26-JUN-2009
Hot glass, Museum of Glass, Tacoma, Washington, 2009
The essence of glass making is the application of heat. While photographing glassmakers at work in the Museum’s demonstration area, the Hot Shop, I noticed them working on a piece of glass with a blowtorch. I zoomed in on it with my longest focal length – 400mm. I had no other choice. The telephoto was the only tool for the task, since I was not allowed to go down on the floor of the demonstration gallery itself and even if I could, I would want to stay well away from the dangers of fire and hot glass. I made this image from the visitors gallery and was able to capture the yellow, and orange colors of the fire enveloping the piece of art glass under a blast of diagonal blue flame from the blowtorch.
06-APR-2008
Victoria Terminus, Mumbai, India, 2008
The British built Victoria Terminus in 1888. Today it is the most impressive example of Victorian Gothic architecture in India. A statue of “Progress” crowns its colossal dome. I used a medium 140mm focal length to reach up and relate the statue to other elements on the roof of the terminal, including the Indian flag.
19-MAR-2008
Gridlock on the Delhi-Jaipur highway, India, 2008
India's 1.13 billion people tax its highway system, particularly those leading out of Delhi, its capital city. India's highway system is relatively undeveloped for a country holding one sixth of the world's population. India will overtake China by 2030 to become the world's most populated country. I used a 350mm telephoto focal length, and shot through the front window of our tour bus. My lens acts as a telescope, compressing the space between the cars, truck and bus as if they were inches apart. I make the traffic jam seem even tighter than it really is.
17-SEP-2007
Experiencing The Great Wall, Mutianyu, China
This section of the Great Wall of China is at Mutianyu, a dramatic hilly setting 56 miles north of Beijing. It is a more relaxed section of the wall, with far fewer tourists and less intrusive vendors and self-appointed "guides" than I found at Simatai on my previous visit to the wall in 2004. (The most commercialized section of the wall is at Badaling, only 44 miles from Beijing.) I wanted to convey the relaxed, relatively un-crowded nature of the Great Wall at this place by including only about five people in this picture. It was a foggy, overcast day, and I wanted to express the mood of the weather as well. To do this, I extended my zoom lens to about 300mm and shoot into the mist. The long telephoto focal length flattens perspective, bringing the towers closer together. It also defines the fog by showing us the foreground clearly, yet greatly softening detail in the background.
18-DEC-2006
A mind of their own, Erg Chebbi, Sahara Desert, Morocco, 2006
A pair of camels has broken away from the herd, and set off on their own into the deeply shadowed dunes of the Sahara. It took awhile for the herd master to corral them. I used my longest telephoto focal length (750mm) to reach them, as well as to flatten the image and bring the dunes in front of then and behind them closer together. The image expresses both the power and majesty of the Sahara, as well as the independent nature of the camel.
18-DEC-2006
Ram alert, Sahara Desert, Morocco, 2006
There are many herds of sheep on the fringes of the Sahara. We stopped for one that filled the road before us. A alert group of rams with very large horns create a wall here to keep the other sheep in check. I also used a 750mm telephoto focal length to make this image – the rams were very far away, and I wanted to make them as big as possible. They were the subject of the picture and I needed detail to create the incongruous “wall of horns” that keep the rest of the sheep in line.
19-SEP-2006
Reflections at sunset, Bryce Canyon, Utah, 2006
The wall at the base of this image is reflecting the light of a late afternoon back into the darkness of Bryce Canyon, softly illuminating the colorful hoodoos in a golden glow as no direct sunlight ever could. This scene was not very close to my camera position, and there was no way for me to move any closer. Except optically. I simply zoomed out to about 250mm to make this image, bringing up detail and rendering the color accurately and completely. Any smaller focal length would have included too many hoodoos, and diluted the meaning cast on the individual rock formations by the delicate, softly reflective light.
