Jim Larson Photography

Near the university in Bellingham, Washington there is a nice hiking trail that takes you up into the nearby forest.  One portion of this trail takes you through a tunnel.  Photographing tunnels is fun, but you need to know how to handle the exposure.

The easiest way to do it is to walk to the far end of the tunnel where your camera no longer sees any of the tunnel itself, but only the forest.  Set your camera’s exposure adjustments there (manual exposure), then go back into the tunnel and compose your shot.  The view of outside will be a perfect exposure.

The other option is to use the “spot metering” function on your camera.  Most of the SLR cameras, both film and digital have this feature.  You are really just telling the light meter in the camera to use a small spot where you are pointing as the place to adjust to for exposure.  This keeps you from having to walk to the end of the tunnel.

If you just try to take the photo without taking into account all of the blackness of the tunnel, the camera will think that everything around you is normal daylight and the exposure will be adjusted to make the tunnel brighter.  When this happens, the tunnel will lose the blackness and the outside will be very over exposed and washed out.

You can do the same technique looking out of the windows of a building.  The inside of the building is much darker, so step up to the window, adjust your exposure, then step back.  The outside will look great.

Have fun experimenting!

The image to the right was taken where we normally go sailing each summer.  It is fun to take a drive up to the lake at other times of the year to see the differences in the seasons.  The lake freezes over each winter which is interesting to see by itself.

I like to search out details that may not been seen unless you are specifically looking.  The image to the right shows one of these details; a leaf frozen in the ice.

What I found interesting in this is how the leaf, being a different and darker color than the ice absorbed the sun’s heat, and over time, melted the ice surrounding it.  This is solar power on a small scale, but solar power nonetheless.

I also framed the shot so that my subject was on that magic “1/3″ line of the image to help with the composition of such a simple shot.

Watch for the details of things around you.  You’ll be amazed at what you find.

Canon 10D, Canon 28-135 f3.5-5.6 IS at 135mm, 1/250 at f8, ISO 100

One night while staying in Friday Harbor on San Juan Island, I grabbed the tripod and camera so that I could do some night photography. The scene of the lighted marina was very nice and I wanted to capture it.

Keep in mind that the sun does not have to be shining to take some pretty nice photos. You will need a tripod, or at least a fence post or other stable object to steady the camera. In order to for the camera to capture enough light for the film or image sensor you need to expose it for a longer period of time. In this particular image, that was 8 seconds. In addition to a tripod, I set the camera in the “self timer” mode so that my hands were totally off the camera as it took the photo.

You may have to try different “white balance” settings, either in your camera or later in your photo editing software to get the look you desire. Different types of lights cast a totally different color of light. Our eyes and brain tend to ignore some of these color casts, but when you look at a photograph in regular light, you will see what the camera captured.

Next time you have a free evening, head downtown or other artificially lit location and see what you can photograph.

Canon 20D, Canon 17-40 f4 L at 17mm, 8 seconds at f5.6, ISO 100

From the title you may think that I took a trip down to Australia.  Actually, the trip was to northern Idaho.

The title came from the subject of this photo which is shooting down at my subject which is under water.  I know that’s a stretch, so don’t shake your head at me too much. 

Lake Pend Oreille is a beautiful mountain lake that is crystal clear.  I like the color of the moss along with the refraction of the light on the bottom of the lake from the surface ripples which can be seen in the lighter diagonal lines.  The water here was only about 4 feet deep.

Canon 40D, Canon 24-105 f4 L IS at 35mm, 1/50 at f5.6, ISO 100

Here is a silhouette of my wife during a recent cross country ski trip. We are learning how to “skate,” which is a style of cross country skiing that is new to us. Instead of skiing traditionally with the skis parallel in the tracks (shown in the right third of the photo), the skis are positioned pointing out away from the centerline. You can see the herringbone pattern in the snow that skaters leave behind. To propel oneself you push the skis away from the centerline in a “skating” motion.

It is quite fun to do and very good exercise, but requires skill to make it look easy. We’re not there yet.

I waited for my wife to get to the top of the hill so that I could catch a good silhouette of her. Also, the horizon is about 1/3 from the top of the photo and there is a nice leading line provided by the tracks to take you to the skier which aids in the composition of the shot.

As you are out having fun with your various activities, try to capture the moment with your camera. They help to bring back fond memories.

Canon PowerShot S-500 (pocket digital camera), lens 22.2mm @ f13, 1/400, ISO 50

Here is the February installment of the Alle Calendar. A white dog in white snow is somewhat hard to shoot. Good thing she has brown eyes!

This photo was taken 6 years ago when we had a fair amount of snow on the ground. 2008 is proving to be another great year for snow and Alle has been happy to pose for the camera many times. I’ll share some of those with your all next winter.

Olympus D490Z (pocket camera), lens 15.7mm @ f8.6, 1/200, ISO 100

Boise sits in a valley that is about 2,800 feet above sea level.  It is also right next to a ridge of mountains that reach up to about 7,000 feet.  The mountaintop is where the local ski area “Bogus Basin” is located and is only 16 miles from town.

Nearly every winter we get to experience temperature inversions where the temperature in the valley is lower than the temperature on the mountain.  Quite often when this happens, low clouds and sometimes even fog forms in the valley hiding what is truly going on above.

It is days like this when it is fun to escape the valley floor and head to the mountains.  Once you break through the clouds, you get to see a fantastic blue sky above with a blanket of clouds below.  It’s an awesome site.

I did a little bit of exposure manipulation in Photoshop before posting this image.  The sun caused the whole image to appear a bit on the dark side, so I adjusted the image to have a good exposure for the sky and saved it to a file.  Then I took the same image and adjusted the exposure for the hills in the foreground.  I then brought in the original “sky exposure” image and stacked it on top of the “foreground exposure” image.  I then masked out the lower portion of the sky image so that the foreground image showed through on the bottom of the photo.

Canon PowerShot S-500 (pocket camera), lens 7.4mm @ f7.1, 1/1250, ISO 50