Taking a Family 'Photo Walk'Stephanie Elie, her dad, and her 9-year-old daughter went on a stroll through DC with the Tamron SP 90mm VC Macro, SP 24-70mm VC, and the new 16-300mm VC PZD lenses. |
Article by Jenn Gidman Images by Stephanie Elie |
Stephanie Elie often takes walks with her camera in her Silver Spring, Maryland, neighborhood, capturing whatever catches her eye. So when she heard her dad was coming to town for a visit, she had an idea. "I've done a photo walk type of thing with my father before, as well as separately with my 9-year-old daughter, Myla, so I figured: Why don't we all do a photo walk together?" she says. "My dad has been taking pictures for a gazillion years, and my daughter has really gotten into photography recently, so I thought it would be a great opportunity to let her play around a little more. I was curious to see what different things everyone ended up taking pictures of, since the three of us are very different people who are often drawn to different types of photography." |
The wandering trio checked out local flora and fauna, as well as more abstract items, street subjects, and a few of the more national landmarks, such as the Capitol Building. To capture their varied subjects, Stephanie and her family brought along the Tamron SP 90mm VC Macro lens, the SP 24-70mm VC lens, and the new Tamron 16-300mm VC PZD lens. |
Stephanie's concentration during the walk was on the usual suspects that find their way across her view with the 90mm Macro, the lens she mainly used on the walk. She took lots of closeup images of flowers and even insects ("even though I'm totally scared of bugs!"), as well as street photos that featured subjects such as oddly positioned streetlights and bicycles all lined up and awaiting their next set of riders. The 90's 1:1 maximum magnification ratio allowed her to highlight a flower's petals or a bee's body in stunning detail, while the round diaphragm of the macro lens gave her the ability to beautifully blur out the backgrounds and concentrate solely on her subjects. "I was really amazed by the flower shot I took, because you can see every detail of that flower," she says. "I don't know what kind of flower it is, but after I took that picture, I started noticing it everywhere!"
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She also used her workhorse 24-70 lens. "That's the lens I have most of the time on my camera at home when I'm taking pictures of my family," she says. "But I also like to use this lens to get some great landscapes and photos of landmarks. I was able to get a shot of the Capitol Building with a little bit of its surrounding environment in there, including some visitors and those dramatic clouds in the upper-right side of the frame. With its fast F/2.8 aperture and Vibration Compensation feature, I can also ensure I get a sharp image with the 24-70, even if the weather's lousy or I'm working in low light." |
Stephanie's dad also used both the 90mm Macro and the 24-70 during his DC tour, switching back and forth to capture everything from a field of sunflowers to more abstract concepts such as rust on a fence or glass pieces stuck in a wall near one of the capital's Metro stations. "My dad's always gone the nature and landscape route in his photos," Stephanie says. "What he got to do on this journey is use both those lenses to get some closeups with selective focus. With the image of the sunflower field that he took with the 24-70, for instance, he was able to zoom in on one of the flowers in the foreground while creating that beautiful bokeh with the other flowers in the background. He employed a similar effect using the 90mm to capture a pair of mushrooms. You get that splash of green from the blurred-out grass, but you're really concentrating on the one mushroom as the subject of the photo."
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Stephanie was especially impressed with daughter Myla's images taken with the new Tamron 16-300 VC lens. "She took such an interesting selection of images, from wildlife to pictures of trash on the ground," she says. "It was a different perspective that was definitely cool to see-she just picked up on totally random things that my dad and I didn't." |
The all-in-one 16-300 lens with its 18.8X zoom allowed Myla to achieve compelling compositions on her animal images ("she followed that squirrel around for a while before she got that pic!") and her "found treasures," letting her blur out the backgrounds when she wanted to focus on her subjects. "She had a blast with this lens and got some great shots," Stephanie says. "Even the trash shots were artistically done, with terrific use of angles and perspective. Plus it was wonderful to see her mind working about this issue-when I asked why she took a picture of the McDonald's cup on the ground, she told me she wanted to show how people litter and said, 'Why can't they just throw it away?' I told my husband she should do an entire photo blog of pictures of trash like this!" |
To see more of Stephanie Elie's work, go to www.bizzieliving.com and www.bizziephotography.com. |