Got caught with a rookie mistake. This is absolute proof that experience and hubris are no match for the laws of physics. I was assembling a project for a recent issue of The Lipka Journal. The project contained landscape photographs with a rare combination of weather, light and location. I was fascinated by this and instead of calling out to stop for photo opportunities, I just opened the window and fired away. “Ha,” I thought, “even though we are speeding down the highway, a fast shutter speed will freeze the motion.”
Apparently not.
All the foregrounds were not as sharp as the backgrounds. I did not notice this huge flaw in the excitement of the editing process. Once the full frame images were displayed full size the flaws were obviously apparent. I solved the problem by cropping out quite a bit of the foreground and not using some other images. The project became much smaller because there is no reason to show work that is introduced with, “I’m really happy with this except…”
This August I took a (non-photographic) bus tour of Glacier National Park and the Banff area. Of course that involved leaving the hotel at 8:30, speeding from scenic spot to scenic spot with 15 minute photo-ops, and being back to the hotel in time for dinner. I had never tried shooting from a moving vehicle, but assumed a 1/500th shutter would work. So I had several hundred throw-aways with blurry tree foregrounds and nice mountain backgrounds. But I enjoyed the trip, and my wife picked it out, so she was happy too.
Posted by: Harry | January 12, 2023 at 04:36 PM