Loving the tripod and shutter release…

Had my first Landscape Photography ‘field trip’ this past Saturday and the weather was perfecto!

We went trail hiking through one of Vancouver’s environmental treasures – Pacific Spirit Park on the UBC Endowment Lands. Acres upon acres of lush forest in the middle of the City… It’s truly breathtaking. BUT, challenging for photography due to the filtered natural light and copious amounts of shade throughout the park and trails.

The subject of this field trip was working with available light and focussing on the quality of light.

In order for us to successfully take photos in these challenging lighting conditions it was necessary to use a tripod [which I usually don't use due to my subjects being MOVING children and adults most of the time - LOL!] and a shutter release to eliminate camera shake. I have to say that the investment in both accessories were worth their weight in gold. Some of the photos I was able to produce are pure magic and mystery!

Here is a sample of what I mean…

I hate spiders, but LOVE this image. It’s funny, I started focussing the photos of this spider web from the front, it wasn’t until the sun moved and I was forced to adjust my position that I finally saw the web from the side. It was magic! Backlit spider, dimensional web strands, bokeh to beat the band. Fabulousness =)

Bokeh (derived from Japanese, a noun boke 暈け, meaning “blur” or “haze”) is a photographic term referring to the æsthetic quality of the out-of-focus areas of an image produced by a camera lens using a shallow depth of field.^[1] Essentially, bokeh is an aesthetic and qualitative measure of light distortion in the out-of-focus areas of an image, and is primarily caused by lens aberrations and aperture shape.

To view an online gallery of photos from my field trip to Pacific Spirit Park, please click here.

If you want to provide feedback, it’s most appreciated and welcomed. Thanks for looking!