As the year gets kicked off so does this new website. It’s slowly taking shape, like many things it’s a labor of love and it takes some time. Beginning to blog on a consistent basis will be something not entirely new. A few years back I used to blog back before it was called blogging! So it hopefully won’t take me too long to get back in the saddle with the concept of blogging.
Now one of my goals as the year was drawing to an end was to go and shoot on New Years Day. I ended up heading to the Palos Verdes Peninsula here in Southern California to shoot the Point Vincent Lighthouse at sunset. Upon arriving there, the parking lot was packed, which wasn’t all that unexpected considering it was a holiday. But as I parked I could hear the people standing along the railing along the cliffs edge gasping and cheering. Not sure what was going on I rushed over to the railing to see what all the excitement was about. Whales!
Yes, whales in the water and not that far out. Standing up on the cliff gave us a unique vantage point. So I ran back to the truck and got out my gear. Now I wasn’t planning on shooting anything long. With Landscapes in mind, I pretty much am always shooting wide, and though I have long lenses, they most often stay at home as I would never have thought about there being whales to shoot. The longest lens I had was a DX lens, an 18-200mm Nikon lens that is a nice all around lens I keep on one of my backup camera bodies. On a DX body, that equates to about 320mm in length. Not too bad, and the whales were in pretty close.
Taking my Nikon D800 I used the DX 18-200mm lens in the DX crop mode. I haven’t really had a chance to try out that DX crop mode, but I do have to say, it worked to perfection! It allowed me to get in nice and close and I still was left with a 15.4mp image. That is pretty sweet! So even though I am not all that into wildlife photography, it was so fun to start out the year shooting those whales. It was totally unexpected, but it was also totally fun! And what we do as photographers should be fun. We should enjoy shooting!
A couple of lessons to learn here. Be sure to know the capabilities of the camera you are shooting with, so that when unexpected opportunities arise, you are able to take advantage of them. Second, keep your eyes and your mind open to what else is around you. Don’t be afraid to try something new.
If this is your first time visiting my website, I hope you decide to stick around and join me in this journey as we pursue capturing the wild light.
Jim