Wagner Park – 52 from 52

Picture info: ISO 160, 36mm, f/4.0, 1/4000 sec

Week 29 (2/17/2014 -2/23/2014): Wagner Park, New York, NY

Picture taken on 2/23/2014 at 5:13 PM

Photograph description:

There is a first for everything, and this week was a feast of firsts. For starters, this week was the first time that I didn’t post within my weekly deadline. After a busy weekend when it came time to write my post on Sunday night, I couldn’t resist collapsing face down on my plush tempurpedic. Other than my latent post, this week also marked the first time that my post’s picture was shot with something other than my Nikon 35mm f/1.8 lens. I still shot my picture at ~35mm but this time it was with a new Sigma 17-50mm f/2.8. I had been tussling with whether or not to buy a new lens for a couple of weeks. Last week I was finally able to validate purchasing a new lens. One of my stocks recently started to take a hit so I decided to cut bait and divert those funds to the investment of a new lens. Hopefully the lens will pay better dividends.

The last two “firsts” worth noting are locations based. This week was the first time that I visited Washington Square park and the nearby Stumptown coffee shop. I’ve been to the Stumptown on 29th street a few times but never the second and smaller location by Washington Square park. It was nice finally checking out the park even if it wasn’t the best time of the day for pictures. The sun was at about 45 degrees and blindingly bright. After walking around the park for a few minutes with my friend that tagged along we decidle split off from one another so we could each focus on finding the best shot. As I moved away from the park’s iconic arch I found a couple ways to use to the sun’s harsh angle. One was to shoot some reflection pictures using the wet ground. The second idea I had was to line the sun up within the street lights that littered the park so it looked like they were glowing in the daylight. Although both were fun ideas, they quickly grew old so I decided to find my friend and search for a better location.

Washington Square Park Light Post

With sunset approaching we decided to head to Wagner Park located at the southern tip of Manhattan. I shot at that location once before during week 16 but since it provides great sunsets, I knew there was no harm in taking a return visit.

While on our way south we seemingly stopped every couple of feet to take pictures. Since the purpose of our trip was to take pictures, frequently stopping wasn’t a problem, but it was threatening our chances of getting to the park at the right time. Eventually we decided to jump on the 1 train to expedite our journey.

Once we got out of the subway we made a beeline towards the park. When we finally cleared the tall buildings of the financial district, I yelled out “boomshakalaka” in excitement once I saw the beautiful evening sky. For the next hour or so my friend and I were treated to one of the better sunsets I’ve seen in a while. We both shuffled around the park trying to find the best shot. I eventually spotted a patch of tall grass which provided me with a good foreground subject and sealed the deal for this week’s picture.

Photography concepts:

Since this week is the first time shooting with my new Sigma lens it makes sense for me to talk about some of the advantages it provides. One of the advantages which benefited this week’s picture is the Sigma’s nice bokeh. As I talked about last week, bokeh is the part of the picture that’s out of focus. One thing I recently learned is that with nicer lenses the bokeh is smoother and although it’s a little bit of an oxymoron, the out of focus images are sharper. The nice bokeh worked well for creating silhouettes of the lamp post, railing and couple walking.

Another advantage the Sigma has is a low fixed aperture of f/2.8. Although the Sigma doesn’t beat my Nikon 35mm’s f/1.8 aperture it’s still large enough to make shooting indoor and night pictures easier. The Nikon beats the Sigma aperture but the Sigma has a 4-stop Anti-Shake feature which allows for slower shutter speeds. This means that although the Nikon can let in more light via a wider aperture, the Sigma can let in more light via slower shutters (without using tripods). The term 4-stops means I can go 4 stops lower than the recommended shutter speed for a specific focal length. When shooting at 35mm (52 with a crop sensor) it’s recommended that I stay at or above 1/100 of a second. Thanks to the anti-shake feature I can hit a shutter speed of 1/40 of a second, and possibly slower if I have any added stabilization. This is a moot point if you’re using a tripod but it’s very relevant when you’re shooting indoors or at night.

The last advantage I’ll quickly mention because it’s not one that can help me during my 52from52 photoblog series is that the Sigma is a zoom. The advantage of having a zoom lens is pretty obvious. With a zoom you’re able to recompose your picture without moving and hit targets that a 35mm prime can’t. Because it’s a zoom I might use my Sigma again in some upcoming posts, not to shoot my picture from another focal length, but so that I have some flexibility for the pictures not meant for this blog. The Sigma’s focal length range 17-50mm ( ~25-75mm) is very versatile. The lens moves from wide angle to a nice focal length for taking pictures of people, especially when I can maintain a f/2.8 aperture. The possibilities this lens has is exciting so stay tuned!

