Some landscape photography books and websites claim that sunset photos are amateurish and should be avoided by true Landscape Photographers as they are plain boring.
Really?
One of the most inspiring views in our planet is an spectacular sunset, or a sunrise if we are early risers. It is no surprise that we all aim up our cameras to remember and to share the view. I’ve seen simulations of Martian sunsets and they look sad and nearly colorless. I will not be a colonist there, trust me. In the Moon, with no atmosphere, they are just black!
So here I am, sharing yesterday’s sunset in my corner of our beautiful planet. I hope you will find it as pretty as it looked to me!
An ultrawide lens (anything below 24 mm in 35 mm equivalent format) can provide a sweeping view of an open landscape, but I also find it important for crowded forest and tree covered environments.
The widest rectilinear lens I own is an 11 mm lens by Irix and it is an excellent lens, but these pictures are made with other lenses. They are landscapes I made while testing an ultra wide 11 mm lens by Venus Optics on my Z7 alongside a 12 mm Samyang fisheye lens. I no longer own either lens but the photos I made that afternoon are good representatives of what can be done with these optics.
One thing I sometimes dislike about ultra wide rectilinear lenses is that elements in the corners of the image can look too stretched, like sucked into the frame. Because of this, I sometimes actually prefer using a fisheye lens: when used carefully, one can can hide the strong deformation we associate with their extreme projection. By keeping the horizon near the center of the frame, it remains straight on a fisheye lens image. In other cases, the image can be reprojected (defished as some people call it) to avoid the curved corners.
You can be the judge now and decide if this approach works as I really wanted to include nearby elements from a restricted point of view: I was literally shooting from a barbed-wire fence in all the photos I show here.
Have you tried using fisheye lenses for landscape photos?
I have been honored to have a Black and White Photography Exhibition at the prestigious Calderón Guardia Museum in Costa Rica. Opening day on February 26 drew a large crowd of nice people and here are some snapshots from that night. Continue reading My Photo Exhibition in Costa Rica!→
In my post about nesting Least Grebes I said I would be showing photos of the distant birds taken with my 300mm lens and stacked 1.4X and 2.0X teleconverters. Here is a photo of one of the parents is about to feed a piece of crayfish to the chicks. Continue reading A happy family… with stacked teleconverters→
Ok, they only look like some fancy chocolate candies but actually are tiny butterfly(?) eggs. How small? The whole clutch measures 9 mm from side to side (a little over one third of an inch). Continue reading These are not chocolate candies!→
I must confess I wasn’t expecting Downtown Chicago to be as nice as it is: Wonderful architecture, great museums and parks. Very tourist-friendly. Continue reading Chicago and Olympus→
By chance I found on the same memory card photos of the Golden-Orb Weaver and the Nylon fishing lines from an Art Installation. They both belong in the same post of course! Continue reading Golden Orb-weavers and Art Installation→
Just as promised: Here is a selection of the body paint parade that took place as part of the Festival Flores de la Diáspora Africana 2019, Continue reading Body Paint Parade→
Some times five minutes is all you get! A brief rest during a body-paint parade gave me a chance of photographing two of the models. Brick wall by a sidewalk, shooting with my phone, their phone, my camera, dodging passersby… you get the idea. Continue reading Body Paint Photo Session: 5 min→
When somebody asks me how to use a new camera my advice is always: set it in one of the auto modes and shoot away for a few days. Let it show you what it can do. Enjoy it.