After a photography trip, I love to see Mary’s photos. If you have been following us for a while, you probably know the differences between her photos and mine. Here is a good sample from our big December trip to Big Sur and Pismo Beach.
Mary converted an 18 MP Canon Rebel T3i to infrared. This is her go-to camera in bright light situations when she knows she will convert to black and white. Even when I convert to black and white from my Mark II or III, I can not get the range of contrast she can in her infrared camera. Wow. In this case, I had to take out the sky, because it was blown out in white. She was able to bring it back in.
At the Little Sur River, we literally stood next to each other. What I highlight here is not the color versus black and white, but the compositional choice we each made. She chose to have more ocean and sky and I did not. This could have been a function of the camera, but I think we made our choice based on what we saw. In this case, she actually went bigger than me…this rarely happens.
What I loved about these two shots is we wandered off in two directions. I planted myself on the northeast side of the pier waiting for this highlighted glow and I got it. Mary went to the southwest side and got a different, but also pleasing image. The pier is not really silhouetted but she gets good contrast between the light and the dark shades. Both images convey what the pier looks like at sunrise…beautiful.
This is another good example of being feet apart and getting a different look and feel. I am not talking about the black and white or color. I clearly chose to make a foreground of the green ice plant Mary sucked in to frame the rocks, ocean, and clouds. The black and white works and so does the color. I think the color orientation helped to drive a wider composition. Notice, both of used the “rule of thirds” slightly differently.
To see more of our work, please go to www.pamphotography.com.
pamphotography 