Vito Paratore Photography

After a few uninspired, busy weeks, I made time to go shooting this past Friday and Saturday. On Friday, I took a trip to scout out Batsto Lake not too far from Tuckerton, New Jersey. It looks like it has some promise, although bug spray is a must. I found 3 ticks on me after walking for less than 15 minutes. I went back to Whitesbog for sunset and found a few good spots for future photos.

On Saturday I went back to Whitesbog for sunset. I found this small group of stumps in one of the bogs. Because the bog is so shallow, the water is very still, making for awesome reflections of the sky. Here is what I ended up with:

I had the day off work on Monday, so I decided to take a trip to the Manasquan Reservoir. The water has come up all the way to the trees, cutting off access to my favorite subjects. When I walked down to the edge of the water, I found these nice, dark-red leaves with the water rushing in amongst them with each wave. The water saturated the colors of the leaves and reflected light, making for a high contrast composition. I used my Canon 17-40mm f/4 L with my tripod dropped to just inches off the ground. I stopped down the aperture to get maximum depth of field, leaving me with a shutter speed of over 1 second.

I picked my two favorites from the day, which happen to be of the same area just from slightly different angles. I prefer one slightly over the other, but I am curious to hear what you all think. Which image do you like better? Which composition feels more balanced to you? Leave a comment with your answer!

Last Friday, I was able to leave work earlier than usual. It was raining, but this glorious fog was appearing because of the rain. I decided to go to the reservoir to take some fog shots. My camera, the Canon 400D, is not weather-sealed, so I had to find a way to keep it dry. I prepared a garbage bag for the job like so:

1) Placed the garbage bag over the camera, judging where the lens would be on the bag.

2) Cut out a lens-sized hole in the bag, and positioned the bag just over the lens.

3) Having the bag slightly overlap the filter I had on the lens (circular polarizer), I put the lens hood on, catching the garbage bag and pulling it into the hood slots for a better ’seal.’

This way definitely is not perfect, but it sure is cheap. As long as the garbage bag stays tight in the lens hood slots, no water touches the lens or camera. Unfortunately, this prohibits me from changing lenses, therefore I must decide more specifically what I want to shoot before I go.

If any of you readers have a different or better way to keep your camera dry, let me know and I will try it out and post the results.

Last Friday evening, I was able to go out to photograph the ice that was potentially forming at the reservoir. The ice was still thin, so the small waves of water moving underneath the ice made interesting sounds. Sounds that would have made a star trail trip later that night very creepy (it was overcast, so star trails were not possible that night). When I saw this area of ice, I decided to try some more abstract compositions and play with small depth of field ideas. The late afternoon sunlight gives definition to the texture of the ice and color to the reflections.

This photo is another shot from my drive on New Years Eve. My grandfather and I have taken photos of this barn on many occasions because of it’s rustic look and perfect placement on the curving road. The barn is only a 10 minute drive from my grandfather’s house. I was happy to get a nice blue sky in the background.

Here is another shot from my interior shoot on Saturday. The large area of countertop in the bottom left-hand corner will be a good spot to put a logo or other information for an advertisement. As with the last shot, I had to correct perspective and distortion in photoshop to keep the lines straight and level.

Today, I attempted to photograph a kitchen. The first thing I found out is that 28mm (equivalent) is not very wide at all and I had problems fitting everything in. The second thing I found out I noticed on my computer a little bit ago. The barrel distortion on my wide angle lens reaks havoc with the walls and cabinets. With some perspective and distortion correction in Photoshop, the end result is not bad, at least for a first attempt.

The second stop of our morning drive in the snow, this birch tree has been in several of my photos in the past. I opted for a more unusual composition by focusing in on the bottom half.

The Sunday before New Years my family and I drove up to Timbertops (the name we have given to my grandparents house up in Pennsylvania) to celebrate Christmas with my mom’s side of the family. Sunday night into early Monday morning, it snowed about 6 inches. My grandfather, my friend Brian, and I went for a nice drive in the Jeep. We stopped to take photos at a few of our favorite spots in the area, as well as stopping at a couple spots where the curving road was particularly nice.

As mentioned in yesterday’s entry, I was able to take two trips to the reservoir: Last night and Wednesday night. Last night, I was more successful in lighting the foreground. I used a Maglite flashlight to “paint” the foreground with light. I used the stacking technique in both attempts, which gave me a bit of flexibility with the foreground. I used the flashlight on the first and last exposures I took; that way if one was too bright or two dark, I had the other one as a backup. It turned out I exposed too much light on the first frame, so I used the last frame for the foreground.

For this photo, I was facing a few degrees west of south, so my trails were longer. I got to the spot earlier as well, so my total, stacked exposure was twice as long as Wednesday night’s (approx. 42 minutes). I was amazed at the number of airplanes that flew over during that 42 minutes. Most of them did not expose on the image, but you can see a few there now. For any prints I may make of this shot, I will probably clone them out.