Five weeks before Dewey

While thumbing through pictures I took at Dewey last year I spend some time looking at those I took at sunrise. I'll share this particular one of beach grass that I took on Monday morning, a few hours before I left:

That smudge on the left is a bird that flew by.

I'll mention that the camera was set on Program mode, where the camera sets the shutter speed and aperture for you. Sometimes you'll read about never using Program mode -- that it's better to use any mode (Shutter, Aperture, or Manual) other than Program. To be honest, I'm amused when some people are so strident about this. All I care about is that I get the picture that I'm seeing in my mind. I've used cameras long enough to know the capabilities of each mode, and why you'd want to use any of them. But when you have light changing so quickly as you do during a sunrise or sunset, I don't want to waste time thinking about settings -- I want to concentrate on what I see in my viewfinder.

Yes, you should learn what each mode can do for you, because Program is not a one-size-fits-all kind of thing. But you're not a loser if you use Program.

(Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 18-200mm VR zoom; program mode; camera set shutter speed of 1/80 second at f/4.5 at ISO 400; auto white balance; normal JPG.)

Beach grass

I don't usually photograph plants or trees. But I wanted to try my luck at photographing the beach grass at Dewey Beach. So after watching a fantastic sunrise (the pictures of which I've shared in an earlier post) I walked on a footpath that cut between two enclosed areas of beach grass. I paused at one spot to photograph the grass-lined path that I had just walked up but I wasn't happy with the results. So I resumed my walk.

Stopping at a curve I picked out some tall grass silhouetted by the rising sun. A breeze was blowing and causing the stalks to wave back-and-forth. I aimed the camera towards the sun, which I knew the camera would pick a fast shutter speed -- fast enough to freeze the grass. I briefly thought about spot-metering so the grass would truly be silhouetted but I thought I'd just leave it in matrix-metering and see what would happen. I went to full zoom on the 18-200mm, focusing on the grass, throwing the background out of focus, and compressing the perspective.

Then I waited for the breeze to die down a little so the grass wasn't moving around so much. When it calmed down I took one shot.

This is what I got:

 

I guess it came out like I'd imagined it, although I wasn't expecting the overall golden tone. Sometimes I'm not sure I'll get, so this was a nice surprise and part of the fun of taking pictures.

(Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 18-200mm zoom lens at 200mm; program auto; camera chose shutter speed of 1/640 second at f/13; ISO 200; auto white balance; normal JPG.)