So, as you probably can see, I like taking nature photos when I’m wandering around in the local woods around Boulder. It can be challenging to come up with creative ways to take new photos every time, when the surroundings appear to be the same. In the foothills of Boulder, we really don’t have too many big scenery shots other than the standard Foothills landscape. Our local pine woods are generally quite scrubby looking, with lots of visual chaos. I find that the tilt shift can really help in providing alternate perspective, as any ‘Perspective Control’ lens should! As you can tell I’ve really been getting into those lenses lately; they are the ones I go to when I want to just mess around. Too much fun!

One of the good things about mountain biking alone is that I have plenty of time to stop and smell the flowers! And the wildflowers were out in full force last weekend up in Keystone. I love my Nikon Perspective Control lens because it is also a macro, allowing me to shoot landscapes and closeups, with some unusual compositions.

Welcome to Part 2 of my tilt shift tour of New York. I arrived in Manhattan’s Penn Station on one of the warmest days so far this year. Outside there was the longest line of police cars that I’ve ever seen. I have no idea what that was all about.

Next I went to Central Park to see if half the city could fit in the park at one time. I think they can!

Well, I’m sure you thought that I’d have more interesting photos of the city than this. I don’t. Hey, you can’t win them all. I did take a lot of pictures of trees though. I know, I know, I go to Manhattan and take pictures of trees. I’m funny that way.

On my trip back East, there were two distinct parts.  The first was family time in PA.  The second half was NJ and NY.  My grandmother lives a train ride away from the city, so I stayed there and took a trip to NY.  I went to Manhattan for a day.  I didn’t want to bring all of my gear, so I decided to pick one lens, and shoot the whole day with only it.  That’s a tough decision for a gear head like myself!

So I decided to bring the most difficult lens I have, the 45mm tilt shift (Perspective Control PC-E in Nikon speak).  The difficulty provides an interesting challenge that I enjoy a lot!  This lens allows you to change the focal plane so that it is not perpendicular to the camera sensor.  So what this means is that you can make areas of the photo in focus (or not), that are not necessarily the same distance from you.

This lens is experiencing a fad-like popularity right now.  It’s somewhat easy to take a subject, like a person, and blur everything around them.  It’s only somewhat easy because you still have to manual focus the lens!  But you can get the effect and still be ignorant of how to use the lens to it’s full capability.  In this series of images I angled the focal plane to create visual ties between parts of the images.  So as you look at the images, pay attention to what parts of the photos are in focus, and what parts are not.  Trippy huh?  :>)

And if you aren’t interested in the technical mumbo jumbo . . . just enjoy the scenery from the most infamous parts of NJ! Haha!

I’m in the middle of my first big push of weddings for this year. I shot 5 in 4 weeks plus 2 engagement portrait sessions plus a family portrait session. So I’m going to have lots of updates on my wedding blog, but not so many on this site in the near future.

I’m still working with that new tilt shift lens. Here is a recent shot where I’m using the lens ‘correctly’; aligning the focus plane with the items of interest. This photo would not be possible with a normal lens. The taps are receding away from me, and are all in focus. But the area behind the taps, the bar, is completely out of focus. This shot was taken at f2.8, 1/50, ISO1600.

And at the request of a request in the comments section, this image was taken at Delaney’s down in Denver.  I was shooting images at this month’s Integrated Alliances Socialnet event!