By Jenn Gidman
Images by Dave Blinder
Ocean City and Cape May are renowned for their seaside communities, drawing vacationers from around the world. But to nearby New Jersey resident Dave Blinder, they're also photographic gold. He was able to try out the new Tamron 16-300mm VC PZD lens during recent trips to these resort destinations, photographing local landscapes, as well as animals at the Cape May County Zoo.
"My first impression of the 16-300 was what a compact lens it is," Dave says. "You don't draw a lot of attention to yourself when you're shooting with it, and it's very comfortable to wear around your neck or hold in your hand for a few hours while you're walking around. The focal-length range is also perfect. The traditional wide-angle kit lens is usually 18mm, but the extra 2mm this lens offers draws in a lot more scenery and offers a broader perspective. The 300mm end gives the reach I need to fill the frame with the animals I'm photographing to show off their personalities. And I often found myself using the middle of the focal-length range to compose my images the way I wanted to."
Read on for Dave's descriptions of the photos he was able to capture during his jaunt along the Jersey shore.
I caught a sunrise along the shore in Ocean City that was unbelievable. It only happens with this intensity once in a while—it has to do with the atmospheric conditions, the sediment in the air, the time of year—and I just happened to be there this time. I shot this image at 16mm, which let me get a nice, wide perspective of the horizon.
The photo was pretty much straight out of the camera. The sky was dark when I got to the beach before the sun came up, and when it lit up like fire, it only lasted about two minutes. I took the photo using a 30-second exposure at F/7.1, ISO 200.
It was also before sunrise in Ocean City when I was walking down the street and spotted this Ferris wheel. That starburst in the Ferris wheel's center is actually a streetlight. I noticed the light there and thought I'd move around a bit to see if I could get the light aligned perfectly in the middle and with the spokes of the Ferris wheel. My camera was at just the right height on my tripod, so I just stepped a little to the left to set it up the way I wanted.
I took the picture at 22mm with a 30-second exposure, stopping the lens down to F/22. If I had had the aperture at F/6 or F/8, it would have been just a small blob without a focused light. But because of the optics of the lens, the setting at F/22 created that starburst.
For this wintry ice-and-stream picture, I knew I wanted to go out when there was very soft light—I didn't want to try for that shot in broad daylight because there would've been too much dynamic range. I shot it at a long exposure of 30 seconds at F/11, which is one of the best apertures for a detailed image like this, offering a fine sharpness throughout the photo.
In traditional landscape photography, you want to focus about a third of the way into the scene and bring as much into focus as possible. Focus any closer to yourself and the background will go out of focus; focus behind that and the foreground goes out of focus. I put my autofocus point on the bottom left-hand corner, at the tip of the ice. You can see all the rocks are highly detailed, complemented by the silky water and the soft light. I zoomed in with the lens to frame it, which shows the versatility of the 16-300. I'm right about in the middle there at 151mm.
One of the most colorful birds I saw at the Cape May County Zoo was this toucan, which was about 8 feet away from me here. It was so vibrant that I wanted to fill the frame with it to show that colorful eye and bill and the bird's individual characteristics. There was a metal meshing in front of the bird, but because the 16-300 is such a compact lens, I was able to push the lens close to the caging so the meshing fell completely out of focus.
I shot this image handheld at 1/50th of a second, ISO 800. It wasn't a bright day, so it really shows what the 16-300 can do in low light. The VC was on, giving me four extra stops. This shot probably wouldn’t have been possible without the VC—I'd have had to have raised my ISO much higher, which means the image would have been grainer. By using the VC and taking the picture at 300mm, I was able to get a sharp, clean shot.
The river otters at the zoo were so funny as they played in the water. They're in captivity, but I didn't necessarily want them to look like they were in captivity in my images, so for this photo I filled the frame, mostly showing this otter's face to highlight its character and personality. Taking the picture at 300mm knocked the background out of focus and created that bokeh, which gave me a natural-looking photo of the otter.
I handheld this shot at 1/100th of a second at F/7.1, ISO 400, with the VC on for extra stability (I also braced my arm on a guardrail to maximize the sharpness even more). Again, it would have been hard here to get this image without the VC: There's a lot of magnification at 300mm, and the river otters don't stand still for very long. You have limited opportunities to get good eye contact with them in your frame where you want them. The VC also gives me the benefit of a sharper view through the viewfinder, which helps me compose my images.
The eyes of this sandhill crane were really glowing a fiery orange-red, so I wanted to shoot the image pretty tight so the viewer could appreciate its eyes. By composing the image this way, the crane also appears to have an elongated face, which makes the photo somewhat whimsical.
I took this picture at 227mm, knowing that using that telephoto view would knock the background mostly out of focus and offer a soft, neutral look that goes with the crane's plumage and that wouldn't distract anyone's eyes from the crane. You can see the amazing detail in the feathers and how clearly defined it is around the edges of the eyes, as well as the detail in the centers of the eyes. I took this photo at F/7.1, a fairly wide aperture that gave me a lot of sharpness but also a little softening at the back of the bird's feathers.
To see more of Dave Blinder's work, go to www.flickr.com/photos/davidraymond.