Continuing to work through my Ta Prohm photographs, today a carved stone doorway rendered golden by the reflected light. As I discussed previously, this is a location that rewards those who slow down and closely observe both the form of the subject and also the fall of light.
In this case, I was stopped in my tracks by the extraordinary light which transformed a grey stone doorway into a seemingly metallic surface. The colours represented here are as viewed at the time and not the result of any unusual digital processing. The camera was tripod-mounted and a small aperture was used for maximum depth of field.
More tripod thoughts
As an aside, when using the tripod, I found myself thinking, “I’m not putting my camera on the tripod, I’m putting the tripod under my camera”. It may sound trite, but it’s a way of making the equipment conform to what we need, to get what we visualized, rather than us modifying our approach to the equipment.
Some thoughts on camera design
Taking that thought a step further. When we look at modern camera design, one of the major grumbles (at least in my view) is the bewildering array of menu items, many of them unnecessary, some simply bloatware, and some that are actually impossible! I can think of one particular item which refers to functionality that, on my camera (the Canon 5D Mark 4), doesn’t even exist. Who in their right mind would ever consider ordering a photobook from the back of their camera?
I often find myself thinking, “It sure would be good if camera manufacturers offered……..” A recent version of this was, “It sure would be good if I could simplify the camera menu.”
My current camera has over 100 menu items. Many are setup items. Set what you want when you first get the camera and then leave them alone. But about 20 more items are specific to jpeg shooting. As a RAW only shooter, I never wish to see any of those items, if it were possible to easily select and delete them, I would (with a return to factory default option for if I ultimately sell or hand the camera on).
Fortunately, the menu designers are not totally clueless and provide a “my menu” customization. In my case, I found that there were just 4 items that I need to access frequently and 1 more item which I access occasionally. Finding any of these items normally involves wading through multiple menu headings which I can never remember. So now under one tab, I have:
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Exposure compensation/auto exposure bracketing. For when I wish to bracket for later HDR processing.
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Mirror lockup. For when the camera is tripod mounted.
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Format card.
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Date/Time/Zone. When I’m travelling, I’m often crossing time zones.
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Sensor cleaning.
This is of course not intended as some sort of “definitive list”, everyone has their own needs and their own way of doing things.
Website design
Observant blog visitors may have noticed that clicking on an image displayed in a blog post, will take them through to the image gallery page and display not only the specific image but the collection it is a part of, in this case the Cambodia 2018 image gallery.
As time permits, I’m going through previous blog posts to incorporate such linking where possible. ~KD