The theme for 52Frames this week was “Water”, with an extra credit for “Using an ND filter”. Turns out that I DO have an ND filter that I had never really used, and that I had wanted to go take pictures of this place on the Sihl (which has been less than 1km from my apartment for the last 12 years…) for a while.
So I got my photo bag, my tripod and my ND filter, and I went to take a few pictures. Turns out, even with said ND filter (which is only a 4-stop filter), I wasn’t able to increase the exposure length as much as I wanted to at this time (it was roughly 6PM). So there’s two things I know: 1/ I’ll probably get a stronger ND filter at some point 2/ I’ll need to go back there on a less bright day/at a later (or earlier?) time.
But anyway, I got the shot, including the extra credit, and that’s yet another one on the streak 🙂
I didn’t know exactly what to do for the second 52Frames theme of the year, Leading Lines – but last week I went for a tiny photo walk near the lake. A friend of mine had lent me his Sony NEX-7 so that I could have a look at the form factor and at the general feel of it – so that was an extra motivation to go out and shoot. I arrived at the lake at the same time as the boat, so I took a few pictures; I also experimented with the spyglass that’s nearby, but I didn’t manage to get something convincing leading-lines-wise.
On the post-processing side, of note – the pink/red nuances in the sky were there, but I spent some time making them somewhat more obvious; that’s probably a bit more “creative reality” than I usually do, but I don’t hate the result 🙂
Last week-end, the weather was quite nice, and I wanted to go for a walk – so we ended up in the Zürich botanical garden. I had been a couple of times, but in particular I don’t think I had ever entered the large greenhouses – despite their pretty characteristic look.
The main issue with greenhouses is that their climate is, by design, not very compatible with, well, me – I still had a very good time taking pictures of the different specimens there.
The words: “OH THOSE ARE SO CUTE” have been uttered:
The outside of the garden was also very nice – the frogs were very noisy (probably to compensate for the fact that they were not very visible) and I found some weird stuff too.
The theme for 52Frames this week was “City by Night” with an extra credit “5 seconds or longer”. So I took my tripod outside of the apartment for the first time – which made me conclude that, although I do love my Manfrotto for studio work, I definitely need a more portable tripod if I want to move around with it.
I started my walk at Lindenhof to get a view of the Limmat, the University and ETH.
I also got a picture of a rare ghost tram!
On the other side, Grossmünster and the colorful lights from the Kantonspolizei building.
Then, I strolled along the Limmat, taking the picture that’s on top of this post (and that I submitted for 52Frames), as well as this more accidental one (I probably shot in the tripod in the middle of the exposure, although I don’t remember it…), that I ended up liking quite a lot 🙂
I ended my stroll at the lake, looked at the pier…
… as well at the other side of the view in direction of the Opera.
I believe that, for a first try at tripod night photography, it was pretty good. The pictures I got are not very original, but they’re from a technical point of view not bad, and I’m even happy with them 🙂
All of these were exposed at 30 seconds on ISO 100 and with a f/stop that would allow me to get a reasonable exposure (f/13, f/14 for these ones, although I experimented a bit more than that). Hardware-wise, my Pentax K-1, mounted with my 24-70/2.8, my Manfrotto 055 tripod with a ball head. I had a neutral density filter in my backpack because I didn’t know what would be the conditions for “long exposures” (which I wanted), but I didn’t need it. Oh, and a cable release – I wouldn’t have expected to use the remote and the cable release as much as I do when I bought them 🙂
The theme for 52Frames last week was “Hello from…”. And it so happened that we’ve had very good weather – to the point that I said “YESS” when arriving on top of Lindenhof and seeing the Alps in the background. I wanted to go for a very “classical” shot of the city, and the one from Lindenhof is my favorite, because you see Grossmünster very well (and, on that day, it had flags!), there’s a tram line on the road, and on clear days you see the Alps.
So I did that, I took the opportunity to take a few more shots – mostly with a crystal ball – and all in all it was a great afternoon in my favorite city – in which I happen to live 🙂
For Christmas, I got a crystal ball to use for photography. On Tuesday, the weather was nice, so I went in the city to experiment a bit with it.
First, I went to Lindenhof to get a re-take on my favorite view of the city.
The other side of that view is cool too:
Then I accidentally left my polarizing filter on – but that’s actually pretty cool, look, I’m holding a soap bubble!
And actually, photographing trees through that ball is pretty fun. But hey – I do have a favorite tree in Zürich! What if I visited it? A short tram ride later, here I am – Zürichhorn!
After a few more shots in the vicinity, I found another cool tree when walking back along the lake.
As I walked back to Bellevue, the night fell. Time to take a last one – I did not intend for the whole thing to be out of focus, but I happen to really like the end result 🙂
Balise's Blog 