Some shots take a lot more work than I expect. The Boston Light and Graves Light image was the third attempt at the picture. The first time the atmosphere was too dense (hazy). The second time the wind caused too much camera shake in the long exposure. The third time was the charm. My good friend Bill Shields and I set out for the base of Fort Revere in Hull before sunset. The air was clear and crisp with no wind. Boston Light is probably a mile from the fort, and Graves Light maybe a mile beyond that. To compress the two lights into one frame, have good focus on both lights (depth of field) and get them flashing together required a long lens and a long exposure.
I chose a Canon 1D MkIIn, which has an 8.3-megapixel processor. I selected a 300mm 2.8 telephoto coupled to a 1.4 converter. With the cameras 1.3 crop factor of the camera plus the 1.4 teleconverter on the 300, that makes a 546mm lens. I could have gone longer (maybe next time) To get the lights shining and depth of field I needed a long exposure- I though about 15 seconds would do it. The lights only shine together once every 30 seconds or so.
To keep noise (grain, fuzz) to a minimum I wanted to shoot at ISO 200. As the light faded I ended up with ISO 400. Shooting in RAW I had lots of chances later to correct any flaws in Photoshop. (RAW is an uncompressed file type; JPEG compresses the image by stripping off some data) For color balance I selected (automatic) which was a guess since the image mixes daylight with incandescent.
I mounted the rig on a heavy tripod and got out the cable release. Bill and I made a number of test shots to start dialing in on what we wanted. Bill was using a similar camera set up with a Mk III camera. The first shots looked OK but warm (yellow cast). As the sky started to get darker we started to get a colder (blue) sky.
 
 
One problem we found was that as the lens on Boston rotated it shone directly into the camera lens creating a very bad flair. Ok how can we get a shot without the light shining in the lens when that is what we kind of wanted? I had an idea that the flair was only from the instant the lighthouses lens was pointed directly at my lens. The solution was to stop the recording of the exposure during that brief time. I took a small dark seat pad from my trunk which is use to sit on hard surfaces. As the light rotated past my lens I covered the camera lens with the pad. This allowed me to get the lens shining, but no flair. Now I had to increase the length of exposure since I was cutting some time off with the use of the black shade. I ended up with a 30 second exposure.
After maybe 15 frames it looked as though we has some keepers. The darker it got, the less I liked the sky too, so we packed up the gear and headed for the computers to process the image. Raw images don’t open in my editing software so I had to open each image in Photoshop one at a time. Some of the images had camera shake (motion) just from tripping the shutter (next time I’ll try mirror lock up) some were out of focus and some were not properly exposed. I picked one frame and started tuning. The color is almost right from the camera. I did have a few CCD dust specs, which I cloned out, added smart sharpen and dodged a few spots on the outbuildings of Boston Light. The red streak is a boat traveling into the harbor; the red is it’s portside running light.
I like the results, but want to try the shot once more; maybe a little longer lens and mirror lock-up to dampen any camera shake. Bill wants to try using a 600mm lens for his shot.

Keep your eye on the ball. Ask any sports photographer and they will all tell you most great action shots will include the ball or puck or a portion of it. Now that’s not to say that all sports shots follow this rule, but most do. How can you best position yourself to get great sports shots? Whether “ T Ball” Little League or High School you can get great action shots with a little practice and some luck. First, know the game. Anticipate the play and be ready. You don’t need a super telephoto.
 

Let’s take football. If the one team possesses the ball, they are moving in one direction to the end zone. If you position yourself ahead of the play in the end zone they will ultimately come to you. You just have to sit and wait. Well it takes a little more than that. You need to be ready. Since most sports are fast moving you’ll want to freeze the action. I like to use shutter priority setting on my camera. “S” in Nikon, “Tv” in Canon. A shutter speed over 1/500th is best. You may need to adjust the ISO rating to get to the desired shutter speed. I like to start with a longer lend on the end zone and either zoom back as the action gets closer or switch to a shorter lens. In covering pro sports I keep a second body ready with a short lens (50mm) in case the play ends right in front of me.
The shot of Moss making a fingertip reception on the one-yard line was made this way.
Camera was a Canon Mk II n with a 300mm lens; shutter speed was 1/1000th at ISO 320

Focus can be overrated. There are times when having less of an image in focus can create a better result than having most of the image in focus. If you really want to but emphasis on a subject or a portion of a scene use focus to do it. For example, you’re trying to get a shot of your kid who has the great smile, shooting against a cluttered background. If you have lots of depth of field, the smile gets lost in the scene. Kind of like seeing the forest and not the trees. In this case I switch to a “slice focus” or “shallow focus” technique which allows for strong emphasis on the smile and allows the background to stay just that-background. One-way to do this is to switch your camera controls to “A” or aperture priority. This allows you to pick the aperture opening and the camera will pick the shutter speed to allow for a proper exposure. If you are shooting in daylight you will have to drop your ISO “film/sensor speed” to allow for a wide-open aperture. Don’t be surprised if your shutter speed-reads well over 1/1000th of a second- that’s OK we want the aperture to be our tool. Some lenses like “primes”(fixed focal lengths between 35-100mm) give better results than a wide angle or a zoom. The wider the lenses aperture (1.4-2.8) the better the effect. I like to use the effect for more than just faces. It works well with flowers or objects were you want the viewer to look at the subject, which appears to float in the background.

Late season foliage- Many photographers look for peak color, I find that just after beak offers some very vibrant hues, particularly late in the afternoon. I look along rivers or ponds, which allow for the added dimension of reflections. One good tip is to shoot with a "cloudy" setting on your DSLR's white balance. This will warm the tones even further than the setting sun. Look for leaves that have fallen into the water with the blue sky reflected on the waters surface. First frost will be soon, get up early with you macro lens and shoot some crystals on your garden flowers. Milkweed and burdocks look really cool with frost in the morning sun, try backlighting the frost to get an effect that looks like diamonds over the foliage. I sometime will use a telephoto lens to isolate one or two frost covered plantings. Throw the background out of focus with a wide open aperture. The image at left was taken at Little Pond in Plymouth's Morton Park with a Canon DSLR and a 300 mm telephoto. ISOwas 200 and white balance was set at cloudy.