Northern California

deepfriedl · May 13, 2016

I took a trip to Northern California last month and took a lot of photos. I've been learning a lot since, so this will probably be the last of them that I post on TPF, but here are a few more of my favorites:

Many others can be seen at davidfriedl.com

manaheim · May 13, 2016

Tree shot seems kinda neat.

The first three shots are all tilted. Almost looks exactly like the same tilt in each one, which is funny. One of your legs is too long!

What the heck is that thing in the foreground in the first one? It's really distracting because I can't figure out what it is, and it looks sort of weird.

Second one looks like it has some promise but it's not quite clicking. I think it's because the boats seem so small in the frame and I didn't realize what they were right away. I wonder if a little crop top/bottom might pull it in a little.

KC1 · May 13, 2016

What the heck is that thing in the foreground in the first one? It's really distracting because I can't figure out what it is, and it looks sort of weird.

A driftwood treestump.

Very nice photoset, I like the way you did these.
Love the scale of the stone outcropping in the second shot.
And of course the obligatory ground up redwoods shot we all have taken, I always like seeing them still.
Were you anywhere near Crescent City?

deepfriedl · May 13, 2016

manaheim said:
The first three shots are all tilted.

I do this all the time. It's annoying - I feel like I spend too much time with fine rotation in Irfanview for my horizon shots, only to let one slip through. I didn't realize it on the others until you posted that, though. I kindof wish my Nikon D3300 could show a grid in the viewfinder the way it can on the LCD... or maybe I just need to correct this.

manaheim said:
What the heck is that thing in the foreground in the first one? It's really distracting because I can't figure out what it is, and it looks sort of weird.

Yep driftwood stump. I like it there, but I should have had less shadow / more detail. I shot in all jpg for this trip and only just started shooting and editing raw. Hopefully it will get better.

manaheim said:
Second one looks like it has some promise but it's not quite clicking. I think it's because the boats seem so small in the frame and I didn't realize what they were right away. I wonder if a little crop top/bottom might pull it in a little.

What's your opinion on this if the image were displayed larger? When it's blown up, I can see the boats much better, and I originally really liked the shot because of how much the rock dwarfed them. I felt like I was challenged to show scale through this whole trip, between the enormity of both the ocean scenes and the trees.

KC1 said:
Very nice photoset, I like the way you did these.
Love the scale of the stone outcropping in the second shot.
And of course the obligatory ground up redwoods shot we all have taken, I always like seeing them still.

Thanks! I bought my girlfriend and me each a D3300 specifically because we wanted to get a bit more into photography and wanted to take photos on this trip. It's my first SLR (her's too), but I'm learning as fast as I can. As I said above, I was fighting with showing scale constantly on this trip. I felt like I was always at the widest my 18-55 could go or the closest I could get with the 55-200 or 70-210.

KC1 said:
Were you anywhere near Crescent City?

We roamed from Eureka, where we stayed, as far north as Crescent City. The first shot is at the public beach near Mad River. The second shot is from "downtown" Trinidad, at the lighthouse. The third is from near the elk viewing area north of the Lady Bird Johnson Grove. The last is from the Arcata Community Forest, which was very nice, despite being busy with hikers and the trees not as large as the big groves. Crescent City didn't make it into this set of photos, but here is a shot I like from there:

manaheim · May 13, 2016

Don't feel too bad about the tilt thing. It's pretty common for them to be at least a little off. I'm adjusting mine all the time, even when the tilt is intentional. After a while of doing this, you'll get more of an adapted sense of it and be able to spot it quickly, even without any obvious point of reference.

Ah, ok on the driftwood. And yeah, just a bit more detail would help. Lesson learned and you said you're shooting raw now, so... all the better.

On the scale/bigger image thing... that occurred to me when I was commenting before, and yeah... maybe. The problem is if the image NEEDS to be giant to work, I feel like that's a problem. Two things to consider here, I think...

1. Often times we initially want EVERYTHING in the picture, when in truth we can get what we need to convey the feeling with far less of what we have originally captured. Early on in most photographer's careers, cropping is almost always needed and almost always strengthens the image. To some degree, I think that is the case with this one.

2. And here's why the "to some degree"... to be honest, NONE of the boats in the image are laid out in a way that does a great job for the image. They're all facing away from the lens, and not terribly interesting from behind. Even when you try cropping in to maintain just one in the frame, it just doesn't work that well. In short... you had a good eye for an interesting scene, but the elements in the scene were out of your control and didn't line up in a way that really worked.

So... still a cool image, but not a real bell-ringer, if you know what I mean.