27-SEP-2006
Raven, Hot Lake, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, 2006
Bird photography generally requires using telephoto lenses of 400mm and up. Birds often keep a good distance from humans, and are relatively small subjects to begin with. If we are to embrace a bird with our frame in order to show detail, we must use a focal length capable of doing just that. Ravens are large birds, but even a large bird is a small subject when it comes to stressing detail and expression. I used my zoom lens at 420mm to bring out the texture of this raven’s feathers, the catchlight in the eye, and the explosive thrust of a beak in full cry. I fill more than half the frame with my subject. This long focal length, when used on a subject that is relatively close, will also throw the background into soft focus, simplifying the image by removing all background clutter and distractions.
10-JUN-2006
Sea Otter, Oregon Coast Aquarium, Newport, Oregon, 2006
Sea Otters are difficult to see in the wild. There is a delightful exhibit of otters at the aquarium in Newport, and they are often close enough to photograph, particularly with a telephoto lens. I used a 377mm telephoto focal length to make this shot. The reason telephotos are so essential is the small scale of the animal itself. The smaller the animal, the longer the lens must be if key detail is to come up. My long lens enables me to simplify my image, and stress the detail that will take this image beyond description and instead express ideas about this otter. The paws clasped to the chest, the serene expression on a face marked by trails of stylized tears, will tickle the imagination of all who will see this image. A long telephoto lens in the 300mm-500mm range is essential for photographing wildlife at a distance, enabling us to shoot without disturbing the animal, filling a large portion of frame with the subject and making key details visible. For more examples of wildlife photography using telephoto lenses, see my Safari Gallery at
http://www.pbase.com/pnd1/safari
01-APR-2006
Sharing a smoke, Baisha, China, 2006
This trio of Naxi farmers share a leisurely chat and several pipes filled with local tobacco.
I used my telephoto lens at 350mm, focusing on the man doing the talking and softening the men doing the smoking. It is a study of faces and hands, gradually growing sharper and more emphatic as we move into image. One of the most important aspects of the telephoto as a tool for expression is its ability to selectively soften certain areas of a picture while keeping others sharp. If we want to focus selectively, we open up our lens to its largest aperture and then focus on whatever we wish to stress. The lens does the rest as it does for us here.
26-OCT-2005
High Noon on Avenida Juarez, Guanajuato, Mexico, 2005
A long row of iron posts separate traffic from pedestrians who walk the bricks of this avenue. I use the full zoom reach of 420mm to compress that row of posts, making it seem as if each post was standing up against each other. Actually, the posts are spaced at least six to eight feet apart (you can see another photo of them showing this spacing by clicking on the thumbnail at the bottom. ) I wanted this image to contrast the silhouetted man in the wide brimmed hat to the posts stacked before him on one side, and to the silhouetted traffic jam arrayed before him on the other. The telephoto perspective collapses distance and merges foreground, middle ground and background together, pushing the man and the objects before him much closer together than they would appear to the eye.
04-SEP-2005
At Prayer, Cathedral of St. Stephen, Zagreb, Croatia, 2005
The man was sitting alone behind the main altar of Croatia’s greatest Cathedral, staring straight ahead with clasped hands. He was so deeply into prayer and meditation that he rarely moved or changed expression while I was there. I wanted to make an image defining his concentration and devotion. But I certainly did not want to disturb him. Sitting on a bench fifty or sixty feet away, I placed my camera on the back of the bench in front of me for stability. My 432mm telephoto lens allowed me to reach out across that space and the fill nearly half my frame with the praying man. The light was very poor, but my camera has an image stabilized lens, which gave me the freedom to use both a low ISO (100) and a shutter speed as slow as ¼ of a second and perhaps get a sharp picture in the light that was available to me. I never use an intrusive flash, under any circumstances. I turned off all noises on my camera, and probably made about thirty or forty images of him over a ten- minute period. Many of them were slightly blurred, but this was one was perfect. He was so far away that my depth of field extended well beyond him and defined the names of historical figures on the wall behind him in sharp focus. This image is all about concern, acceptance, and perhaps a touch of sadness as well – all of them resonant human values.
07-JUN-2005
Wings aloft, Brussels, Belgium, 2005
A sword-wielding angel protects Brussels from his perch far above the city's old fish market, as wings of another kind leave disintegrating contrails in the evening sky. Because the angel was mounted on a very high column, I used a medium telephoto focal length of 160mm in order to make the size of the sculpture equal one third the length of the jet contrail behind it. If the statue were any larger in the frame, the contrail would be cramped for space. On the other hand, if the angel were any smaller, the contrail would overwhelm it. That’s why I recommend telephoto zooms over fixed telephoto lenses. We can easily fine-tune the scale of our subject to make it work best with the size of its context. The scale relationship between statue and contrail also determines the size of the triangle created between the flow of the wing, the leg, and the contrail. This triangle defines the incongruous relationship between the mythical wings of an angel and the wings of jet aircraft that etch the sky with their contrails. I also tilted the frame to run the contrail dynamically from corner to corner, energizing the angel in relationship to the thrust of the gradually disintegrating contrail behind it.
17-JUN-2005
At the Gate of the Goat, Kinderdijk, The Netherlands, 2005
Kinderdijk features nearly 20 windmills, built around 1740 to drain water from reclaimed land below sea level and pump it into nearby rivers and canals. It is the largest concentration of windmills in the world. I built this image around the relationship between the whimsical sculpture of a goat mounted on a hay bale near Kinderdijk’s entrance, and several of the windmills deep within the complex. Standing a good distance away from the goat, I used a long telephoto focal length of 319mm to get both the goat and the windmills into focus, yet also pulled them much closer together within my frame than they actually appeared to be in reality. The expanse of water between them also becomes narrower, and the long lens cuts through the mist to define the detail on the sails of the windmills. The reclaimed land itself is a verdant mass of green, which I emphasize by stressing the color of the grasses in the foreground and repeating them in the middle ground as well. The backlight abstracts both the goat and windmills, creating a timeless image of this place, which was added to UNESCO’s World Heritage list in 1997.
15-JUN-2005
Brabo Fountain, Town Square, Antwerp, Belgium, 2005
This image demonstrates the ability of the telephoto lens to compress multiple layers of an image into a dynamic perspective. I used a medium focal length of 264mm from a fairly close distance to integrate the incongruous detail of the bizarrely tarnished bronze figure, the spouts and droplets of water hanging in the air, the flags billowing from poles before the city’s town hall, and the façade of the town hall itself. The image throbs with energy – a bronze goddess supporting the massive platform of the fountain above her, the arching streams of water, and the waving flags in vivid primary colors, all of it flattened into a single plane.
08-JUN-2005
Place de Brouckere, Brussels, Belgium, 2005
In 1872, a design competition was held to encourage construction of architectural value around this busy Brussels square. Today, the winning designs have fallen victim to time and commerce. It is more lucrative for the building's owners to promote a Coke than to cherish Brussels' past. The sign is mounted on the top of a tall building. To be able to get this perspective, I had to stand at least a full city block away from the building. Yet I also needed to emphasize detail to stress the elegance of the deeply shadowed pediment and to compare the dynamic swoosh of the Coke logo to the perfection of the pediment’s classical triangle. The only solution is a very long focal length. I used the full length of my 432mm zoom lens to stress this detail. I then cropped the picture to retain only the bottom of the sign and the pediment of the building, using only the top half of my original image. This means that I would have had to use a focal length of 864mm to make this same image in an uncropped version. (I also had the option of using my “digital zoom” feature, which would have eliminated cropping the image later. However I never use that “digital zoom” feature because it just crops the picture in the camera, significantly degrading image quality. It’s always better to crop a picture in Photoshop, than to crop it in the camera!)
