Yellowstone—Revisited #1

 

In August, JD and I are going to Montana/Wyoming to photograph my nephew’s wedding/Yellowstone. 

I do not professional photograph weddings; so, my knowledge about the subject is very limited.  I have been watching a lot of YouTube videos on wedding photography, but, I am not sure I really understand what the “Boss” (JD, my bride, for those new to the blog) has gotten me into.  The wedding is in Sydney, Montana—a somewhat hard difficult destination from Houston. 

After the wedding, we plan to drive to Yellowstone National Park (my absolute favorite national park).  Over the weekend, I started reviewing my photographs from our last visit to Yellowstone in September 2006.  

At that time, I was using a Nikon D200, which I considered the best camera I had ever used.  All the RAW images in my Lightroom Catalog were processed in Lightroom 2 or 3.  Looking over the photos, I soon realized just how far cameras and Lightroom have progressed since then.  WOW!  What a change. 

Today’s photo is my favorite from my last visit to Yellowstone.  As far as back story, the only thing that I remember is that I had used a graduated neutral density filter to tone down the sky. 

Enjoy. 

Camera settings:  Nikon D200, 24-70mm f/2.8 at 26mm, ISO 400, f/22 at 1/13^th of a second on a tripod. 

Post Processing: 

Lightroom 5—applied Nikon Vivid preset, set white and black points, added clarity, sharpness and vibrance and burned top and bottom of photo using the adjustment brush.

Brazos Bend State Park and Alligators

You cannot go to Brazos Bend State Park and not come back with a few photos of alligators.  In reality, alligators are not really that exciting to photograph.  Still, I always photograph them when I am at the park. 

This young male alligator was lifting his head out of the water and roaring.  He was in a vocal war with an older and much larger alligator. I wanted to capture him coming out of water and doing “his thing”, but I also wanted to create a little mood to the photo.  Luckily, he swam from the shade to a pocket of light. So, I waited until he got to the light and took about ten shots of him in the light. 

To me, this photograph is as much about the light as it is about the alligator.

Enjoy. 

Camera settings:  Nikon D800 (DX format), 80-400mm f/4.5~5.6 at 600mm (effectively), ISO 400, f/8 at 1/350^th of a second on a tripod. 

Post Processing: 

Lightroom 5—applied Nikon Vivid preset during import, set white and black points, added clarity, sharpness and vibrance and burned top and bottom of photo using the adjustment brush.

Looking for Photographs

Sometimes, I just see no photographs in front of my eyes.  Such was the case one day at Brazos Bend Park.  I had walked up and down this one path three times.  I saw nothing that I wanted to photograph.  Then I sat down and just starting staring at the lake.  I immediately noticed how the light reflected off the water and onto the underside of the water plants.

Wow, how did I miss that? 

In today’s photograph, I wanted it to be about shapes and colors.  

Enjoy. 

Camera settings:  Nikon D800 (DX format), 80-400mm f/4.5~5.6 at 600mm (effectively), ISO 1600, f/13 at 1/4000^th of a second on a tripod. 

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 5—applied Nikon Vivid preset during import, set white and black points, added clarity, sharpness and vibrance and increased saturation of blue, green and yellow.

What Do I Think of the Nikon AF-S 80-400mm f/4.5~5.6 VR II—Part 4

 

One of the things that I did not mention in my last post is the lens’ bokeh.  It is very soft and pleasing to the eye.  It makes it very easy to separate the subject from the background, even at apertures like f/8 or f/11.
I like the lens a lot but I will say, like almost every piece of equipment that I add to my camera bag, there is a leaning curve to it.
Would I recommend you purchase the lens?  If your needs are similar to mine, yes.  I think it is a reasonable substitute for the large, heavy and expensive telephoto lenses.
Today’s photo was taken in JD’s garden.  Dragonflies tend to fly off and then fly back to the same spot.  This one did exactly that.  I set my camera at almost its minimum focusing distance for the lens.  The photo has not been cropped—it is full frame image of what was captured in the camera.  I wanted to show the dragonfly's brilliant rd/orange colors against the green backgrounds.
Enjoy. 
Camera settings:  Nikon D800 (DX format), 80-400mm f/4.5~5.6 at 600mm (effectively), ISO 1600, f/22 at 1/4000^th of a second on a tripod. 
Post Processing: 
Lightroom 5—applied Nikon Vivid preset during import, set white and black points, added clarity, sharpness and vibrance.

