TOOLS FOR CREATIVITY

I always take my tripod with me.

I think tripods are one of the most important pieces of equipment you can have, it gives you the opportunity to create different moods with your imagery.One such mood is the magical way you can blur movement.

In this image I blurred the water rushing over the rocks. This was taken with a shutter speed of .4 sec. to really make the water turn it into a soft shape. I loved this setting but I wanted it to be misty and have a mystic feel to it. I needed my tripod, I couldn’t have done that hand-held, even with the remarkable image stabilizer in the SONY a99.I can shoot with a 70 mm lens at an eighth of a second or a fifteenth of a second and get tack sharp images. That is unheard of!But you can’t hand hold for a minute – even with this advanced system. So, my routine when I’m looking for images is to find an interesting area and then figure out what kind of feeling I want the image I make to have.

Make sure you have equipment that will allow you to be creative. Tripods, neutral density filters, etc… Because I had the correct tools, I was able to slow the shutter speed down and make this moody image.