Pink Water Lily Close-up

This close-up image of a pink water lily came about more or less by accident, rather than direct intent. We had gone out to a public garden to photograph water lilies, but there were a lot of leaves and other debris floating on the surface of the water. Faded blossoms from other plants, as well as torn and pockmarked lily pads, didn’t exactly help promote the site, either. While the garden would have been okay for a snapshot, trying to find a subject suitable for fine-art photography in this mess was a bit of a problem.

Since there was no “landscape” as such to photograph, and the water garden area wasn’t clean, I abandoned the idea of getting an entire flower in the frame. Sometimes leaves and twigs can add to an image, but there just wasn’t much of a subject here. I decided to try and get some close-ups of the flowers and to direct my energies to the details of the flowers, rather than the whole flower.

This image has a slightly soft focus, which some photographers might not like. I don’t remember the aperture settings, but this was likely shot with Velvia film which has a film speed of 50. Velvia is a nice film for plants and renders wonderful greens, but it is slow enough that you will need a tripod. I probably ended up with the soft focus because I got lazy about carrying around a 10-pound tripod and tried to hand-hold the camera. It didn’t help that much of the water garden was in partial shade, so a longer exposure was necessary.

Technicalities aside, I’m pleased with the final image. I like the asymmetrical shape that is formed by having the center of the flower at the left side of the image, while the petals reach up to the right edge of the photo. This creates a more dynamic image than if I had centered the flower in the frame. What do you think?

Cheap Raingear

There are some good, heavy-duty raingear items available for your camera, lens, tripod, and you. If you are going to do a lot of outdoor photography, consider making the investment into one of these products to keep your equipment safe. For occasional outings, though, carrying a lot of gear can be a real pain, especially when you are trying to take pictures in crowded public places. And with some of the smaller camera bags on the market today, such as the digital bags, there just isn’t enough room to carry large gear.

An inexpensive solution is to visit your local dollar store and purchase rain ponchos. These usually are sold one or two to a package for one dollar. But the best part is that they are folded really small and only take up about a two-by-two inch square about a quarter of an inch thick. They can be easily carried in all but the smallest camera bag, in which case they can travel in your purse or pocket just as well.

The ponchos are fairly thin, which means they will tear easily. Unless you are climbing through brambles, though, a cheap poncho will do the trick of keeping your camera dry until you reach the great indoors. Ponchos can be worn so that you can put your camera around your neck or carry your bag under the poncho. I’ve even draped the poncho over a camera mounted on a tripod. The hood part of the poncho can be pulled over the camera and lens to allow you to continue to take pictures in a light rain, too.

Like maps, though, once these ponchos have been used they never go back in their packages! So be prepared to deal with this, and know that these ponchos won’t last forever. Still, a dollar spent to keep your equipment (and you) safe and dry is cheap insurance. And that’s what Photography on the Cheap is all about.

Photography on the Cheap

Photography can be an expensive hobby, can’t it? Consider the cost of buying and developing film (if you still use film), plus plastic sleeves to hold slides or negatives. Then there are hangers for file cabinet storage, or archival boxes for those of you who’d rather box your stuff.

For digital photographers, there’s the initial cost of digital media and the requisite pouches and bags to carry your memory chips. There are special cleaning kits for the camera’s CCD. Special bags, because a regular camera bag doesn’t have those really small, really neat, anti-static kind of pockets for chips.

For all photographers, there’s the cost of photo albums, frames, scanning software and hardware, photo editing software, printers, inks, and paper. And for those photographers who are really serious, there are monitor calibration devices and software, ICC profiles for your printer, and other technical tools to help make your life better. And don’t forget the cost of upgrading your computer, just in case it doesn’t have enough memory to handle those filter effects on your images or enough hard drive space to store them.

In an effort to help photographers save on expenses, I’ll be adding a Cheap Tricks section to show you how to use inexpensive props and tools to help make your photography life better.

The website is back!

The Tangent Graphics website has had most of its problems fixed, so it is now back up and displaying images. You can now go to www.tangentgraphics.com and see a sampling of what kind of photography we do — nature and landscapes, florals, animals, and the urban environment. That’s a wide range of subjects, I know, but we haven’t really specialized in any one area of photography. The one thing we really don’t photograph is people.

The Gallery pages are going to be updated this month to include more photos, and possibly more categories. I have some black and white images that will be added, also. The Gallery will be moving into an online store, but in the meantime, if you see anything you’re interested in, please send me an e-mail.

Many thanks to those of you at CodingForums.com who helped chase out some of the CSS bugs in the website!