Steve lives in Malibu, California. Being so near the Pacific Ocean gives him an unfair advantage I think. Anyway. He does mainly baseball photography, and also birds, waves and surf, as far as I know.
He works with a Canon 40D camera and professional Canon lenses. Real good equipment. A couple of years ago, his lens took a direct hit while he was doing baseball photography. Canon simply changed the front part of the telephoto for 200 USD, camera undamaged. I don't know the odds of receiving such a hit on your lens...
Today's pictures are quite good IMHO. The first one for the gull's snobbish expression, the second one for the perfect timing and the razor-sharp precision. This is easier said than done on a rapidly moving target like a surfer.
Waiting for your comments on those two... :-)
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Steve Wandzura : Deux photos en provenance de Californie
Steve vit à Malibu en Californie. Le fait de vivre à proximité de l'océan Pacifique lui confère un avantage indu à mon humble avis. En tout cas. Il fait principalement de la photo de baseball, et aussi d'oiseaux, de vagues, de surf, entre autres choses.
Il travaille avec un appareil Canon 40D et des lentilles Canon professionnelles. Il y a quelques années, une balle de baseball frappée à pleine puissance a heurté son objectif de plein fouet. Canon a simplement remplacé l'élément frontal du téléobjectif au coût de 200 USD. Pas de dommage à l'appareil photo lui-même. Je ne sais pas quelles sont les probabilités d'un tel événement...
Les deux photos d'aujourd'hui sont remarquables à mon avis. La première à cause de l'air snobinard du goéland, la seconde à cause d'une synchro et d'une précision parfaites, ce qui est plus facile à dire qu'à réaliser sur une cible mouvante comme un surfeur.
On attend vos commentaires sur ces deux photos...
RogerG
A Snobbish Seagull / Un goéland snobinard
The Rat Surfer
Les deux photos sont superbes, il est rare de voir un goéland aussi blanc et l'image du surfer est exceptionnel , tu l'as bien dit...
RépondreEffacerA Snobbish Seagull / Un goéland snobinard
RépondreEffacer..a brilliant capture of nature using the very best equipment (clearly). I like the right side of the bird's head as you can see the influence of the blue coloured background on the white of the bird. An interesting phenomena to contemplate: the way the coloured light is arriving at our eyes having been distorted and bounced off those tiny feathers..
So close, I feel I must be on first name terms with the bird!
A shot with big impact.
Tommy Olsson from Sweden wrote me:
RépondreEffacer"Really nice one of the seagull. I like the way the colour on the neck smoothly melts with the background. And the surfer - very good sharpness on that kind of rapidly mooving object.
All the best from Sweden with the spring round the corner ;-)"
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Tommy Olsson de Suède m'écrit :
"Le goéland est vraiment réussi. J'aime la façon dont la couleur du cou se fond en douceur avec l'arrière-plan. Et le surfeur - excellente précision sur ce type de cible mouvante.
Salutations de Suède, avec le printemps à nos portes ;-)"
-- RogerG
All said it about the seagull... clearly an awesome shot.... I think Paul said it all....
RépondreEffacerTho, I will say that I am not too keen on the surfer shot... although it is very sharp in deed, and clearly the right settings and gear were used, I dont find the composition to be the best, I dont think that the weather condition were at best and therefore dont find the contrast/colors to be right for that kind of shot.... especially coming from California...
Sorry...
Steph
I tend to agree with Steff. What I like about shooting Rat is the way he sculpts the water. (He also sculpts the boards, by the way - see www.ratsurfboards.com.) This photo shows an example of what I mean. What I don't like about it is that it doesn't show his face - I got some other frames in the same shoot that did, maybe with some compromise in the hydrodynamics.
RépondreEffacerAs far as the weather - it seemed pretty good to me, clear and hazy. Jeff surfed the north side of Oceanside pier so the sun would be behind me. Maybe I should have pumped up the saturation a bit more - I have a tendency toward undersaturation.
Interesting ideas from Steph and Steve. The next post should clarify things I think.
RépondreEffacerBTW, this blog is there exactly for that: different points of view, and if possible an explanation. :-)
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Points de vue intéressants de la part de Steph et Steve. Le prochain message jettera un nouvel éclairage là-dessus je crois bien.
En passant, ce blogue existe justement pour ça : un échange d'idées appuyées d'arguments quand c'est possible. :-)
RogerG