Fuji Archives - Page 6 of 9 - Cape Ann Photo Tours

Early Evening Sail

July 30, 2019July 30, 2019 by Kirk

I love bringing my camera along when I go out sailing. My wife and I went out for a sail on the Thomas E. Lannon for a beautiful evening on Gloucester Harbor. We had a nice light breeze to off-set the heat of the day. I did not shoot a lot of images but the ones I did I like quite a bit. So often I find myself converting images around the water to B&W. I don’t know why but for some reason I love the look of B&W maritime images. The wonderful tones in the low light of early evening are such a joy to work with.

I chose to bring my Fujifilm X-T30 with the 10-24 f4 which gave me the opportunity for shots of sails and things with the ultra wide, like the shot above with the binnacle in the foreground.

In the stern of the schooner this mainsheet block and tackle with the line woven around it was an interesting subject and I was looking at it all the time. Finally near the end of the sail I made a photo of it.

The sunset never did work out great but it still added to the horizon on the eastern shore of Gloucester. It was a great sail and I’m looking forward to doing it on the Ardelle and Adventure near the end of the month.

Patience and Persistence in Landscape Photography

July 23, 2019 by Kirk

Twin Lights moon — The Buck Moon rises next to the South Light on Thachers Island in July of 2019. Fuji X-T3 w/Fujinon 55-200 exp. ISO 400 1/13s @ f5.6. Luckily it was not real windy so the long shutter speed was fine. This is a fairly large crop from the original as I don’t have a lens longer than 300 (35mm terms).

A couple of the things that I preach with workshop attendees is that in most cases you will be rewarded when using patience and persistence. This image of the Buck Moon rising next to the South Light on Thacher’s Island is an image that required both. A friend had called a few days before reminding me of the Buck Moon and that it would be rising very close to sunset and that it would be rising between the the Twin Lights of Thacher’s Island in Rockport. As the appointed hour started to approach, which was at 8:21 PM, the clouds started to move in. What a real bummer it would be if the clouds blocked the moon. As the time approached I got even more apprehensive. Should I bother to go? Here is where the persistence came in. I decided to go and just see – who knows what will happen.

It still did not look promising as I walked up to our location on Eden Rd. From this location you can’t see the moon as it rises as the island blocks the horizon. I estimated that we would see the moon around ten minutes after it rose. So as we talked about the possibilities, the moon slowly poked out of the clouds and gave us a brief glimpse. So our patience paid off as we got about five minutes of shooting in before it rose into the clouds. It would show itself again later when it was dark but not near the lighthouses. The difficulty came with trying to time the red light on the lighthouse. I first counted how long it took to come around and once I figured that out it was just a matter of hitting the shutter a milli second before the light came around. So luck and skill were involved in making this image.

Others on social media have cheated and merged two images, one taken well before when it was obscured and another when it was well up in the sky. So in this case the image is not reality. The blending of two exposures to balance the dynamic range can make for a dramatic image. Unfortunately it produces images which are not a representation of reality. So I tend not to do them.

Therefore I give you this image which is and example of persistence and patience which is reality!.

Lupine & Waterfall Workshop Wrapup

July 8, 2019 by Kirk

The second week of June is a great time to be in the north country. The weather is unpredictable so the clouds and mountains work in harmony to create incredible vistas. Then to add to all of this beauty add in the flowering of the lupines. The blues, whites, pinks and purples are an inspiring palette for the landscape photographer. The spring run-off waterfalls create wonderful flowing lines when taken with a slow shutter speed thus our workshop focused on all of these elements which made for some great images made by our participants.

lupines & Tree — Lupines surround an old tree in Sugar Hill NH.

Lupines and clouds — Young lupines wait for the next cloud burst.

We had participants from all over New England and what a great group it was! This year the lupines were slow in coming up but by the time we left they were really starting to come up. We stayed at the Inn at Sunset Hill and were overwhelmed by the location and the Inn itself. It is an Inn in the Old New England style and it was a pleasure to stay there. The vistas that greeted us every morning it was not raining were unmatched and we could not have found a better place to stay for our workshop.

Cannon Mt. sunset — The sunset billows over onto Cannon Mt. in Franconia Notch.

We had plenty of rain on day one which kept us away from the lupines until sunset. The image above was made from Sunset Hill in Sugar Hill, NH. as the blazing sunset behind us spilled over onto Cannon Mt. and the clouds above it. The first day gave us the opportunity to photograph some waterfalls down Rt. 93 at the Basin. The light was subdued and it really added to the wet experience.

Waterfall at the Basin — This waterfall is near the Basin in Franconia Notch.

The Pemigewasset River running by the Basin in NH.

On our last day we experienced a huge field of mature lupines that took our breath away. Everyone was busy finding compositions among the huge selection by Pearl Lake in Sugar Hill.

Lupines Sugar Hill — Lupines across from Pearl Lake in Sugar Hill, NH

Overall we had a great time even though it was like photo boot camp at times. Below is a video with Dave and I talking about the weekend.