Never Put Your Camera Away!

Like baseball, success in photography is all about statistics. In baseball, the more times you’re at bat, the better your average usually is. One simple rule for increasing your “stats” (percent keepers) in photography is to never put your camera away until you get “home”. (OK, enough with the baseball analogy)

I took this shot before Christmas as I was leaving McKinney Falls State Park, on my way back to Sugar Land. I had my camera on the car seat next to me and spotted this beautiful light just peeking through the clouds during the early evening. It was almost dusk and the sunlight was diffused by the clouds just enough to put the trees in silhouette and make the long grass “glow” when backlit.

Winter Fields – Austin, Texas
Copyright 2009 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture priority (Av) using an EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens tripod-mounted. The exposure was taken at 100mm, f/16 for 1/5th of a second at ISO 100 using a Singh-Ray 4-stop graduated neutral density filter. All post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3 Beta. Click on the image above for a larger version.

I grabbed my camera and took a few quick test shots through the window and then stopped my car right there on the side of the road. I setup my tripod and camera in less than a minute and started taking exposures using a polarizer at first and then finally using a graduated neutral density filter. I lost the sun in just a few minutes but that brief stop gave me the opportunity to capture some really nice shots that I would have normally driven right past if I hadn’t had my camera handy!

Posted in Photography Tagged: Canon, Canon 5D Mark II, McKinney Falls State Park, Photography, Texas Landscapes