Wallace Koopmans Artlog

A walk a long the Trans Canada trail in Burnaby B.C. gave some interesting industrial views.  I shot these all with the Nikon P7000 which is much improved in operation since the latest firmware update (Version 1.2).  One of the problems addressed by this update was the focus system.  It is the one area that really caused me issues particularly focus at the long end of the zoom. Previously it often failed to lock focus despite having a good contrasty subject and lots of light.  Now the camera focuses without problem at all focal lengths. Also improved is it’s ability to focus in low light, and the overall speed of focus. It really can’t be over stated this is a major update that anyone with a P7000 should consider doing. The P7000 has become my default carry everywhere camera with it’s very effective 6.0 to 42.6mm  (28-200 equivalent) zoom.  The P7100 that replaced it uses the same lens and sensor so while it may have improved operation the final result will be the same, for this reason the P7000 is an excellent deal while they are still available and I would buy another one despite all the other cameras competing in this class.

This poor post has been sitting waiting for months, everytime it’s turn comes up I write something else, so in the spirit of the season. Here you go little post off into the world with you.

Sometimes photography can be as simple as sharing something that you saw, these clouds caught my attention and I wanted to share.  As simple as that.

I really liked all the font’s that many of the hotels and apartments in Oahu used for their signage as well as the patination of the materials.

More images from Oahu, this time with buildings as the focus.

Among my many trip pictures are some less personal ones that I thought were worth sharing.  These images all have the ocean in common.

On a recent holiday I was struck by the number of balconies at the various hotels and the repeating patterns that they made.  While I didn’t devote much time to photography these were easy and all around.

Well I could call October the month of the cell phone picture with all the images I took and posted to Mytubo, but I still managed to shoot some film and also some digital images too with my Nikon P7000.  I think that the social photo sharing is actually sharpening my photo skills, due to the effort of coming up with new original imagery, but I am not the best judge of that.  It’s up to the other users of Mytubo to decide whether they “LIKE” my images or not.

If you can just pick up a camera and take a great picture you can stop reading now.  If you are like the rest of us and have to work at creating images by all means read on.  Sometimes something will catch your eye and present a good opportunity to create an image, but the first click of the shutter may not meet your expectations.  It can be a good idea to look at what you want to take a picture of and consider how moving around and changing angles will effect the scene.  If you find it difficult to envisage how something will look then take a picture and look at it on your LCD. I am assuming your using a digital camera, I mean who still uses film, right? 

 You can effect a photograph a great deal in post processing and even by cropping but by getting a composition that works to start it will ultimately yeild a better image.  On the technical side consider; is what you intended to be in focus truly in focus, is there unwanted motion blur, are there other settings that are wrong such as ISO?  If your pleased with the technical then it’s time to consider composition. Did you have a point of interest and is it in the best location within the frame?  Are there elements in the image that you don’t want and can they be eliminated by changing your view point?  There are many more questions that you can put to your self , but by engaging in the evaluation of your image you are on the path to creating better ones.  What you don’t want is to do this thinking later at the computer when there is nothing you can do to improve things, or that requires editing that would not have been otherwise necessary.

For this image I started with a horizontal composition that didn’t really work.  The sign took up to much of the frame and the sky wasn’t really a factor.  The next image was another horizontal capture but this time I put the sign in the bottom left corner, still not as good as it could be and wires cut across the bottom corner.  This is when I realized that by pointing the camera up and vertically I could include more of the cloud, making a more dramatic sky.  The final decisions I made where during processing the file into an in camera jpg.  I applied correction for the slight barrel distortion and increased the contrast and saturation to make the sky stand out.  The final thing was to add a black border which I liked as it mirrored the frame of the sign.

Here is the photographic sequence I described, on the path to this image.