BAYFIELD REFLECTIONS

November 28, 2021  •  Leave a Comment

Three New Images! 

Hard to believe it, but here I am adding new content! I know, I really am walking the walk when it comes not focusing on quantity! But, keep reading to see the three new images that I just uploaded to the website. 

A Summer (and Fall) of Boating, and Little Photography

As acknowledged in my last post, I have not been shooting much. My interest and energy have focused on fully enjoying boating this summer, after relocating our cabin cruiser to Bayfield Wisconsin this past spring. This has been compounded by the fact that, this fall, we bought a "new" (33-year old) boat, which will be quite the renovation project, and is keeping us quite busy. That's a whole other story, and if you are interested in following along (on something completely non-photography related), I invite you to check our our blog here: Aboard Idilio blog.

Enjoying the Water, and Capturing What is Offered

While I didn't set out shooting much, I did at times bring my camera along, and often found myself pointing it at the water. The images below were all captured hand-held, as they were shot either from the moving boat, or from the floating (moving) docks. Honestly, I didn't even bring the tripod with me most weekends, I just brought my camera along with my stabilized Canon EF70-300 f/4-5.6L IS USM telephoto lens. As Becca often does, she caught me as I was photographing all three images. On the left, I am shooting around sunset as we cruised back to Bayfield from Stockton Island on a beautiful quiet evening. I captured "Molten Sunset" then. On the right, I am walking the docks during one of our last weekends there. We were in the process of "moving out of the boat" and loading up the car, and I stopped to explore compositions of the reflected colors along the shoreline. 

"Molten Sunset" was one of many, many, photos I took over a span of twenty minutes during that cruise. The water is ever-changing, and it's almost impossible to identify compositions, as they immediately disappear right before your eyes. I took more of a trial-and-error process, exploring with shooting water at different distances, and focal lengths, until I found a balance that delivered images with just the right amount of abstraction and interest. 

Molten SunsetMolten Sunset

"Fall Palette" was a surprising composition to find, in real shallow waters (just a few inches) right by where the docks connect to the parking lot. It was the strong diagonal lines of the trunks that caught my attention, but it's how these lines separate areas of different colors that really makes the image for me. 

Fall PaletteFall PaletteAbstract reflections of Fall colros on the waters of Lake Superior. "Season's Edge" marks the first time I am happy with the results of using a slow shutter to artistically blur reflections while retaining enough detail. I've tried this technique quite a few times, but am usually dissatisfied with the results. I had to get creative with the camera angle, and the rotation at which I present the image, to achieve the composition below. 

Season's EdgeSeason's EdgeFall colors reflected on the waters of Lake Superior, in Bayfield, Wisconsin. Technical Details

The first image, "Molten Sunset", was captured at 300mm, using ISO 400, an aperture of f/8, and a shutter speed of 1/1600 sec. I likely could have used a lower ISO and still achieved a sharp image, but I was focusing on finding compositions and did not want to be continuously adjusting the ISO in this situation, so I set it conservatively for the whole session. 

The second image, "Fall Palette", was captured at 59mm, using ISO 800, an aperture of f/4.5, and a shutter speed of 1/200 sec. I really had to push the ISO and aperture a bit here, as longer exposures dissolved the lines that make the composition work. 

The third image, "Season's Edge", was framed at 70mm using ISO 400, an aperture of f/9, and a shutter speed of 1/50 sec. Note that in this case, 1/50 of a second is slow enough to create the desired abstraction, and longer shutter speeds resulted in images that were too undefined (and just looked blurry.) 

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