The weather forecast said it would be sunny. Right now. I looked outside and the sky was overcast. I had a plan though and I intended to follow it, maybe it would clear out a bit later… so I drove to my spot and found out that I had nothing to do there and the cloud cover didn’t show any signs of lightening up. I took some pictures with the analog camera to try out what 16mm really feels like (so the pictures will be worthless but what am I going to do with slides anyway?) and had the 300mm lens on the 40D because I had this great idea that I would use the wideangle on analog and then shoot dragonflies with digital. The only insects I saw though were mosquitoes so I just walked back to the car, it was pointless. I had no plan B so I had to sit in the car for a while and figure out what to do. In the end I decided to drive to the little tarn I discovered earlier in the summer, there’s a nice wind shelter where I can drink my coffee and wait for the sun.
There was a little bit of wind that broke the surface of the tarn, but sometimes the wind quieted down and gave me nice reflections. I really like this tarn, you can walk all around it and the shoreline is filled with interesting features so there’s always something to catch the eye. You just have to remember that the shore is really just more or less moss floating on water so watch where you step and be prepared to fall back and you’ll be fine.
Of course it would’ve been nice with some sunshine but it just wasn’t happening and I wasn’t too disappointed to be honest. I might be a little bit odd but I don’t mind overcast weather, it’s not necessarily a bad thing for landscape pictures. Purists may scorn at it, but maybe it’s the flower photographer in me that can settle with flat light! By the time I had done one and a half rounds around the tarn, I saw that the clouds were a little bit brighter in the horizon. I didn’t bother to wait and see if they would clear out, I was happy with the shooting I had so far and didn’t feel the need to take the same pictures all over again in the mid-day sun. So I drove off and on the way home when the sun really did come out, I stopped at another tarn and walked around it in search of dragonflies. I found some, but need a little bit more practice before I’m going to post any dragonfly pictures here!
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I’m already good friends with the new Tokina. I know I have to work harder on my foregrounds and I also need to figure out how to take horizontal pictures because I’m mostly taking verticals at the moment. Then again, I’ve always liked verticals… so maybe I shouldn’t blame the Tokina for that. I also took some pictures at f2.8 and the centre sharpness is really good. At first I was horrified though at the corner sharpness until I realised that it’s more of a DOF problem than sharpness issue as such so I’m not worried about it. It’s a great lens and I can’t wait to see what I can do with it in the mountains in September on my vacation!