15-JUN-2005
Mother and Daughter, Temse, Belgium, 2005
I used the classic portrait focal length – approximately 105mm – to make this naturally candid portrait of a Belgian mother and daughter. I wanted the image to reflect an intimate, thoughtful moment in time, with each of the subjects appearing relaxed and unaware of the camera. The daughter is softly illuminated by window light, while the mother’s profile is in shadow. We were luncheon guests of this Belgian family, and I made this image while sharing a conversation with them and several other guests. The mother answers a question, while her daughter, who is still learning English, is patiently trying to absorb the answer. Working from about 10 feet away, the 105mm focal length makes it seem as if I was five feet away. But I was not in their face, and they were able to concentrate on the conversation instead of reacting to the camera. Without a telephoto lens, it would have been very difficult to make this natural an image.
15-JUN-2005
Town Crier, Temse, Belgium, 2005
This fellow stepped out of the 19th century to welcome us to the small town of Temse. I made this portrait of him from a distance, using the full length of my 432mm zoom because I wanted to use its shallow depth of focus to soften the contemporary building in the background as much as possible and reduce its prominence in the image. I later converted the color portrait to black and white, taking him even further back into the past. The black and white image removes the vivid colors of his uniform as well as a reflection of the blue sky in building's window.
14-JUN-2005
A crack in time, Ghent, Belgium, 2005
This clock, on the tower of Ghent's old post office, peeks between the bricks and stones of Ghent's 12th century guildhouses. It is one of Ghent's most visible landmarks. I made this image from about 200 yards away, shooting through an opening between two medieval Flemish guildhalls on Ghent’s riverside promenade. The ancient brickwork of those buildings was deeply shadowed, but because the clock tower was so high, it was still catching the last rays of the setting sun at 9:40 pm on a long June evening. I used a medium telephoto focal length of almost 200mm to frame the golden face of the clock tower within the darkened brick facades of the guildhalls. It enabled me to bring three buildings together within the same image that were three blocks apart in the real world.
09-JUN-2005
Maison du Roi. Brussels, Belgium, 2005
The Maison du Roi, once the administrative center for Flander's ruling Spanish kings, is now home to the city museum. It is just one of the ornate 400 year old structures surrounding the Grand Place, at the core of the old city. I photographed it on a cloudy morning, using backlight to abstract the tiny figures that seem to be dancing around its spires. Because these figures were so small and so high above me, I used a 240mm medium telephoto focal length to make this shot.
10-JUN-2005
Antiques Market, Place du Grand Sablon, Brussels, Belgium, 2005
Shoppers at Brussels' Place du Grand Sablon Weekend Antiques Market make good photographic subjects in themselves. This woman's hand gesture speaks of decision-making. She seems to have just stepped out of the painting behind her, which also makes use of hands. I was standing about 20 feet away from this scene, and used a medium telephoto focal length of nearly 200mm to make the photo. Although my point of focus was on the woman’s gesture, the painting is sharp enough to register detail as well. The depth of focus at 200mm from that distance was substantial enough to define the painting in reasonable detail.
19-JUN-2005
Into the night, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2005
A small boat seems to hesitate before a bridge over an Amsterdam canal, as if its passengers were anticipating their passage into a world of shimmering gold. This image speaks to me of the lure of travel and all its possibilities. It also refers to the color palettes of the great Dutch painters who once lived and worked in this city. To make it work, I eliminated the top of the bridge, which was cluttered with distracting railings, cars, bikes, and trucks. I wanted as quiet and intimate scene as possible. I isolated the boat, the arch, and just enough textured water, reflecting various intensities of gold. The telephoto lens is an essential tool for isolating content and simplifying composition. The boat and arch were a long way from me, so I used a long 310mm focal length to compose the image in this manner. I focused on the boat, making everything sharp from the foreground to where the water begins to soften just after the arch. Normally, I do not center my subjects, but in this case I did so to intensify that feeling of hesitation. I wanted this image to draw this moment out forever. That is one thing still photography can do very well.