... Continued Nebraska-trip pics:
I got the opportunity to wander aimlessly for a couple of hours at Lake Cunningham. I brought both my cameras.
As a child, we used to call it "Dam Site 11." Sounds weird in retrospect, but that's just what everybody called it. A great place without a fancy name. "Our family is going to have a picnic today out at Dam Site 11." "Oh, cool!! can I come?" That sort of thing.
When I became a teenager, people started calling it "Glenn Cunningham Lake." I would frequent the area on occasion, sometimes to do weekend, high school reading assignments (I read a good chunk of Bram Stoker's "Dracula" there). But mostly it was to covertly meet groups of friends and Boone's Farm.
Now it's just called "Lake Cunningham." References to "Dam Site 11" are difficult to find or gone these days. I'm not sure how I feel about that.
Figure 1. Canadian Goose (
Branta canadensis).
Figure 2. Some sort of Mallard (
Anas platyrhynchos) I think.
I don't like my angle in the Mallard pic (See Fig. 2). They say when taking photos of birds in water, get as low as possible, such that your camera is just above the water. I didn't get low enough.
Figure 3. Lighthouse for the marina.
Figure 4. More Canadian geese.
If you were able to zoom in closely (you can't really do that on PF), you might notice that the central goose has a tag in its ankle/foot, probably for some sort of ornithological reason. But not all the Canadian geese had these tags.
Figure 5. One last Canadian goose. Notice no tag on its ankle.
Figure 6. Lake Cunningham.
While not in the above photo (see Fig. 6), the location where I was standing was littered with dog poop -- at least what I thought was dog poop at the time -- but it was probably goose poop. Lots of goose poop. I was wearing open-toed sandals that day and somehow managed not to step in any. Success!
Figure 7. "Dam Site 11" There. I called it that.
I think the above photo of the willow tree (See figure 7) is my favorite shot of the outing. I'm breaking a few "rules" of photographic composition here, in favor of other rules. I feel like a rebel.
Figure 8. "Nebraska field as seen from a moving vehicle." You can see a bit of blur in foreground corn rows due to the faster apparent motion of closer objects.
On the way home in the passenger seat of the car, I stopped down the aperture on the 50mm lens to f/5.6 or f/8 or some-such (I don't recall the specific value), adjusted the manual focus using the depth of field indicators engraved on the outside of the lens, to maximize depth of field for the given f/ stop (by aligning the infinity symbol with the chosen f/ stop).
Then I'd just put my camera up to the window, occasionally take a few shots (without even looking through the viewfinder), and hope for the best.
Above is one of the pictures that resulted (see Fig. 8). I think this one actually turned out pretty pleasing.
Unfortunately for dimwitted me, I neglected to manually increase the shutter speed. I don't know what I was thinking. I was in a moving car.
Of course there's going to be motion blur. I knew that. But for whatever reason, adjusting the shutter speed appropriately just didn't cross my mind.
Funny thing is I was close to neglecting -- maybe even deleting -- this photo, before I gave the group a second or third look, and finally noticed that there might be something there with this one. None of the others came out well, mostly due to motion blur.
So if you ever use this technique,
- Stop down the aperture to get the depth of field you want.
- Adjust your focus accordingly (manual focus).
- Don't forget, like I did, to also increase your shutter speed well beyond what it would be for normal handheld photos. (Unless you actually want the motion blur of nearby objects.)
Oh, and don't do this while driving.
More Nebraska pics to come ...
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