It moves too fast!
Author: Ann
I don't really enjoy photographing live things. No wildlife, no sports events nor active (or inactive) children for me. They move too fast and I find it frustrating and often get bad results: who wants to see the backsides of their kids or blurry dogs. Who knew that a shutter speed set to 1/250th of a second would be too slow? I enjoy photographing landscapes, partly to experience beautiful or interesting places when they are at their best but also because they generally don't move much.
Maybe you think this kind of photography would be relaxing, an act of meditation? Maybe not so much.
On our trip back from Fresno (for our final Sportsmobile design meeting) we stopped overnight at the Alabama Hills in Lone Pine, California. We arrived in the late afternoon, leaving plenty of time to scout out our photo shoot for the evening and morning. What a strange landscape of wind-sculpted rocks - all against the beautiful but stark background of the east side of the Sierras. No wonder it is such a popular location for filming movies. In fact, if you are interested in such things, there is a self-guided tour of those locations you can drive. But for Dan and I, we are not so much interested in famous movie locations but are there just for photography, And for that too, the Alabama Hills was perfect! In case you want to read more about it, here's a Wikipedia article about the hills.
We woke around 3am and drove to the first group of hills we chose from the previous evening's scouting. Dan had spotted a beautiful tree in golden fall color and, in addition, the moon would be setting against the backdrop of the Sierras.
We spent the next several hours working the scene around the tree and climbing up rocks (ok, only Dan climbed up the rocks - I am way too clumsy for any acrobatics) to get the best compositions of the tree, moon and Sierras.
By 8:30am or so, the light was getting harsher and people started to show up in the area, so we began to get ready to pack up and go have breakfast.
As we started to move towards the car, I picked up my tripod and realized that the moon was starting to set over the closest hills. I thought: "What a lucky day! I'll get to do a shot of the moon setting and do a black and white - so having harder light is maybe good for that. I have PLENTY of time to get set up and get a good shot."
I got out the lens I wanted, and started to think about the best place to shoot from. I looked up and saw that - in 5 or 10 minutes - that the moon had not only moved, but was almost behind the hills!
With no time left for thinking, I focused and shot. Look at the image below to see what I meant to happen, and what actually happened. Live things aren't all that moves too fast!
“I hate to say it, but Ann is totally right. All too often I’ve taken my time to suddenly realize that the light has changed, the wind has picked up, or something “stationary” has moved (clouds, shadows, the moon . . .). But I’ve finally learned to relax as much as possible and to not rush things, because that’s how you make mistakes. Plus, relaxed makes you faster - at least I learned something from Tai Chi.””
— Dan
And the non-annotated image:
