The work in progress

Sometimes, when I shoot I'm not sure of what I want to achieve, but when I see the image in Lightroom I start thinking about it and the ideas start flowing to my mind while I play with the software. Thus, there are other situations when by the moment I glue my eye to the visor that I know what I want to say, what the image means to me or what I can do with it during the editing process. 

This image, when it happened, it was quite clear, even though I understand it can give room to many different interpretations. The simple and plain idea was: a lonely man walking away from the camera in a sad and moody autumn’s afternoon. If you give it a deeper look, you will notice that at the end of the walk is not exactly clear what he will find. The trees are quite thick and apparently there’s no sign of another track going anywhere else. Is he about to get lost in the park or swallowed by the dark trees? This uncertainty probably adds a bit more of pathos to the frame, but the main thing, if we don’t want to get too far and clever in the interpretation is that is sad and moody. 

This is the key scheme of the shot but to achieve that I had to work on the best composition, even before the man arrived. I had the camera on the tripod because I was working on a slow shutter speed (1/4 sec) and had to wait until the man was a tad farther from me, right in the place where I wanted him to be. At home, later, I had to convert the shot to black and white, quite gloomy and blue, while it was originally a decent afternoon with the sun setting nicely.

Not every time I have the chance to think so much about a photo and to be able to explain it decently, as I hope I did here. Usually is my gut that keeps me pushing the shutter button, and the brain start working later, especially when I’m on the “reporter” mood. Every once in a while I will post some “image with a thought” and comment it for those willing to read about it.

Retiro Park, Madrid

For somedody who live sin Madrid and loves photography paying a visit to this beautiful park is almot a duty, or at least it should be. During my stay in this city, now since 1995 I have been to the Retiro several time, yen never with my camera. I fixed this obscene issue last week, a short visit during abeautiful fall's afternoon: my D90, the Tokina 100 f.28, the Nikkor 18-70 f3.5-4.5 and the tripod, here to follow the result of the visit

Backlit iamegs are my favourite, and if there's a human being in the shot much better

Fall is quite a romantic or depressing season, is just a matter of taste. For me is the "Antipasto" of the winter, which I hate... The lone man walking on the park adds something to the shot

Sidelight, almost backlit I should say. Warm and beautiful

Light and water, a combination that always attracts me

The "classic" Retiro shot, the pond and the monument to Alfonso the XII

Aranjuez, Royal Palace, a lucky moment

In this photographic business the lucky factor is quite important, and being in the right place at the right time with the camera in the hand can make the difference. So I learned once again few days ago.

On a short tourist trip to Aranjuez with some relatives, I took my Nikon with me. I had few things in the vest like a replacement lens, a flash, gels and optical cleaning paper, in order to travel as light as I could, no heavy bag this time. The tripod stayed at home too, it was just a tourist trip and there was no time to use it.

After walking around town and enjoying its monuments and gardens we went back to the Royal Palace. The sun, at about 7PM was low on the horizon and together with strong winds, a storm threatened from the sky. I stood in front of the entrance with the sun almost on my back (unfortunately) and in front of me one of the most amazing shows a photographer could aim for, unveiled. The Palace was shining and perfectly lit against the gloomiest and darkest sky. There’s enough light so I expose for the palace and let the cloud get darker. I’m also looking for the best composition I can get out of the lens I’m using, the modest yet decent 18-70 f3.5-4.5. At f13 I can still get 1/320s.

During this moment of ecstasy, a couple of strong gusts of wind offered me a new opportunity. A cloud of dust appeared and pushed by the breeze dimmed the left hand side of the building. Even though the current of air shoved me quite hard such that I could barely keep my balance, I still managed a couple of shots of that moment as well. Right after, I picked up my things and headed back to the car, as happy as a kid.

Bullfighting in Madrid

Last Sunday I received a wonderful invitation to see a “Rejoneo”, one special kind of bullfighting where the bullfighter rides a Spanish horse, especially trained for this kind of show. The place was nonetheless the “dome” of Spanish bullfighting, the famous arena of Las Ventas, in Madrid. Hermoso de Mendoza, Andy Cartagena and Sergio Domínguez completed the billboard against 6 bulls from Los Espartales. That’s enough for technical infos, I’m not a bullfighting major fan or expert and the main reason I went is because I love to see what they can do with the horses in front of the bull, something absolutely magic.

