Sunday, February 2, 2014

Joe Hutson tube ride sequence slide show

Joe Hutson tube ride from Jeff Parry on Vimeo.


I was able to photograph a secret spot in Santa Cruz that was particularly good in mid January 2014. My friend Joe Hutson was out and snagged a few good tube rides. Shot with a Nikon D600 and a 500mm f/4.0 P at 1600 ISO 1/2000 second and f/8. The slide show is of two different waves. Keeping Joe in focus with this manual focus lens was the difficult part. Shot in Aperture Priority in continuous shutter. Joe made it look easy.

Here is a link to the photos on my website: January 20th 2014 MLK swell

Nikon 500mm f/4.0 P

Pacific Harbor Seals
I got a new toy. The Nikon 500mm f/4.0 P prime telephoto manual focus lens. With a x1.4 teleconverter and a x2.0 TC I will effectively have a 700mm and a 1000mm telephoto lens as well. This shot of the Pacific Harbor Seals resting on the offshore rocks just off Pigeon Point was captured with my 500mm. They are incredibly sensitive marine mammals so I had to keep my distance at 50+ feet so as not to break the Marine Mammal Protection act, but also not to scare my subjects into the Ocean. As I know this reef intimately so I was able to sneak up onto them and set up my camera and tripod with out disturbing them very much. They did all notice me as this photo exemplifies, but I was able to mess around with my settings and get off a few different shots before the setting sun went down too far and before the seals looked away or moved around. I shot it at f/4 so the depth of field would be shallow enough to blur the background and focus the eye on the subjects in focus. The bokah appears to be real nice in this prime telephoto lens. ISO 200 1/100 second. Post production in Lightroom 4.