GEAR TALK - Eighteen Months with Isaac's Farm

Fifteen years ago I got in the car, drove 15-30 minutes and was taking pictures. Nowadays the drive is often 2-3 hours, followed by hours of roaming about to find something click-worthy. This new reality has fundamentally changed how I take pictures.

PRE-PLANNING

Using Google Earth and Street View to virtually drive down highways and streets is a great way to digitally preview an area and decide if it merits an in-person road trip. Google's street view and bird's eye views are also helpful for identifying possible sight lines and vantage points.

Apps like the Photo Ephemeris are helpful for gauging how the light and shadows will fall at different times of the day and year. If trying to line up a moonrise, apps like Photo Ephemeris are a must.

This pre-work aids in creating a punch-list and deciding how to sequence the stops to maximize the onsite time. Ultimately there is no replacement for "being there" and seeing things first hand. Often the plan goes out the window, but at least I have decent idea of what to expect.

REPEAT VISITS

If I find a new spot, time and time again the spot has vanished by the time I stop by again, so I tend to revisit a newly found spot over and over until the wanted outcome is achieved. I may go weekend after weekend, or in other cases wait until a better season, such as a winter light vs summer light.

Fifteen years ago a successful Saturday or Sunday was coming home with 5 to 10 good shots. Nowadays an outing might only be 10-20 clicks and maybe 1 image makes the cut and gets edited. It is a major mindset change.

Each visit tends to have a different take on how the subject is positioned relative to the background. Shallow DOF vs stopped down is always a variable. I experiment with different focal lengths to see if telephoto compression or a wide angle feel works better. It is a creative process mixed in with learnings from past visits and past edits.

SITE SPECIFIC GEAR

That iterative process is entangled with gear choices. Sometimes I buy a lens or other piece of gear because I think it will be "perfect" for a shot. Sometimes it works out, sometimes not so much.

Capture aids like IBIS and AF modes make little difference for how I shoot. Whereas capture modes like bracketing, shutter delay or frame averaging are much more useful, sometimes even key to a shot. The Arca Swiss Rm3di and Phase One IQ4-150 are the latest example of this obsessive compulsive behavior.

After visiting the same spot many times, the spot becomes a reference scene of sorts and can be helpful for judging how a new lens renders (i.e. - bokeh, contrast, sun stars, etc.) or how a new camera handles colors and such. When finished, much of the edited pictures and onsite handling experiences become fodder for the reviews on PebblePlace.

ISAAC'S FARM

Isaac's Farm is a good example of a spot I have visited probably 15-20 times over a 24 month period. Finding Isaac's Farm was dumb luck. I was driving down white rock roads for miles an miles and just happened across the old farm house.

The pictures on this page are a mash up of different vantage points, different focal lengths, different elevations, different cameras... Through the trial and error, a preferred sight line and composition began to take shape - with the car as the dominant subject and house providing context.

The last two pictures with the Leica 50mm F1.2 Noctilux-M and Leica 90mm F2 Summicron-M APO, and the version at the top of the page with the Leica 180mm F2 Summicron-R APO are my favorites. The pictures are laid out in chronological order to help illustrate the iterative evolution described above.

The 50mm Noctilux shot looks the most 'filmic' to my eyes and benefited from a warm late afternoon / early evening light. However, its optical performance was not my taste - the bokeh is jittery and sharpness is ho-hum. When printed at 17x22", the image is kind of disappointing. The 90mm and 180mm shots print better, but are less dynamic in terms of their perspective / presence / angle of view.

PICTURE TAKING TODAY VS YESTERDAY

When I first started taking pictures of North Texas, it was a macro exercise - covering large areas, getting may shots, etc. Today it is a micro exercise - shooting the same spot repeatedly until it has been completely exhausted.

For better or worse I justify this behavior based on these sites vanishing from the landscape, so there is a get'em while they are here' mindset. Also there is not an abundance of such locations, so when I do find one, it feels a photographic gold mine.