The Hanging Mat
So for the 4th I went down to Santa Fe. A wonderful place to vacation in, but not so much to live. I love all the art and the culture, and really just how interesting the place is, but for me when I lived there it just didn’twork out so well. There really aren’t that many places for younger people to hang out, and it’s rife withtourists. Not that I’m not a tourist a lot of the time, but after a while you get tired of answering the question of “where’s the plaza from here?’. I of course had my new 70-200 and just had a blast with it. It was great to be able to zoom around across the street and find interesting people to take photographs of. I’m still sorting through the probably 20-30 shots that I will be posting up here. That was culled down from about 200 photos a
lot of which I really like, and a few duds.
I always find it amazing how many shots can look so cool when you’re in person taking it, and then when you get it larger it just doesn’t have much “umph”. I guess being in the 3d world, and taking 2d pictures will do that. And often I don’tlike to show much environment withmy shots, mainly because I like to shoot with wide open apertures. I find that separating the subject from the background is my greatest way of bringing to focus exactly what the focal point is. I guess that’s why I’m just not a big landscape photographer. It’s so hard for me to set my camera at f/11. I die a little inside when I do that. Maybe that’s an amateur thing, maybe not, but I love shooting wide open. Hence why when I upgraded my camera and lenses I got all very fast glass. Although I will say this, I have noticed quite a bit of chromatic aberrationwithmy new 70-200. This is something I’ve never really had to deal with before. I don’t think it really ruined any of my photographs so far, but it is something that I’m going to have to watch more and more.
So the reason that this shot came about was as we were walking around the plaza a bird crapped on me. Right on my hand. Disgusting. I almost threw up. I had to find a paper towel or something right away. So I went into this jewelry store and asked for a paper towel. The guy was very nice and helped me out by giving me some antibacterial too. As I was walking out of his shop I noticed that on all the rafters in a sort of open market alleyway were decorated with what I can only call a hanging mat. They were so bright and colorful, and the sun was adding a great rim light to them. So I took a few shots. They turned out to be some of my favorites of the trip. So I guess if the bird hadn’t have crapped on my hand I never would have seen these and taken some pictures of them. So I guess there is a certain amount of fate to photography. Still kinda sucked that a bird crapped on my hand though.
This shot was almost straight out of the camera, of course I heightened the contrast and saturation a bit, to make the colors really pop, but the contrast is so great on this 70-200 that I really didn’t have to do much. This was shot at 1/320th, f/2.8 (of course), and ISO 250. Obviously the lens does a have a tad bit of light falloff, which helps the shot more than it hurts it.
Hope ya like.
-Dave
