Siguenza, Spain. Extreme wide angle view at night of the Santa Maria Cathedral

Wide angles makes things look different, there's no doubt about it and most of all there's no much you can do to avoid it. When shooting architecture, monuments, historical building, being from a lower position the walls will converge, the base will look way bigger and the precise plans of a master builder go to hell. So what ca we do, drop the wide angles at home and shoot only with a 50mm or a tilt&shift lens? No way.
make the flaw bigger, exaggerate the bug and create some super dramatic shots.

For this image I put the camera n the tripod and almost had to sit on the sidewalk to compose through the viewfinder. The 10-20 was with its nose up and everything seem to tumble on top of the viewer. I edited it in Lightorrm and converted in duotone because the full color image was kind of weird, I mean there was a strange mix of colors

Light trails

There are amazing things that can be done using your camera’s slow shutter speed properly; one of them is taking pictures of car light trails. What you need is pretty basic: camera, lens, tripod, maybe a graduate filter and a remote control to release your shutter when you are in “bulb” mode, or at least you need it if you own a Nikon. I like these images especially when is not 100% dark, in fact at twilight you get the best colour of the sky, far from being black it turns into an amazing blue. Put your camera on the tripod and secure it properly, compose your scene. Take an exposure reading of the ambient light; let not the car’s lights fool your meter into underexposing the scene. The light will be burned anyway, and that’s what it is, just light that will decorate your scene.

If you need to balance the sky use a grad filter but I don’t think you will need it unless you have a strong backlit image with the sun too high. Now, I assume that if you are like me you are in manual exposure; if not maybe you should try. A (aperture) is ok too, but you will need to compensate the exposure through the exposure compensation button, hence in manual will probably be faster. If your shutter speed is within the 30 you will probably be able to use the self timer to trigger the camera, but if you have very little light and need to go over 30” you will need to put your shutter speed to “bulb” and then you will only be able to take the shot using the remote control (no worries, is not an expensive gimmick).

When everything is set, with your ISO as low as you can, the lens clean to reduce the problems with flare, and the tripod well set you start shooting, Most of the times is a trial and error business, until you find the right light and the right “traffic” to get the image you need.

Painting with flash

Last week I was in Bermuda, what a beautiful island and incredible fishing ! It is also plentiful of photo opportunities, and I spent a lot of time behind the viewfinder of my D80. By the way, before my departure, I made the mistake of cleaning the sensor myself... I wish I have never done it ! Since I started working on the images I spent more time cleaning the photos rather than editing them.


Back to the photos, very close to shore there was a subject that caught my attention and I wanted to portrait in various manners, a wooden boat. Among the exposures I took, my favourite came out at night, slightly after dark. I put the camera on the tripod and choose an aperture of f8. I could have opened even more but I'm not too happy with the CCD results with the too long exposures (a lot of noise) and also, since it was just an experiment, I didn't want to keep waiting 15 minutes before closing the shutter. So 185sec was the right time, it came out after a couple of tests and I was happy with the way it looked. The Sigma 10-20 allowed me to place the camera very close to the boat and yet have a lot of background in the image. I also put the WB setting to Tungsten to achieve that deep blue sky, and since I was going to use the SB600 to paint my subject, I put a CTO gel to warm up the light and counterbalance that specific WB. During the time the shutter was opened I hopped around the boat flashing the light 1/64. I wish I could have excluded completely the grass to make the boat stand even further, but I couldn't. Next time.

the longest fishing portrait exposure

This is one of my favourite photos. I have taken it long time ago, February 2006 and to be honest with you I'm not even sure I consciously wanted to achieve this look. It was one of those successful "mistakes" that turned into a great image. I was using rear curtain flash sync and program mode, it was before the A, S or M era, I was still struck on P. The camera decided that the right exposure time was 3 seconds and here I go, shoot!
The fish is a Giant African Threadfin, we were hammering them on the mouth of the Iguela Lagoon, in Gabon. The sun was already below the horizon but the blue sky was waiting for my lucky shot. The fisherman is my good friend Mario, a great guy from Gran Canaria and keen photographer himself.