Anchorage | Dan Bailey's Adventure Photography Blog

Isolating Your Subjects with a Short Telephoto Lens

Posted on January 15, 2020 by DanJanuary 15, 2020

I’ve always been a fan of the fixed short telephoto lens, which is typically a mid-range focal length with a relatively compact size. In use, this type performs like a classic normal lens, but with a little more throw, and it has the basic characteristics of long telephoto without the encumbering bulk and weight of a bigger zoom.

In practical terms, a short telephoto allows you to isolate subject matter that’s relatively close to the camera and add slight compression to your scene. The effect is an image that’s clean from the distracting elements that a wider lens would catch and enough bokeh to allow the main subject to stand out from the background.

For this reason, I find the short telephoto to be an excellent choice for shooting intimate landscapes that feature a prominent subject with just one or two other elements that help give a sense of environment to the shot.

Traditionally, the short telephoto has been considered the ideal lens for shooting portraits, and while I do use mine for that, I love using it to shoot nature scenes. For this reason, it would also be an excellent choice for things like street photography and travel, because it allows you to capture the details of the world in and make clean, simple compositions.

In my mind, the short telephoto focal length checks two boxes that can always lead towards more effective compositions: simplifying the scene and making use of varying depths of focus. Both of these techniques help you create pictures that easily draw your viewers into the shot and leave no ambiguity about what they should be looking at.

In other words, it allows them to clearly answer the question, “What’s the picture about?”

My favorite short telephoto lens these days is the Fujifilm XF50mm f/2. It’s a pocket sized, weather sealed gem that only weighs 7 oz. It’s small and light enough to carry with you all the time, it has a minimum focusing distance of just 1.28 feet (39 cm), and it has a fast f/2 aperture. (Read my full review of this lens here.)

With a focal length that equates to about 76mm compared to old film lenses, it offers just enough compression at close to medium distances to make it an extremely versatile lens for a wide range of styles and subject matter. For this reason, that little 50 has become one of my favorite Fuji lenses and it goes with me just about everywhere.

Back when I shot Nikon, my favorite short telephoto was the venerable 105mm f/2.5 manual focus. Nikon’s current AF equivalent is the 105mm f/2.8G lens. Canon also has a 100mm f/2.8 lens. Either of those would be a great short telephoto.

In addition, many kit lenses and shorter zooms encompass this focal length, so even you don’t have a fixed telephoto prime, you can still make use of these techniques.

I shot all of these photos this week, thanks within a mile of my house, either in my neighborhood, or along the main bike path that runs right through Anchorage. In addition to the main subjects I captured, all of these scenes where filled with regular city stuff, like houses, power lines, traffic lights, street lamps, etc…

With the really bright orangey sunset photos, I shot all of those on the trail right next to one of the larger intersections in the city. The background was filled with all kinds of stuff I didn’t want in my shot, and by using the short telephoto and a bit of walking to find good vantage points, I was able to crop all those distracting elements out right inside the viewfinder and make clean, uncluttered compositions.

In my mind, the short telephoto is a lens that fits in with that notion of abbreviation, which I consider to be such a vital compositional concept in photography. By abbreviating your scenes, instead of showing everything, you create much clearer compositions, and you engage your viewers to imagine what lies outside the borders of your frame.

If you have a short telephoto, whether it’s a prime, or if you have that focal length on one of your zoom lenses, I encourage you to spend more time experimenting with it.

The key is getting close to your subjects so that you isolate specific parts of your scene, while eliminating everything else. You can leave one or two elements things in the shot, but they must be things that either accentuate, compliment or contrast in some intriguing way with your main subject.

Have fun.

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Early January is The Most Magical Time of the Year in Alaska

Posted on January 6, 2020 by DanJanuary 6, 2020

Some people think the big payoff for living in Alaska is the 24-hour daylight we get in the summertime. They would be wrong.

I won’t say that those super long days aren’t nice. After all, I love summer when I can ride my mountain bike in shorts for hours at a time, hike until midnight and explore gravel bars in my little yellow Cessna without having to preheat the engine and shovel out the plane from two feet of snow.