Picture Info: ISO 200, 35mm, f/8, 1/320sec

Week 16 (11/18/2013 – 11/24/2013): Wagner Park, New York City
Picture taken on 11/23/2013 at 5:04 PM

Picture description:

Back in September I discovered the beautiful location that is Wagner Park. After getting the picture for my week 5 post, Never Forget, at the Freedom Tower, I had dinner with my wonderful mother for her birthday at a place that had long been on my “To Try” Yelp list. The restaurant I’m talking about is Gigino at Wagner Park and let me tell you put it on your to do list. Gigino has outdoor seating (weather permitting) which provided us with one of the best sunsets I’ve ever seen while we ate a delicious dinner. After dinner I knew that I’d have to make a return trip in the near future, if not for a date, I’d absolutely have to take my camera to capture the scenic views at Wagner Park.

Since September I haven’t made it back to Gigino, mainly because it’s gotten far too cold to take anyone on a date there. That being said I can handle the cold on my own so this past Saturday I decided to take a trip to Wagner Park around sunset to see what kind of pictures I could get. Luckily as it turned out I chose a great night that provided a really interesting and vivid sunset. Out of all the sunset pictures there was one picture that really caught my attention during editing. It’s pretty obvious which picture I’m talking about, look up, but let me give you the quick story behind it.

After arriving at Wagner Park I noticed that I wasn’t the only one that decided today was a good day to hang out in the park. No I’m not talking about a person, although they were there too, I’m talking about a brace of ducks. Yes, a group of ducks is called a “brace” look it up, I did. As I walked around the park trying to figure out where would be the best place to get my sunset shot I kept glancing over to the ducks. Eventually I decided why not see if I can creep up on the group and snap a birds eye view? Since the sun was so strongly beaming down from the horizon I couldn’t use the viewfinder (I’ll explain this more later) I blindly lined up my shot and fired away. With each picture I adjusted my shot based off the last picture’s preview. After a couple shots I finally “walked in” my picture’s composition to something that I liked, and here you have it.

Photography concepts:

As I mentioned in the description section this picture was shot basically blind and through a series of picture to picture adjustments. The reason I did this is first because I could not use the viewfinder. It might seem obvious but when you’re taking a picture directly into the sun you can’t look through the viewfinder. Why? Well the sun is dangerous enough to look at with the naked eye, forget about through essentially a magnifying glass. Since I value my eyesight I won’t even risk getting flashed with the sun’s blinding light. For shot’s into the sun this leaves the live-view option which is the back screen. Although I could have used the live-view I don’t like how it focuses, it’s not fast enough for moving objects. With the ducks moving around I wanted to be able to fire quick shots and thus did not use the live view.

A concept I tend to mention in almost every post is the rule of thirds. This time though I want to highlight how I didn’t exactly follow the rules. In this picture I had three things that I considered the focus of my shot, or my main subjects. One was the sun, two was the light post and the third the ducks, more specifically the one duck that was closest to me in the foreground. When it came time to align my shot rather than put the sun on one of the left or right third lines like I usually do I centered it. I also centered the main duck and the light poll, which only further highlighted the sun. Aligning the sun with the light post gave off the effect that the light post is the reason the sky is so illuminated. The reason I said I did’t exactly follow the rule was because I did follow it for some other parts of the picture. For example, I did not put the horizon in the absolute center of my picture. I gave more weight to the ducks/grass rather than the sky to further emphasize them in the picture. Another way I loosely followed the rule of thirds was putting some of my secondary subjects close to the cross points of the upper thirds line on the left and right. I’m talking about the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Although this falls under the rule, it was more of an accident but I’m glad everything lined up with such great symmetry.

Center Vs. Rule of Thirds

The last thing I want to mention real quick is how I edited the sky. In the unedited photo the sky was really blown out from the sun. As I’ve mentioned before since I shoot in a RAW format I’m able to recover some of the detail even when images get over or under exposed. Below is a comparison of how the image originally looked and how it did after I dropped the exposure for just the sky by about 2 steps. One way I might have been able to avoid doing this is shooting in HDR mode or creating one via bracketing and photo merging. I haven’t talked a lot (if at all) about HDR but it’s something I plan to in some future posts. Right now I’m still in the experimental stages with my Nikon as far as HDR but it’s one of my favorite effects with my iPhone 5s. More to come on this subject soon!