Photographing in the South PacificMichael Snell captures the beauty of New Zealand with the Tamron 18-270mm VC PZD lens. |
Article By Jennifer Gidman Images by Michael Snell |
During a recent two-week trip to New Zealand for a Society of American Travel Writers convention, Michael Snell knew his schedule was going to be packed with meetings, tours, and other business obligations - meaning that the photographs he was able to shoot would have to be sandwiched in on the fly. |
To assist him in his roving responsibilities, Snell brought along the Tamron 18-270mm VC PZD lens, which he had test-driven a few weeks earlier in Baton Rouge. While shooting in Louisiana, he was impressed with the 18-270's light weight (less than 1 pound), compact size, and focal-length range, which came in handy whether he was capturing an 18mm scenic of downtown Baton Rouge from the observation deck of the State Capitol building or zooming in to 270mm to show the Huey Long statue on the Capitol grounds from the same vantage point.
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It was this versatility and portability that led Snell to choose the 18-270 when it came time to head for New Zealand. "Having a lens that can do that many things in a lightweight package was important, because I knew I wasn't going to always have the ability to take my whole bag with me," he says. "I'd go straight from meetings to a half-day tour, then back to meetings. It was nice to be able to have one lens on my camera and be prepared for anything, from macro food photography to telephoto for wildlife." |
Snell appreciated the 18-270's Vibration Compensation (VC) feature and the faster, quieter autofocusing, a result of PZD technology in the lens. "I've had other lenses with vibration control, and sometimes when you turn them on, the image floats around in a strange way in the viewfinder, which is disorienting," he says. "With the 18-270, you turn on the VC and it just grips and locks. I used it most often in New Zealand when I got into the long end of the telephoto range. Plus, I took for granted how fast and quiet it was - you only really notice that kind of thing when a lens is really slow or noisy, so I didn't even have to think about it." |
Shooting Fast and Furious |
New Zealand is known for its unique birds, animals, and plants - a photographer's dream. Snell approaches the flora and fauna, though, from the perspective of a travel photographer, not a wildlife photographer. "I have great admiration for wildlife photographers," he says. "But they tend to spend days, if not weeks, out in blinds waiting for the animals to cooperate and for the right light. I don't have the patience or the time to do that."
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Instead, Snell works at a faster pace with minimal setup. "I'm more like the typical person on vacation," he says. "I'm trying to get more of a sense of place, and I have to be ready to get that shot on a moment's notice. With the 18-270, I can be shooting landscapes one minute and then immediately zoom in on a Royal Albatross that comes into view without changing lenses." |
When shooting wildlife or any other subject where he wants to isolate one element from a busy background, Snell often shoots wide open for a shallow depth-of-field - another area in which the 18-270 excels. "The bokeh is a real deciding factor for me when choosing a lens," he explains. "If I'm going for an out-of-focus background, I want it to be as smooth as possible, not a hard edge that's distracting. This lens has that soft bokeh I'm looking for." |
The versatility of the 18-270 came in especially handy during Snell's visit to the fossilized forest at Curio Bay on New Zealand's southeastern coast. While Snell was busy photographing the petrified logs, a couple of yellow-eyed penguins stumbled out of the underbrush and onto the beach. Thanks to the reach of his lens, Snell was able to zoom in and capture these endangered birds at the 270mm end. |
Even overcast or rainy days didn't put a damper on Snell's photographic mission. It was pouring when he set foot on one of his destinations: Ulva Island, a small island in Paterson Inlet that serves as a sanctuary for birds and plants that are rare on the New Zealand mainland. |
"It was coming down pretty hard on the beach," he recalls. "I had my camera tucked into my jacket so the lens wasn't constantly getting wet. Once we got in the undergrowth, the rain was reduced enough so we could shoot." |
Snell found that the lushness of the rainforest made for a fine subject on that gray day. "I'd rather shoot something like that on an overcast day than when the sun's bright, because you can reduce the contrast and get a lot more saturated color," he explains. "Simply focus on detail shots - like macros of flowers - so you're not getting that white sky, or crop out the sky, like in my shot of the Kaka parrot hanging out in a tree. Also shoot down so you don't get rain on your lens." |
A final piece of advice if you're trying to add something extra to your travel photos: Don't just focus on what you're trying to capture visually - capture what the place is about. "If it's windy, is there a way in the photo to show it's windy?" Snell says. "If the streets of a foreign city are bustling, is there a way to show that? When I was shooting in the streets of Bangkok, for instance, I used longer exposures and purposeful motion blur to pan with all of the people on scooters. That way, I got the person on the scooter fairly sharp but the bustle of the street behind him nicely blurred. You want to bring those extra senses into the visual so the viewer knows what it felt like to be there." |
To see more of Michael Snell's work, go to http://www.michaelcsnell.com. |