robertwallace

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Jul, 2014

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Lovely face! Great shot

PRO+

beautiful light, colour and composition.

PRO+

congrats on the award!

Thank you for the kind words. I know its been a long time since the comments were made and I'm sorry but please know that my thanks is heart felt.

Thank you everyone!

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Same photographer See all Behind The Lens

It took several tries getting this little guy. Shot with Nikon D800, SB700 flash, Tamron 180mm lens hand held.

grasshopper hitching a ride on the nose of a lizard

This was shot on I day 7 (I believe) or an 8 day photography adventure that I took on my own to the Olympic mountains and coastline. It's a singl

I have been shooting at this garden for the last couple of weeks and walked through (and photographed) this particular area without ever noticing this

This was a HDR shot of a foggy morning in Cade's Cove that is nestled in a valley of the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee.

It pays to be up and out just before the sun has a chance to dry things out.

Behind The Lens

Location

This photo was taken at Avalon Park which is located on Long Island, NY in Stony Brooke. A beautiful park that is larger than expected that is all about hiking with three distinctly different areas. Lake (pond), forested and fields. It was the field area where I came across this little jumping spider.

Time

This was shot at around 3:30pm. Luckily for me the sun was at my back and a bit to my left to help light my subject up and allowing me to hand hold my camera. Surprisingly the spider never once tried to hide, being just as curious about me as I was excited to photograph it.

Lighting

When I go out in the field (pretty much everything I so is outside of a controlled environment) I do carry a flash with a wide diffuser if needed but try to always photograph with as much natural light as possible. And as most of us know, early mornings or late evening probably give the best in natural color reproduction.

Equipment

I pretty much always carry two cameras with me. One set up for potential wildlife and the other for landscapes and macro/closeup work. With the jumping spider, I used a Nikon D800 and a Tamron 180mm macro lens. Thankfully I had enough light behind me that I didn't need to use the flash but I did use a tripod for the shot. I don't remember what brand the tripod was at that time (it was 4 year ago). My camera settings (for those who just have to know *grinning here*) were f/16 (to get as much of the subject in focus as possible); 1/60th of a second (the reason for the tripod) and ISO 200 for fine detail and low noise!

Inspiration

What inspired me to take this photo? What's not to be inspired by? Spiders in general are interesting subjects to photograph and most often you see images of them on webs, on a table, a tree, a leaf and they mostly have one thing in common...the whole body is exposed. For me, the way it watched me from the other side of that leaf had a since of not only curiosity but playfulness too. So it was the combination of those two things that made this fun and interesting for me.

Editing

I only had to do a little exposure adjustment in Lightroom to compensate the camera settings I used to insure the best possible photo I could get. And the adjustment was very minimal.

In my camera bag

Gosh. What a question. I would love to say it depends on what I'm out to photograph that day but the truth is, I'm one of those photographers who lives in fear that if I don't take everything then I will surely miss out on "the" shot. At the time of this photograph, I was carrying around the Nikon D800 and a Nikon D300. I would always have in my bag the Tamron 180mm, 100mm, Nikon 17-50 zoom, 50mm normal and a 300mm lens for the wildlife (not ideal for wildlife but it was in my budget at the time). I only had one flash at the time and I believe it was the Nikon SB-700 (I have been through many flashes, lenses and camera body exchanges over the last four years). Today I carry the Nikon D810 (wished I would have stayed with the D800) and Nikon D500 and the D500 pretty much always has the Tamron 150-600mm G2 series lens attached (can't imagine trekking miles with a 600mm lens though it is on my wish list one day). My other lens of note are the Sigma 150 and 100mm macro, a Tokina 11-16mm super wide and a Nikon 24-70 f/2.8. My flash is the Flashpoint Flashstreak 360 by Adorama and I can't sing enough praise about this flash. I also carry UV, PL and ND filters. These are always needed it seems. My tripod is a Manfrotto heavy-duty carbon fiber tripod and a Benro Gembal Head. I do have an off brand tripod head that I use for landscapes and macro work when lighter gear will do.

Feedback

Nature photography is all about luck to start with. What I mean by that is that you have to be lucky enough to either stumble on a worthwhile subject or (if you are the type to sit and wait) have one come to you. Again, I was lucky that this spider didn't go scurrying off to hide and gave me the time to set-up the tripod and compose the shot you see here. The main thing when it comes to photographing small subjects in macro or close-up is to get as much of your subject into focus as possible. It's important to also know your lens and what the highest f/stop you can go to while still maintaining a sharp image. With a dedicated fixed focal length macro lens I was able to safely set my aperture at f/16 which put the most important part of my subject in focus...the eyes. Another way of doing this is through what is called rack focusing. That method requires several shots and then blending them in post. Not an easy task out in the field. the slightest breeze or movement will mess the whole thing up. So in the field, f/16 is my usual macro goto setting. If I'm doing a few miles of hiking I will leave the tripod behind and have learned to handhold for macro shots. Not easy but doable. This usually means a higher ISO for a faster shutter speed, learning how to best hold a camera and use continuous high speed shutter.

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robertwallace

robertwallace

Photo

Behind The Lens

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