excitement for the weekend, but I’ll let my wife tell that story on her blog here when she gets a chance to post about it.
This was my first time down there, so wasn’t sure what to expect, and quite frankly the weather was such that I was definitely enjoying the relaxation part more than the adventure part. It was quite brisk and wet out, but it wasn’t so bad that it offered a dramatic background. Just cold, gray, windy, and damp. Weather forecast had painted a little bit better outlook for Saturday last I checked, but I guess that changed. Anyways, we limited our adventure to a couple unwitting, but willing four-legged subjects as well as a few abandoned farm structures. The dreary winter overcast skies I think lend themselves to exploring with black and white.
I’d guess at this point in time most all digital cameras (even point and shoot style), have an option of shooting in b/w. I would recommend though that if you are shooting with something that has the ability to shoot in RAW format, that you use this feature. This way you have the luxury of seeing the b/w results on the LCD screen as you shoot but the camera will also record the color information so that you have the ability to revert back to color if so desired later when you are viewing the pictures on the computer. If you shoot B/W in JPEG format, the camera will record only the B/W data and you won’t have as much creative room to maneuver later on.
This I think was my favorite of the bunch. This girl was the most inquisitive of the bunch and walked up and proceeded to attempt to eat my gloves (with my hands in them) and then my jacket. All in all though she added a bit of dramatic effect with the ultra wide-angle (UWA) lens. The UWA lenses tend to distort the up-close subjects a lot, especially at different angles; it’s an optics thing. When used right it can add some dramatic affect. The rest was handled in Adobe Lightroom by adjusting the contrast up a bit. Hope you enjoy.
- Canon 5d Mk II, ISO 125, Canon 16-35L MkII @ 16 mm, f8, 1/125 sec
