Stock Shot Project

Sometimes, as an exercise, I go out with only one specialty lens on the camera.  I pick a focal length I haven't used in awhile just to shake myself up.  Today I selected the Nikon 80-400mm zoom lens and put it on the D7000 camera where it has an equivalent focal length of 120-600mm.  Here the top of the Empire State Building is juxtaposed with the roof ornament of an older building on Broadway.

I set my ISO high, mostly around 800, because very long lenses amplify motion blur significantly, even with vibration reduction turned on, and I intended to hand hold the camera.  A high ISO would enable me to use a very high shutter speed to prevent motion blur.  Even with that, I would take several shots of the same scene just to insure that one would come out sharp.  This turned out to be a wise move, for even at 1/500th second many images were blurred. The high ISO is not as destructive of image quality on a bright, sunny day as it is in low light.  This photo is of the Flat Iron Building reflecting the golden glow of the sun, which is also picked up in a reflection in one of the windows in a foreground building.

Long and super-long telephoto lenses have a compression effect on subjects.  I wanted to use this to my compositional benefit by choosing some popular New York buildings and showing how they relate to their environment.  This shot, for instance, is of the Empire State Building framed by the arch of Washington Square some thirty blocks away.

Here an abstract pattern of the Empire State Building lit by the late afternoon sun is reflected in a modern sky scraper.

This super tight close-up of the Flatiron Building reflecting the setting sun reminds me of shots I did of classical Greek temples.

The steeple of a church on Fifth Avenue is compressed through the "telephoto effect" against the top of the Empire State Building.  The focal length for this image was approximately 350mm.