Saturday

River Walk: Town Asleep at 0430.

Splendid river walk for well over two hours today, 430AM to 715AM.  Chicago Area Sea Kayakers are correct.  The river is flooded into the parks in St. Charles and Geneva, and the park is closed with barricades.  The river, except above the dams, is very swift.  Paddling upstream would not be be possible in the narrows, under bridge, and toward any dam (PaddleUpStream, bruce, and Magicpaddler know what I mean, like the stretch below the Carpentersville Dam.... we'd never make it today).

The sunrise was purple varigation today, and I caught much of it on my DSLR.  Took out the 50mm prime lens, and learned more about photography on my own in 160 minutes than I have in all the other time working the camera.  Zoom with the legs, shutter speed, etc.  Very hard, for instance, to take a photo of anything bright, like a window, when everything around it (like the house itself) is in the dark.  The lighting contrast is too extreme, even for a f1.4 lens.  I really do enjoy the 50mm prime (effectively 85mm on my cropped sensor), just as my brother said I would.  I'm going to see if my neighbors want me to take their photos sometime so I can work on my portraiture skills.  A glorious day ahead.  Although alone time is fabulous for airing out the cobwebs, it's super to have friends and loved ones.  I'm truly blessed.

2 comments:

White Ford Falcon said...

Good for you getting out there, brother --- as you realized all the books in the library cannot replace a few hours of hands-on photography experience.

Your beautiful 50mm lens and new camera can teach you lots. The key is to take time to review each picture to understand why it worked or didn't work -- both technically and artistically.

Sounds like one technical lesson for today was recognizing that a camera simply cannot resolve large differences in lighting in a single frame. No camera can match the dynamic range of the human eye... which adds to the complexity of capturing the beautiful scenes and subtle lighting situations that you will see.

Keep up the great work!!

Coolkayaker1 said...

Thanks, brother!

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