A Day Out Photographing With A Purpose

Deadrise oyster boat under the threat of a nearby storm. (click to enlarge)
Olympus E-M1 Mark II; 12-100mm f/4 PRO lens @ 24mm; 1/160th sec. @ f/8; ISO 200

Since it has rained everyday for the past 10 days and is predicted to rain everyday for the next 7 or so, I decided I needed to go out and make some photographs to shake the cobwebs off as well as to find some sort of inspiration.  If you are a regular reader, you know that I advocate practicing your photography just like a musician or athlete practices their skill set.  This time, I decided I would try to do something different than just going out and wandering.  

For this day out, I decided to specifically shoot using three criteria, a) only in square format b), only black and white since the skies looked ominous from the continuing series of passing storms and c) trying to create "fine art" type images, whatever they might be.  Black and white enhances that heavy overcast, stormy, bad weather look I wanted to capture.

In the past, I had not used either my Olympus nor my Fujifilm gear in anything but the sensor's native format so this exercise would be novel.  I decided on taking the Olympus this particular day (mainly because of the superb 12-100mm lens).  I went into the menu and under "Image Aspect," I chose 1:1.  Since I am a RAW shooter, I know that my actual files will still be color and in native format.  However, when the image files appear in Lightroom Classic CC, the images appear in square format as written into the files' metadata.  They do appear in color, but they are easily converted to black and white, either in Lightroom or as I mainly use, Nik Silver Efex Pro II.  I could have also shot RAW + JPEG and used one of Olympus' monochrome settings, but that has two disadvantages.  First, JPEGs are 8-bit instead of RAW 12-bit images and second, I'd rather decide the conversion rather than a preset group of settings concocted by Olympus engineers.  That being said, I've read quite a bit of praise for Olympus' grainy monotone preset.  I may try it one day.

I didn't capture anything spectacular, which is the usual for me.  I did make some images that I like.  I post a few here for your viewing pleasure.

Wetlands, Bull Island, Virginia (click to enlarge)
Olympus E-M1 Mark II; 12-100mm f/4 PRO lens @ 12mm; 1/60th sec. @ f/8; ISO 200

(click to enlarge)
Olympus E-M1 Mark II; 12-100mm f/4 PRO lens @ 15mm; 1/125th sec. @ f/8; ISO 200

(click to enlarge)
Olympus E-M1 Mark II; 12-100mm f/4 PRO lens @ 86mm; 1/40th sec. @ f/8; ISO 200

(click to enlarge)
Olympus E-M1 Mark II; 12-100mm f/4 PRO lens @ 25mm; 1/125th sec. @ f/8; ISO 200

(click to enlarge)
Olympus E-M1 Mark II; 12-100mm f/4 PRO lens @ 15mm; 1/125th sec. @ f/8; ISO 200

(click to enlarge)
Olympus E-M1 Mark II; 12-100mm f/4 PRO lens @ 35mm; 1/60th sec. @ f/10; ISO 640; partial polarization

(click to enlarge)
Olympus E-M1 Mark II; 300mm f/4 PRO lens + 1.4X tele-converter; 1/40th sec. @ f/11; ISO 4000
840mm~ handheld

The point being that even when you feel uninspired with weather that is depressing, our cameras which are computers with lenses are equipped with so many features that we can choose to photograph in ways that are unusual or not the norm for us.  Photographing in novel ways can get your creative juices flowing and you just might produce an image or two that are keepers!

Join me over at Instagram @dennisamook or my website, www.dennismook.com. 

Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

Dennis A. Mook 

All content on this blog is © 2013-2018 Dennis A. Mook. All Rights Reserved. Feel free to point to this blog from your website with full attribution. Permission may be granted for commercial use. Please contact Mr. Mook to discuss permission to reproduce the blog posts and/or images.