What Do I Think of the Nikon AF-S 80-400mm f/4.5~5.6 VR II—Part 3

 

Back to the evaluation of the Nikon AF-S 80-400mm f/4.5~5.6 VR II.

Ken Rockwell writes reviews of equipment and he said:

“This new Nikon 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6 AF-S VR is a big, expensive lens that's super sharp, focuses fast and has a great image stabilization for hand-held shots at foolishly long exposure times. It focuses as close as most 80-200mm f/2.8 zooms.

“For those of you looking for the ultimate long Nikon zoom, this new 80-400 VR is it.”

You can read his review of the lens here.

I am not that experienced with long lenses, so I will take Ken’s word on how the lens compares with other long lenses.

As to my experience of the  lens’ overall performance, I would have to rate it as Excellent.  It focuses fast in most light but does sometimes have a little problem in low light.  The lens is very sharp at f/8 through f/16.  But at lower and higher apertures, I find the results to be not quite as good.  The VR II works extremely well and it allows you to hand-hold shots at much slower shutter speeds than you might expect; however, I must admit that I find my best shots at the higher shutter speeds, which means, it’s the photographer, not the lens that is having problems.

Today’s shot is from Brazos Bend State Park and was taken on a very windy day.  The lens tracked the dragonfly perfectly and I found that most of the shots were in perfect focus.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D800 (DX format), 80-400mm f/4.5~5.6 at 600mm (effectively), ISO 800, f/5.6 at 1/1000^th of a second on a tripod.

Post Processing:

Lightroom 5—applied Nikon Vivid preset during import, set white and black points, added clarity, sharpness and vibrance and added some sharpness.

America—Happy 237th Birthday

 

Two points.
Recently, I was at a dinner party in which the conversation turned to the state of our country.  Several people commented that Europe seems to better understand the world because their countries are older and wiser about things.  For one of the few times in my life, I did not say anything, but I thought:  (a) when does a country start being a country—in our case, I believe it was when we adopted our Constitution on September 17, 1787.  In contrast, the French Revolution did not proclaim France (probably considered by many around the table as one of the oldest and wises of countries) a republic until September 1792 and since that date, France has rewritten its constitution four times (1793, 1795, 1946 and 1958).  Our constitution is the second oldest constitution in the world; and, (b) if the most advanced society the world has ever seen cannot become wise in over 200 years, then I question the definition of “wise.” 
My second point regards the great wonder of how the foundation for our country was laid on July 4, 1776.  On the 150^th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, I think Calvin Coolidge summed up why the formation of our country was so different than any other country when he said: 
“It was not because it was proposed to establish a new nation, but because it was proposed to establish a nation on new principles, that July 4, 1776, has come to be regarded as one of the greatest days in history.  Great ideas do not burst upon the world unannounced. They are reached by a gradual development over a length of time usually proportionate to their importance.  This is especially true of the principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence.  Three very definite propositions were set out in its preamble regarding the nature of mankind and therefore of government. These were the doctrine that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that therefore the source of the just powers of government must be derived from the consent of the governed. 
“If no one is to be accounted as born into a superior station, if there is to be no ruling class, and if all possess rights which can neither be bartered away nor taken from them by any earthly power, it follows as a matter of course that the practical authority of the Government has to rest on the consent of the governed.  While these principles were not altogether new in political action, and were very far from new in political speculation, they had never been assembled before and declared in such a combination. But remarkable as this may be, it is not the chief distinction of the Declaration of Independence. . . . 
“It was the fact that our Declaration of Independence containing these immortal truths was the political action of a duly authorized and constituted representative public body in its sovereign capacity, supported by the force of general opinion and by the armies of Washington already in the field, which makes it the most important civil document in the world.” 
I think that no other country in the world has been  formed with these principles as its foundation. 
Happy Birthday, America.