But ask true Alaskans who love the outdoors, and most of them will tell you that there’s something truly magical about those first couple weeks of winter. During early January, when the sun is low on the horizon and the temperatures are well below zero for days on end, the light is simply magical.

Looking down my street at sunset.

When the air is clear and cold for days at a time, hoar frost forms on every surface, and it turns the trees in to shape the resemble something out of a Dr. Suess book.

And when you add in the brilliant gold and pink light from the low sun, which barely skims the horizon for just a few short hours, the result is truly spectacular scenery that only happens for a few days out of the year.

This is what we live for. At least those of us who pay attention to the light.

After weathering the increasingly dark and cold days of late fall, the ice-laden days we often get in November, and the hit or miss days of December, when we usually see multiple freeze/thaw cycles, Chinook windstorms and numerous false starts to winter, January finally brings the payoff.

Sure, it might be 20 below out on the trails, but the light is so pretty, it makes it all worth the effort. Plus, there’s something really cool about bundling up and braving these bitter cold conditions on foot our on our fat tire bikes.

The trees across the street from my house.

There’s something quite unique about riding or walking on snow when it’s this cold. It’s very loud. It squeak and creaks, and with the noise dampening effect of the snow-laden forest, other sounds become oddly amplified, like the rustling of your jacket, or the swinging straps on your backpack.

It’s loud enough that it sometimes makes you turn around to see who’s there, but you realize that’s no one. It’s just you, all alone in this special and otherwise quiet wilderness.

Hoar frost on the trees, shot from my front porch with a long lens.

When you stop moving, everything is silent, but you know that the forest around you is alive. You can look up at the snow-covered pine trees, and even though they’re standing there completely motionless, you know that they see you, or at least know you’re there. Maybe they’re even talking to each other. I often wonder what they’re saying. Maybe this is their favorite time of the year too.

All of the photos in this post were shot within 50 feet from my front door, all in the first week of January in the last two years. Three of the five were shot yesterday afternoon, at around 3:30pm, right at the peak of sunset. This shot immediately above was shot will standing on my front porch. All were made with my Fuji 100-400 lens, which is really fun for isolating specific parts of the landscape.

They’re all proof that we truly live in Magic Land, and that you don’t need to go very far to take compelling photographs. And they’re proof that this first part of January, as cold as it may be, is indeed the most wonderful and special time of the year in Alaska.

Ask anyone.

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Comparing Last Year’s Favorite Photo With This Year’s Version

Posted on September 25, 2019 by DanSeptember 25, 2019

As a spastic, high energy cyclist and action photographer, I practically live for cyclocross season. I find it to be an incredibly fun way to spend a few hours on a Saturday morning in the fall, as I cheer on friends and race my own bike through the mud and whatever other obstacles and challenging terrain get thrown into the course.

I also find it to be one of the best ways to practice my photography chops and test out the fast action and autofocus capabilities of my camera gear. In fact, during the past few years, I’ve pretty much used cyclocross as my benchmark to test out just how well the Fuji cameras and lenses perform when shooting very fast subject matter.

And as with any subject that I’m passionate about, I’m always trying to better my skills and vary my approach, in the hopes that I can come up with something really incredible. Sometimes I get really good images, and sometimes… occasionally, on rare occasion, I get a truly great image.

This photo above is from last year’s race at Mirror Lake near Anchorage, which featured a 30-foot long creek crossing. Just one of the 698 frames that I shot while standing by the creek during last year’s race, it’s a photo of my good friend Amber, who always seems to look great in action photos.

It was captured with my Fujifilm X-T3 and the XF14mm f/2.8 wide angle lens, at ISO 1600 with an exposure setting of 1/210 sec and f/5.6, using the Mechanical Shutter at 11fps in Aperture Priority Mode, using the super cool PRE-SHOT ES setting.

With the X-T3 set to ACROS Film Simulation, I also added a warm tint in the WARM/COOL BW ADJ settings menu.

I was blown away when I saw it, and in fact, I deemed it to be the coolest action photo that I’d ever shot in my 22 years was a pro action photographer. Here it is again.

Fast Forward to This Year’s Race

The minute I saw that the Mirror Lake course would be included in this season’s cyclocross race schedule, I got all giddy inside, because I knew I’d get to relive the magic from last year. The cheering… the splashing… the chance for another killer action photo.