Fact is that I had THE seats. “Tendido 9”, front row. Nobody in front of me but the bullfighters and helpers ring, the fence and the arena. Obviously I took with me the entire pack of camera equipment: my old D80. 5 lenses, SD cards etc. First lens to be used a Nikkor 10.5 f2.8 Fisheye, just to get an idea of how the “Plaza de Toros” looks like

The zoom that worked the most has been the Nikkor 18-200, pretty efficient in terms of focal length and fast focus yet not fast enough neither too sharp, especially when worked constantly at f5.6. As the afternoon light got dimmer also the D80 showed its limitations with the high ISO I needed to use. Noise was showing pretty heavily in most of the images and together with my scarce experience in these kinds of photographic events, delivered many poor images, and many already swallowed by the recycle bin.

Among the major difficulties I had in the beginning was trying to compensate the exposure difference between the shaded areas and those where the sun was still heavily shining. Once it settled lower on the horizon I switched to manual and worked more or less with the same setting for the rest of the evening.
Eventually I found myself with a bunch of underexposed images, more noise then, while those I have tried to shoot at a lower shutter speed came out quite blurred… It’s the story of the dog biting its tail, and sure enough I couldn’t go any further than ISO 800.

Have played with different kind of focusing, shutter speed, metering and focus point, and when the 18-200 became too slow to capture the dimmer light of the evening I switched to the 60mm f2.8 trying to gain a couple stops. Unfortunately, because of the Murphy’s Law, the rest of the action happened almost entirely on the other side of the arena and couldn’t get many decent frames.

Anyway, let’s not find excuses, what was missing was a good photographer dealing with the situation: my complete lack of experiences in sports and fast action in general heavily shows in the results and the only thing I can think of now is to go back in the near future and try again. Thus, I doubt very much I will be able to do it again from such privileged position.

If I will have such chance I will try to put my hands on a good 70-200 f2.8 and a body that allows me to pump up the ISO with no fear. Is a very exciting show and there are many good opportunities for amazing photos.

"The Bridge" session.

Yesterday evening I went scouting for a place where to relax a bit and take some photos. As usual I was looking for some running water hence I opened the map and headed north, towards the Sierra of Madrid. Without knowing it I arrived to a place that I have already visited with my wife and daughter and recognized a road to the Jarama river, in an area not infested with bulls and hardwired fences.

The familiar noise of the running water raised my spirits. I put my high boots, grabbed the camera and tripod and took my way down to the valley, where the Jarama River was running. The photo session was OK but nothing spectacular, many different shots in places that somehow called my attention, but I was enjoying it. Every time I go out to take a picture I try to take it as a learning experience, not thinking about coming out with a winning image. Hence, whatever it comes, if is an improvement over previous tries is a goal achieved.

Towards the end of the day I discovered this sort of a "Bridge". Maybe is just a decorative log, even though I doubt that the elves of the woods spend their time re-decorating it just to make it look nicer. Anyway, I placed the tripod and started playing with exposure, white balance and obviously the flash.

The first shot I'm showing here is very orthodox. Cloudy white balance and nothing else. I like it but is probably average, it doesn't have any special "edge".

This is a B&W conversion of the same shot, maybe is a little bit more appealing because of that Black & White feeling yet is not a gigantic improvement. For a novel photographer like me is a nice image but I understand that it cannot compete on the major league

Here below is where I started playing with the camera configuration and my always available portable speed light, in this case a Nikon SB600

Here things started to get a tad odd. I changed to WB to tungsten and played with the SB600 speed light with two full CTO gels on it. The result is a tad exaggerated, the "Bridge" is cooked, way too hot. There's a lot of flash light spills on the ground as well.

Second attempt. Mellowing down on the gels and the amount of flash bursts. Changed the white balance in RAW to something closer to Fluorescent rather than Tungsten. The result has improved a bit but at least to me it still looks a bit too hot.

Third attempt. Maybe I'm wrong but I think this is the right way. There's no signs of the flash bursts on the ground and the color given to the "bridge" is more natural, yet still creates a contrast with the background. Unfortunately I couldn't paint with the flash further that half the log. For my next attempt I will try with a torch.

Funny enough I don't seem to be able to do landscapes kind of stuff without playing around with a strobe. Maybe one day I will grow up :-)