Of course, I had set a pretty high bar for myself. Having made my coolest action photo ever, at least up to that point, I knew that the pressure would be on for me to come up with another awesome image.

That’s the great thing about photography, you always have room to improve. Even if you were to shoot the best, most amazing image of your entire life today, you can potentially shoot an even better one tomorrow. That’s a really cool thing to think about, and it’s what drives us, right?

All week, leading up to the race, I’d been playing it over in my mind. I’d been thinking about how I might approach the race this time, and wondering if I could indeed come up with something at least as cool as last year’s image, if not better. That said, when we’re talking photography, maybe “better” is not necessarily the right term. Let’s go with “equally cool, but different.”

Come race day, I drove out to Mirror Lake, scurried down to the creek, warmed up by shooting the intermediate men’s race, and waited for the pro women to start. Call it nostalgia, call it favoritism, I was really waiting for Amber. As I said, she always looks awesome in photos and I love capturing hero shots of my friends.

In my quest to come up with a different approach, I shifted my vantage point and moved to the other side of the creek. Shooting again with the XF14mm f/2.8 lens, I set the X-T3 to PRE-SHOT ES with 11fps bursts, this time using the Electronic Shutter.

I also set the camera to the ACROS film sim, since I love shooting cyclocross in black and white, and once again, I used the WARM/COOL BW ADJ setting, but with a slightly cooler tint than what I’d used for last year’s image.

Standing on the on the edge of the creek, and reached out as far as I could, holding the X-T3 horizontally out over the water, using the Vertical Battery Grip for a more ergonomic purchase. I set the focus to ZONE AF, adjusted the location of the zone to a medium sized box at the right side of the frame and kept my finger on the Grip’s shutter button as I waited…

During the first lap, I grabbed some shots of Laura, Jessie, Andrea and Kate.

During the second lap, I could see Amber through the trees as she came flying down the tail opposite the creek and made the turn. When she hit the water, I did a front-to-back horizontal pan and shot an 11fps burst at ISO 800, 1/140 sec at f/4, with a +.7 adjustment on my EV+/- dial.

She was true to form, looking awesome with her determined expression as she splashed through the creek. This shot was the fourth in a seven-frame burst and I’m blown away by just how sharp she is, despite the amount of camera movement there was in the shot. Let’s just say that I’ve had a lot of practice with this panning thing. Still it doesn’t always come out that sharp.

After she came though, I checked the frame on my camera and was quite exited. It was good. Very good, and certainly different than last year.

My Favorite Shot from This Year’s Race

Then it happened. Amber’s daughter Cadence hit the creek forty nine seconds after I grabbed the shot above. She’s racing really strong this year, finishing 3rd place in the last two races, and she’s every bit as photogenic. I’d shot a few photos of her during the first race two weeks ago, and I was really psyched by the results.

I was ready, having shot the two other women who were spaced in between. Using the same panning technique, I angled the camera down just a tiny bit to give the shot a slight more dynamic feel. Honestly, I don’t remember if I did that on purpose, or if it just happened in with all the excitement.

This was the seventh frame out of the eight I grabbed as she flew by and raced her way to another 3rd place finish. For some reason, the shutter speed had switched to 1/300 sec, so this frame is definitely darker than the other photo, but I think it looks pretty cool. It has a lot of definition and a nice contrast between sharp and blur.

There’s something a little bit different about this photo than the other frames I shot at the creek this year, it just has a little bit more energy, more water and a more exciting feel.

Comparing it to my favorite shot from last year, I think it holds up well. It definitely shows off the action capabilities of the X-T3, and from a creative standpoint, it satisfies my itch to continually push my own boundaries as a photographer and walk away from every scene with an original image that truly excites me.

With that in mind, I wonder how things will play out next season…

Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope you’re having fun pushing your own creative boundaries as well this fall.

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My 5 Favorite Cyclocross Photos from This Past Weekend

Posted on September 16, 2019 by DanSeptember 16, 2019

The cyclocross season continues, with our second Anchorage race of the series taking place this past Saturday, which, of course, meant another great opportunity for some action photography. As always, I spent a good two hours running around with my … Continue reading →